The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter
axios.com
axios.com
I leave my car plugged in overnight, in the "normal" charging mode.
While I get dressed, I turn on extended range mode and turn the heat on. This warms up both the car and the battery. It usually takes me about ~20 minutes to get dressed.
I stop at a Supercharger to use the bathroom.
If I can, I grab meals at a Supercharger.
Most of the time, I don't need to "wait" while the car charges, usually because I'm in the bathroom or waiting for food prep. If I do need to wait, it's usually about 5 minutes. Thus, total stopping time is about as much as a gas car.
The only limitation is that there's waaaay less Superchargers than gas stations. The only time I really had to wait a long time at a Supercharger was when I went to a ski area with a charger, and because it was early season, there were no lifts / shuttles to the parking lot with the charger. (Otherwise I'd have been able to drive home without charging.)
Edits: I have a 2018 long-range. It got a total of 307 miles new, now that it's 3 years old it's total range is ~280. (This is very close to the 2022 standard range, BTW.)
I get about 2/3rds of stated range in cold weather. I drive with the heat at 68, and I use the but warmer for a few minutes. I try not to exceed 75MPH on 65MPH roads, or 80MPH on 70MPH roads. Where I drive, often traffic exceeds the posted speed limit.
Hopefully this changes with time, but it is a GIANT limitation. Skiing around Arizona I have noticed all the chargers have EV's parked in them. I want to buy a used BMW i3, but the convenience factor is still a ways off for me. My Prius gets awesome mileage and I run the heater full blast in the winter and A/C full blast in the summer.
I have half a mind to put a giant DIY battery in the trunk. Wire in a dead man switch of some kind and run on pure 18650's around town... gonna flirt with the idea a bit more. My DIY electric bike has probably given me a bit more confidence in the area than I need, but YOLO!
Look at it this way: There'll never be less chargers than on the day you buy your EV. Charging networks are expanding constantly, with more sites, bigger sites, and faster chargers. So the utility and convenience of an EV is only going to improve. If you can get by with the chargers that exist today in your region, it'll be even better in the future.
A Shell gas station near me in London [1] recently reopened after a renovation, and guess what? There's no gas pumps there anymore. Just ultra-rapid charging points.
Hopefully charging stations will be lucrative enough, or hopefully good supply/demand competition kicks in -- few charging stations and high demand --> high prices to recharge --> more charging stations.
Looking at Europe, nearly every gas station is starting to get a fast charger installed (along major roads, at least). A couple of years ago there were waiting lines at super chargers during the yearly migration to the Alps, but I haven't seen any similar stories this year.
What is "extended range mode" sorry? I'm aware of preconditioning, setting departure time etc.
Teslas allow you to set the max charge %. The interface has changed over the years but it's more or less a slider allowing you to set the max charge %. In it's latest incarnation you can do 1% increments, in the past it was less granular.
When you plug the car in, an interface appears on the main display allowing you to adjust the % as well as charge rate and some other things. You can also adjust the settings from the App on your phone.
Typically you'd set it to X% and forget about it until you were planning a road trip then you might crank it up to 100% either the night before or while sitting at a supercharger.
This should really be a standard OS feature on Android phones.
In theory it is possible to keep driving the car past a "0%" charge, assuming the safety systems could be bypassed, but you would never get the same range/acceleration on subsequent charges. Worst case would need am entirely new battery pack.
As well, anyone buying an EV today, should the worst happen and they need a new battery after ~8 year warranty, the prices of batteries has been steadily dropping.
Electricity is not an order of magnitude cheaper.
You can figure on getting about 4 miles per kWh. Where I live, the kWh delivered is $0.20, so $0.05 per mile for energy.
A gas car getting 25 miles per gallon with a gallon costing $4.00/gal (slightly more than it costs around here) costs $0.08 per mile for energy.
If you could buy electricity for half of my price, you'd be $0.025 per mile, meaning a 25mpg car would need to be buying $6/gal gas in order for electricity to be an order of magnitude cheaper.
