I never seen functioning in cold climate mentioned by Musk or Tesla representatives. In my understanding, cold should be killing the batteries. If Tesla has met with considerable success in cold-proofing their cars, surely they would tell?
That being said, they obviously wouldn't sell if they didn't work but I wouldn't look at the popularity there as endorsement of cold weather performance, other factors are at play.
Wow. So tens of thousands of highly educated people in a cold climate country aren't a good enough indicator? What would be?
Educated people are the types of people that do a cost analysis taking into account tax incentives and choose the best value, even if cheap.
For example, Nissan Leafs are awful compared to other cars at the same sticker price and can hardly make it back and forth to work for a long commute. However, lots of people in the bay have them because:
* massive tax credits make it cheap
* it gets employees better parking at many offices
* free charging at many offices
* access to the HOV lane
1: http://www.ibtimes.com/tesla-owners-norway-get-134000-tax-br...
2: http://jalopnik.com/heres-why-the-tesla-model-s-is-the-1-sel...
1. Almost 20% of the population of Norway is in the Oslo urban area. There could be a fairly large number of people who could get by reasonably without ever having to drive outside that area, and so would be OK with it if their car's range was reduced by cold.
2. The next half dozen or so largest population centers in Norway are also in the southern part of the country, as is Oslo. It looks like the Supercharger coverage is sufficient that any trip between the top several urban areas would have access to one every 70-100 miles. This could make reduced range due to cold acceptable for many people.
Hopefully there will be more data available and released in the future, as Tesla and Nissan Leaf have been the best-selling cars in Norway for multiple years in a row.
For anecdata, an Uber driver with a Nissan Leaf told me recently that range on very cold days is about half of the summer range.
Also worth noting that some, but not all, Leaf's have a more efficient Heat Pump based system which has less impact on the battery.
We thanked him for his time and did not choose a Tesla.
(That was a few years ago, nowadays it's eight years. But still…)
That sounds ridiculous to me but it's probably a pretty common sentiment with people who spend 100k on a car, considering there are lots of people buying 25k cars who do the same, despite it probably not being a wise financial decision.
It's still a value judgement. If you value having a new car every two to three years, which also means you won't be doing maintenance other than oil changes, then you might be willing to pay the extra money.
Owners just build in the monthly lease or loan payment to their cash flow budget.
I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum, I only buy used cars for cash and have not had a car payment in almost 20 years.
The tesla powertrain as a whole should last a million miles or maybe more with nothing more than routine maintenance and some battery pack changes which will drop in cost over time. If battery pack changes get down to $5K (which seems very possible), and battery packs are usable for let's say 150K miles, then you get a car with a power train that runs for a million miles for about $45K in maintenance (add a bit more for tires and other incidentals) and then subtract the cheaper electric fuel cost. This is less than the cost to keep the power train running for a Mercedes S class for one million miles (which will probably require 4 or 5 transmissions and 4 or 5 motors to get to a million miles).
But realistically people don't repair 150K+ mile S classes because it would cost $30-40K to replace the tranny/engine plus all the other engine things while the car would be worth very little, so they junk it and buy a new car which means the cost of owning an S class for one million miles is more realistically the cost of owning 5 or 6 S classes.
I see both sides of the argument. Buying a good used car for cash is probably a better investment financially. I personally don't trust the secondary car market to be honest with me that a car has been taken care of properly. Maintenance records can be and are faked. I generally don't mind paying more to have a newer and usually more reliable car with a warranty. I do usually drive them until they're paid off plus some time span, but in general its not very long, 1-2 years max.
Because it will be smaller it could theoretically even be a free upgrade, depending on the recycling value of the old pack.
New world. I worry about gas mileage because of the impact to the environment - not because of the cost. I want a highly reliable, luxury performance car but I want it with a minimal cost to the environment.
Well, depends on what you mean by that. If you're talking about long-term longevity, cold actually helps: lithium-ion cell capacities generally degrade more slowly in cold temperatures.
I own a Model S as my only car, and it's worked great for me in winter. Cold temperatures definitely impact range (although this is more due to the extra power requirements of heating the car than anything to do with the batteries themselves). I've experienced maybe a 15% range loss in winter, or maybe as much as 35% in really cold temperatures well below freezing. Shorter trips lose more efficiency because the car doesn't have time to warm up, but then shorter trips usually don't need as much range ;).
When the car gets 260+ miles of range on a charge in summer, then even losing 35% still leaves plenty of range for any situations I've found myself in during ~2 years of ownership.
Very cold batteries can lose longevity if you charge them without heating them up first, but most electric vehicles have builtin battery heaters, temperature sensors, etc. If you plug in a car to charge, and its battery pack is too cold, the car will first use wall power to warm up the battery, then begin charging once it can safely do so.
I drive an EV myself and living in Northern NJ, temperatures can go below lower teens in some years. After a 30 minutes pre-conditioning, batteries get warmed up to 42F, which would certainly alleviate the range issue.
Additionally, ICE cars also suffer on range under cold conditions. [1]
[1]: http://www.fleetcarma.com/cold-weather-fuel-efficiency/