I recently took my GEM to work which is 8 miles away. I have the 7.5HP motor and 23" wheels. If I drive my GEM right I can drain the batteries in less than 10 miles.
I made a decision to drive rather conservatively and take it easy on the batteries. I live straight up a hill and coasted down, as it's a first mile or so. I still had to stop a few times on the downhill because of stop signs. After the hill it is up and over the 5 freeway and it is flat for the next 6-7 miles.
DRIVING AHEAD
Since this is my regular route that I drive to work everyday (a small portion is normally freeway) I was aware of the traffic light durations. My approach was to not gun the GEM off the start but try to maintain 25MPH. When I had a unimpeded run I would eventually get up to 30MPH or so. My GEM can easily maintain 30 - 32MPH on the flats but the idea was if I knew I would never make a light off in the distance I would coast to the light and conserve power. More often then not the light would change as I got there. It was about noon so traffic was light so I wasn't in anyones way. Had I not played the lights the way I did I would have expelled much more energy and probably not arrived at my destination any quicker.
I was able to charge at work so I had a full charge coming home. This was at night (ie; lights on) and because of the mile or so uphill near home it took 3 bars to get home. I did the same coasting thing to lights as much as was reasonable practical. Again I maintained a 25-30 mph.
I'm hoping that with this kind of driving I can get close to 20 miles per charge and still have the benfit of the 7.5hp motor when needed.
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