Gasoline is only going to get more expensive. Electricity _might_ get cheaper
(I may have the math wrong it’s kind of confusing … https://www.fpl.com/content/dam/fpl/us/en/rates/pdf/res-jan-...)
But the kicker is, in the winter, production is so low that even our off-peak charging hits tier 2 so the rates are thrown all out of whack.
It's probably actually cheaper to charge our car at a supercharger in november/december/january than to charge at home, tbh.
So assuming 6km/kWh and 100km/9.5L, the difference is a factor of 8. Also, my car is not nearly this fuel-efficient—I get about 14L/100km.
I assume you made those prices up as unrealistic, but it just depends on where you live.
"keep in mind that time, temperatures and other factors (like how long the battery stayed at a high state-of-charge levels) also influence the battery degradation."
I have yet to even put 25K on my Model3, but I have already lost 9% in my 3.5 years of ownership.
So for example on a 310mi rated Model 3 after 4 years, taking a 75mph highway road trip in winter it might look like
310mi x 0.9 battery age x 0.9 weather x 0.8 speed x 0.9 charge % = 180mi..
This roughly checks out with some of my Christmas road tripping recently. Another reason I'm never buying a "240mi-ish" EV and target buying something closer to 400mi than 300mi, and only with access to a huge charging network like Tesla in 2022.
There are a lot more non-Tesla chargers than Tesla Superchargers.
Though they're slower and more expensive.
Whoever decided 7.2 kW J-1772 chargers should exist needs to be dragged out back and shot. They did a lot of damage to EV adoption by feeding the notion that EVs take several hours to charge. Chargers below 150 kW shouldn't exist, IMO.
You'd probably get some giggles out of the OG Nissan Leaf. We have a steep hill near our house and it takes 6 miles of range to get up one side, but I've gotten 10 miles back coasting down the other side.
That's a rounding error for a Tesla but 10% of the charge on a Leaf.
Thats pretty good and far better than I got in my 2019 M3 in the winter. I think the differentiator here is you are using plugged in power to heat the battery rather than the battery itself.
Its a clever and effective hack, but ultimately it shouldn't be a requirement.
Ultimately it's not a huge deal for most of the country (weather-wise) and it'll be yet another item that will improve over time.
So the relative total pain depends on how often/long you road trip.
With at home EV charging you just plug it in when you get home and unplug the next day.
I "raced" a couple neighbors home one night from an outing and arrived home first. I joked with them that it was on top of "stopping for gas" and sent them a text of my car plugged in.
[1] https://aptera.us/ (yes, they are overplaying the "driven by the sun" part, though maybe in a very sunny climate you could get possibly 20 or 30 miles of range if you park it in the sun and for a lot of folks that's all they need most days)
Yes, it is only a 2 seater, but if it's a 2nd car that's not much of a limitation. And it does have a pretty surprising amount of cargo space.
I imagine you forgot about the Prius; the weird eco car that really took off.
The latest models of the Prius and Leaf aren't that visually striking, though some of that might come down to being desensitized.
What sets the Prius and Leaf apart from the Aptera, and other weird cars, is that they're actually practical and functional. They're hatchbacks that you can cram a boggling amount of stuff into, and as commuter cars they just work. The Aptera looks completely impractical for anything other than transporting 2 people and a purse from point A to point B. Where would you fit a suitcase in that thing?
> Where would you fit a suitcase in that thing?
Unless it's some kind of huge suitcase where the smallest dimension is 3+ feet... in the back cargo area under the hatchback.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWukO5TLssM (about 15 seconds in)
It's not huge, but it's definitely a lot more than I first imagined.
More like I have no commute and road-trip once a week...
I feel like the range estimate is as much about individual driving habits as it is battery condition. I noticed the max range was reporting in the low 280s up until December when I had to make eight ~100 mile trips on the highway and suddenly my range is reporting in the high 290s.
Mine was built in fall of 2018 and at delivery it got around 300+ miles, a year or so later Tesla released an OTA update that boosted range to 315+. We only charge to 80% and the reported range at that charge as slid from 275 down to 235 miles over time. Today it reports a max charge of 294 miles.
