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The number of electric vehicles in service throughout the world has increased from a few thousand in 2009 to some 740,000 in December 2014. These vehicles are often seen as a means of reducing climate and health damaging emissions, and their development is directly supported by some countries and endorsed by the EU. Aside from questions of rebound effects, embedded emissions and cleanness of electricity generation, there are unanswered questions about the energy performance of such cars under a range of driving conditions, and the results of existing studies are not easily interpretable by policymakers and drivers. This study uses the results of extensive dynamometer tests on eight commonly sold electric vehicles. It develops a multivariate model, with regression coefficients around 0.97, to map power demand and energy consumption for all likely combinations of speed and acceleration, producing …