Low-Cost Instrumentation for Energy-Based Assessment of Electric Vehicles Under High-Altitude and High-Gradient Real-World Driving Conditions

This study presents an energy-based assessment of a battery electric sport utility vehicle (SUV) tested under high-altitude and high-gradient real-world conditions in Ambato, Ecuador, at approximately 2500 m above sea level. A low-cost instrumentation setup composed of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) device, a Fluke 393 FC clamp meter, and an On-Board Diagnostics II (OBD-II) interface was used to evaluate zero, positive, and negative road-gradient conditions in Normal and Sport driving modes. The results show that positive gradients increased the acceleration energy from 0.0454 to 0.0658 kWh in Normal mode and from 0.0351 to 0.0535 kWh in Sport mode. In contrast, negative gradients favored regenerative braking, with Normal mode reaching a net energy balance of −0.0249 kWh and a segment-level recovery ratio of 194.38%. This value reflects the contribution of gravitational potential energy. Sport mode showed lower regenerative performance, particularly during uphill operation, where the recovery ratio decreased to 8.96%. These findings demonstrate that low-cost instrumentation can capture representative route-level energy trends and support real-world electric vehicle (EV) energy assessment in topographically complex high-altitude environments.