I drive on the less efficient side. Our driving habits since the pandemic have been almost exclusively short 10 mile trips under 50mph on very hilly terrain. We charge about once or twice a week up to 80%, usually only putting 50-100 miles back on with each charge.
I've noticed the same thing with our Nissan Leaf. When it was my 50+ miles a day commuter it reported 80-100 miles range but now it's only driven short trips a couple times a month it reports 75 miles range. That being said, the reported range on that car fluctuates with your farts so idk...
Teslas come with those by default. You just plug them into a socket and you're charging. Sure, it's slow, but it works. I used it to charge overnight at my hotel during a winter sports vacation, for the trip to the slopes and back. (I even brought a power meter so I could pay for the power I used.)
The trip to the area was over 1000km and took all in all about an hour more than it did with my diesel car. Like the previous person said, the only major downside was being less flexible in stopping locations due to Superchargers.
Here I was thinking you were in the Seattle area until I read the last bit.
I'm at work right now. I have not seen green grass since early November. It's currently -12c. Predictions for next week are lows below -20c. We had a good two months below -30, with a couple weeks touching below -40 in the mornings. Last year I had to drive to work once at -47c. My tiny Honda lives outside in the elements but always starts without complaint. It gets me to work each morning without fail. (Fyi,-40c is the same temp as -40f. -12c is about +10f)
I believe that Tesla and every other lithium-using EV only rates their cars to -30c. Below that might void a warranty, a financial risk I cannot afford. And I shudder at the concept of DRM deciding to brick my car because it is "too cold to drive". That nightmare is coming at us soon. I will then be in the market for a snow machine, which are regular on major roads in my area when the weather is really bad.
Based on your weather reporting. I would stick with ICE. As heat isn't free on an electric car in general. So, at the more extreme ends of the spectrum it will be hard to beat ICE
Likely that EV is not going to work here, not reliably. There's something to be said for ICE.
And it also sounds like you're in a place where an EV doesn't make sense. They don't make sense for everybody, but that doesn't mean they aren't fine for the majority of people who drive. So don't buy an EV. I'm not sure that your argument makes sense for most people. I've never even experienced -40, or anything close, and neither have most people that I know.
[1] The issues regarding diesel in winter is a whole other discussion. Diesel fuel is longer molecules and gets very thick in cold. Diesel cars/trucks/generators can have real issues in winter.
You're being too negative saying starting your car early is the same as taking care of a horse, which undermines your point - it makes you look anti-EV and less sincere.
[1]https://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/files/pub61263.pdf
As far as the material, at one time engines had components of various materials. Blocks of cast iron, heads or intake of aluminum. Now as you state, they are mostly aluminum. While it may expand more than steel, the majority of the components are going to expand at the same rate, unlike in the past.
I mentioned the aluminium mainly because piston slap came to mind. More slop, more slap. It's better than everything twisting though.
Which can be pretty critical for safety - my breath fogs the windows if I don't let the engine warm up for at least a couple minutes before driving when it's -20C.
I have yet to have my breath fog up the window even if I start the car and drive off right away.
Of course it's cold. Of course the radio display is sloooooow. You can feel how much slower releasing the clutch is. Can't get into first gear at all unless the car is fully stopped either. So rolling stops need to use 2nd gear.
Make sure you don't use the washer fluid. Scrape everything free. Even with pure "-40" fluid you will get it to freeze and you will have to wait or use the wiper fluid constantly until things get warm. Have the blower on de-fog for the windshield and even if you don't wait even a second before driving off you should have no issues at all. Even the cold moving air is enough to keep things fog free. And defog actually runs the AC too, not that it's needed when the cold outside air you're blowing onto your windshield there has much need to be dehumidifierd.
Either way, it is not my experience that you can drive a combusting car “seconds” after ignition.
It may have been another story at long ago with larger gaps between rings, differential expansion of materials, newer oil formulations and so on.
