• The original Volkswagen e-Golf had a 20-kilowatt-hour (usable) battery
• It was later updated with a bigger battery.
• The first iteration of the EV had an EPA-estimated range of 83 miles.

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The Volkswagen e-Golf is far from what we’d call a do-it-all electric car. Debuting back in 2014, it was VW’s attempt at making a mainstream EV at a time when the first-generation Nissan Leaf was the best value-for-money proposition on the market.

The e-Golf had a 24.2-kilowatt-hour (total) battery pack without active thermal management, which is tiny by today’s standards. According to the EPA, the 2015 Volkswagen e-Golf had an estimated range of 83 miles, so you’d expect a decade-old EV without active cooling or heating to be practically unusable, especially in the winter.

Well, it depends on what your expectations are. As you’ll see in the Bjorn Nyland video embedded below, the original e-Golf can still be used in today’s conditions, even in freezing temperatures, as long as you’re fine with stopping for a top-up every hour or so.

Nyland, who’s a prolific EV tester, bought this particular 2014 e-Golf for 40,000 Norwegian Krone, which is about $3,500. That’s a bargain whichever way you look at it, and it’s even better once you get a glimpse of the odometer because the car has just 85,750 miles (138,000 kilometers).

But what about the range? The test started with a roughly 88% state of charge and an ambient temperature of 12.2 degrees Fahrenheit (-11 Celsius). The car estimated a range of just 51 miles (82 km), so not great.

After roughly 32 miles traveled on the highway at about 56 mph (90 kph), the driver got cold feet and left the highway because he feared he wouldn’t make it to the first available charger. On country roads, things improved slightly and Nyland reached a DC fast charger safely.

He had driven 52 miles (84 km) and the car’s instrument cluster estimated it could still go about 7 miles (11 km). The trip took one hour and 20 minutes with an average speed of 39 mph (63 kph) and an average energy consumption of 3.4 miles/ kWh (17.9 kWh/100 km), which is respectable even by modern EV standards. According to the DC fast charger, the car still had 10% left in the battery.

So, how bad is the degradation based on this short trip? As per Nyland’s calculations, the car still has a usable battery capacity of 16.7 kWh. When it was new, it had 20 kWh usable. In 2023, another degradation test was performed on the same car and it revealed a usable capacity of 17.7 kWh.

In percentages, this particular e-Golf has retained 83.5% of its original capacity, so not bad, considering it doesn’t have an actively cooled battery pack. That said, its capacity was low to begin with, and with degradation, the range only gets worse.

For just $3,500, it’s quite a respectable result. But what’s your take on this? Let us know in the comments below.