This SAE Recommended Practice establishes uniform procedures for testing electric battery-powered vehicles which are capable of being operated on public and private roads. It is the intent of this document to provide standard tests which will allow various performance characteristics of electric vehicles to be cross-compared on a common basis in specifications, technical papers, and engineering discussions. The tests concern attributes of the total vehicle system rather than those of its subsystems and components. Tests of components such as batteries are the subject of separate procedures. The road tests specified in this document are recommended for use whenever possible particularly to establish vehicle performance specifications. The dynamometer procedures are included primarily to facilitate development testing. Paragraph 2.2 provides definitions of terminology used in this document. Section 3 specifies test conditions and instrumentation which are to be used for all the tests specified in this document while Section 4 identifies the data which are to be recorded for all tests. The specific tests covered by this document are:

1. a Acceleration Characteristics on a Level Road (Section 5)
2. b Gradeability Limit (Section 6)
3. c Gradeability at Speed (Section 7)
4. d Deceleration (Section 8)
5. e Coastdown Testing (Section 9)