With my daily driver 1995 Grand Prix (which just a few weeks ago bit the bullet, non-engine related), I never, even in the coldest weather let it sit idling warming up. Most mornings even around 0F, I turned the key and drove off. It died with ~289,800 miles. It did not consume any oil or coolant, the spark plugs are clean as new.
In fact, driving off easy will warm the engine up faster than letting it idle.
I can easily say that most of the people I know haven't not experienced -40, it just depends where you live.
But let's assume you meant stuff close to the US and Ontario border vs. Quebec City. I had to find something where Weathernetwork had data and for some reason the border crossing town of Lacolle, which is about as far south as Quebec goes showed no data but Hemmingford is the same height, just a bit to the west:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/monthly/quebec/hemmingf...
Now you are right in that -40 is not a temperature that will be had for a long time, that is relegated to the prairies. It also does not happen every year. It's seldom that it dips that low. But here some close enough for my taste examples:
Jan 24: -33.3C Jan 26: -34.1C Jan 27: -34.1C Jan 28: -32.7C Jan 29: -33.1C
And then if you look at the Laurentians, which is a popular ski and overall winter destination for the millions of people living in and around Montreal and both of these are basically just going "straight up north" (as in highway direction, not map direction) from Lacolle, these temperatures become more frequent and it's more likely to dip that low more often. And all of these are way south of Quebec City. Climate change is not helping, i.e. more historical data would be better. Weather network doesn't seem to have that.
I definitely know more people that have experienced -40C in their life than ones that don't. I have and I do not live in the prairies.
Yes, the -40 is what I was using for my differentiator. You provided an example of a location that didn't come anywhere close to -40.
Pretty much everyone I know complains about it being -40 out, but it never actually is (they're all talking about -30 with a strong windchill). It is particularly egregious to me, as the difference between -30 and -40 is as significant as -15 (standard chilly) and -25 ("ok I hope there's no wind today"). And when it comes to a technical discussion about something like battery temperature, those few degrees matter a lot.
> I wonder what you call the southern half of Quebec. Quebec goes way up north. Southern half of Quebec would exclude almost the entire population of Quebec.
Yes, I was not being geographically precise - I was mostly referring to the St Lawrence Valley, which contains most of Quebec's population. Obviously Saguenay, etc would have experienced -40. I basically just checked environment Canada's historic records for Montreal, Quebec, and Trois Riviere. It wasn't intended to be terribly precise.
Environment Canada is a good one, didn't think of checking that for historical data. Makes sense tho come to think of it. Another thing is the real local conditions vs. actual weather stations. I've seen quite a difference between my thermometers (that all agreed with each other within a degree) vs. what various online sources provided for our location. The next actual weather station where I am is ~15km straight line distance from here for example.
Sounds great, the problem is when law makers get involved - BC is banning the sale of ICE vehicles within the next 10-15 years, the law is already on the books. Plenty of real cold places here, not to mention the fact the our electrical grid will never be able to keep up
This is without a doubt the best take I’ve read on EVs. Certainly they fit many use cases, and certainly they’ll improve to fit more in the future. In the meantime, the hoops that some fans jump through to justify their suitability for tasks at which they’re inadequate are amusing.
>> AAA found the loss in driving range could be as high as 41% with the heater on full blast.
Notice, that these are all 2018 or older models. Why does that matter? Because battery capacity has increased and newer models have heatpump heaters (which are roughly 4x more efficient).
This is the primary difference in range in the opening info-graphic on the page. Why for lower temps some cars only lost 10% of their range while others lost 40%.
But further, WHY is 40% range loss "totally unacceptable"? What is acceptable? How do you deal with range loss of ICE from overly hot weather?
[1] http://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/AAA-Electric-Vehicle...
I've never bought a car newer than 5 years old. And it looks like the EVs that handle cold better tend to be the more expensive models and brands. So the problem here isn't so much that no EVs work in the cold, as that it reduces the economic feasibility of using an EV for many people.
