Yeah, if you aren't riding the brakes, I agree with you that it sounds related to the Fiat. 35mi of range for 20mi of hills seems off.
> To be fair, that's precisely what I said: Hills kill EV range
Sure, but efficiency is a factor in range. What I'm saying is that, unless your EV range is so small that it can't get up the hill in the first place, hills shouldn't have a substantive impact on its range (much less so than an ICE).
I don't know a lot about the Fiat, so perhaps something strange is going on with its regen breaking. For example, with its smaller battery capacity, it's likely to have a lower max regen limit. Perhaps you're driving in cold weather and it poorly regens under those conditions. It looks like the Fiat does blended braking, so perhaps your using more of the friction brakes than you expect. Etc.
While I have not driven some of the most recent EVs and have no doubt they are better, the above statement surely contradicts physical reality.
It takes more energy to go up a hill than to drive on flat ground, so it is inevitable that a trip uphill will drain available range far faster than driving on flat ground.
Yes, but real world trips that involve hills tend to be somewhat balanced (round trips rather necessarily so) and it takes less energy to go down a hill than to drive on flat ground (and, while some of that advantage is wasted by excess speed from gravitational acceleration, regenerative braking can get a lot of that back, too.) So, the range impact on a trip with an uphill component will often not be substantive if you have enough energy to handle the uphill portion itself, if you have a car and driving pattern that uses things like regenerative braking efficiently.
All I can say is that didn't match my experience as an EV owner (leaser) at all.
At 100% battery, indicated range was 90 miles and on level ground that estimate was just about right.
But on the commute over a hill, 30 miles, I'd arrive at work with only ~10 miles left. So it used up 80 miles of indicated range to travel only 30 miles! Due to the uphill portion. Recovery on the downhill is minimal as mentioned in earlier post, just a couple miles of indicated range.
With the Fiat, it would use up about 30-40 miles of indicated range to go uphill less than 10 miles. But it would only recover 2-3 miles on the downhill side.
> is a local transportation vehicle not designed for that kind of travel
This is local travel, it's just that the area is hilly so going anywhere is going to inevitably involve hills.
> Perhaps I misunderstood your complaint, and your concern is just the range and not the efficiency?
To be fair, that's precisely what I said: Hills kill EV range.