> But further, WHY is 40% range loss "totally unacceptable"?
Because EVs often already have smaller ranges to begin with, have fewer charging stations than gas stations, and take longer to charge, and a significant decrease in range exarcerbates those problems, and may make an EV completely impractical in some situations. Hopefully all those things improve in the future.
To heat up my Tesla, I pull up the tesla phone app and tap the "preheat" button. That's it. I keep it plugged in when it's at home (takes me less time to plug it in than it takes you to fill up your car with gas). While my tesla charges, I'm usually doing other stuff at home. It's completely neglected (the poor thing). All in all, the ONLY time I might wait additionally on my EV vs a gas car is when I go on longer road trips (450+km). That's somewhat rare.
And I don't have oil changes, engine problems, etc. The only maintenance I've done are new tires, car washes, and window wiping fluid. This is with a 2018 long range model 3 with 110,000km.
My tiny tesla doesn't have a "start", it is effectively always on. I've never worried that I can't put it in gear and start driving.
I've now come to realize that part of me looks forward to having a chat with people at charging stations in 2035.
I had to check, because I know Siberians don’t just stay inside all Winter in the bad old days (actually I learned from “Gift of the Raven” that siberians travel less nowadays because they can only carry so much gasoline, whereas old fashioned beasts of burden are self refueling aka eat grass under the snow)
Check out this winter adapted horse, complete with antifreeze coursing through its veins:
Edit: The reason to heat up an EV's battery on a cold day is for regenerative breaking. You don't have to, the car just drives a little weird until the battery heats up otherwise.
Yes, long trips require more planning. That will change once high speed chargers are more common.
> Sounds like you own a horse more than a car
The situation is extremely different for day-to-day driving.
When I owned a gas car, I had to put gas in it about once a week. Each stop at the gas station was about 10 minutes out of my way. Now I charge in my garage and I never need to go out of my way to buy gas.
I also don't need to deal with oil changes.
My gas car was a lot more of a "horse" than my Tesla!
If I'm driving 300 miles in a day, I'm probably not stopping (definitely don't need to gas up partway). If it's 300 round trip (two 150-mile legs), I'm definitely not stopping for gas or bathroom.
Are there not places to charge on the slopes? I'd think this would be a useful perk for resorts to offer, and shuffle cars between. Perhaps they don't have the energy to spare?
Unfortunately, I only know of two ski areas that have them. One ski area with a charger is about a mile away from a supercharger, and that supercharger happens to be next to an awesome restaurant. The other one is the place that I mentioned where they didn't have snow at the parking lot with the charger because it was early season.
Tesla understood that heat management is key to an EV, so they invested in designing a compact and elegant system (Google “octovalve”) to move heat wherever it was helpful to send it.
They also use intelligence to allow the car to optimize itself for charging. For example, you can use the Tesla smartphone app to have your car wake itself up and warm or cool both the battery and cabin while still plugged in. And if you use navigation to plan your charging stops, it will automatically precondition the battery pack as you are getting close for optimal charging speed.
Most of the cars that performed poorly on that graph were because of shoddy engineering by people who don’t understand the problem space.
That’s not a problem with EVs, it’s a problem with bad engineers and management who care about the wrong things.
The Bolt has CarPlay. The screen is much nicer in the Tesla, but CarPlay brings a lot of additional functionality and flexibility.
The Bolt is lighter, more nimble, smaller. For city driving, it's really handy.
The Bolt has normal door handles that don't require any special movement to open them. Normal locks, mechanical glove box latch, full windshield wiper controls, a normal shift handle to select regen (good because my wife hates regen, I love it).
The Bolt has slightly stronger regen, especially with the paddles. And it has a saner regen-to-stop mode, which only functions in drive. Unlike Tesla, which makes you use the accelerator pedal to get the car to reverse down the driveway (which just feels weird).
The seats are crappy on both. I prefer cloth to vinyl, though. And I especially don't like the slippery vinyl on Tesla's steering wheel.
The Bolt is vastly cheaper. Like, half as much.
The Tesla charges much faster with DC fast charging. If you only charge at home they are identical in this regard.
Overall, I feel like the Bolt is a much, much better deal if you factor in the cost. The Tesla is much faster, has more range, heated rear seats, and it makes fart noises. Of course, it also has AP, which some people like.
The Bolt feels like a car that happens to be electric. The Tesla feels like a computer that happens to have wheels.
My wife would be happy with another Bolt when the lease on this one expires next year. I won't buy another Tesla without CarPlay and proper wiper controls, but my next EV will need to be faster than the Bolt. So I'm thinking Taycan.
The Bolt makes me wish that VW would make an electric Golf R. Same size, better interior, more power. Aside from getting screwed over by LG's flubbed manufacturing of the batteries, the Bolt really over-delivers compared to what I expected from it.
I like this, simple and effective.
You can't have it in the US, though.
It's basically head and shoulders above the competitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1kHsd3Ocxc
ICE vehicles have endured every known failure you can think of and car manufacturers have fixed all of these...over time.
It will take some time before all the snafu's with EV's are ironed out. Tesla is at the forefront since its more of a tech-company than a car manufacturer.
BTW: Volkswagen and Mercedes already have heat-pumps in their EV's.
Gasoline vehicles eventually outcompeted them by reaching 60mph and having more range (sound familiar?) but the parent isn’t wrong about Rockefeller, cheap and abundant fuel came 2 years later:
> …growing electrification of lighting produced a drop in kerosene demand, creating a supply problem. It appeared that the burgeoning oil industry would be trapped into over-producing kerosene and under-producing gasoline since simple distillation could not alter the ratio of the two products from any given crude. The solution appeared in 1911 when the development of the Burton process allowed thermal cracking of crude oils, which increased the percent yield of gasoline from the heavier hydrocarbons.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline
Jay Leno has an entertaining segment driving around LA in his restored Baker, he can tell you all about it, fascinating vehicle: (starts at 3:20)
For example, GM can add a heat pump to improve their winter performance (Bolt) but if it is a new part that needs to be integrated into their assembly, there’s a cost to it that cannot be recouped. Batteries are already expensive. Tesla is less sensitive to costs as it had no profit pressures.
Startups and large companies necessarily need to have different thinking and that’s ok. When the giants turn around, they can quickly copy the upstart. Car engineering is not as complicated as rocket science.
Anything liquid might end up freezing. In an EV that's electrolytes, cooling liquid, brake fluids, etc. Of course, batteries can be heated in an EV and that helps. Simply using them heats them up. That's why many EVs have battery cooling. Also many owners might want to turn up the heat remotely so they enter a nicely warmed car instead of an ice box. That costs energy and range of course.
So, it's not all that black and white. But overall, it seems EVs can do well under arctic conditions. All the big vendors test under those conditions. The cold hard reality (to paraphrase the alarmist title) is that it isn't that big of a deal.
> In Norway — where half of all new cars are plug-ins — tests show that EVs lose about 20% of their driving range and take longer to charge in cold temperatures, according to the Norwegian Automobile Federation.
Naturally people who don't like EVs are going to cherry-pick these problems, but the mixed results suggest to me that it's down to a deficiency in the design and testing process at some companies. I had a 2009 Prius where the rubber pad on the metal hatchback handle melted, fell off, and left a thick streak of rubber adhered to my license plate. It was a known issue in that model of Prius and affected a lot of people in the southwestern US. Was it a great engineering challenge to create a handle that could handle such heat? Did they consciously decide to sell something that would fail in an ugly and embarrassing way right below their brand logo? I doubt it; I suspect it was a new design that they failed to test rigorously enough.
eg Oslo this January was above freezing every day, and only below freezing a few nights. https://www.accuweather.com/en/no/oslo/254946/january-weathe.... Compare that to Chicago https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/chicago/60608/january-weat...
Oslo is colder than like 90% of the inhabited parts of the planet...it's probably fine to use it as an example when talking about cold weather performance of EVs
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hottest-c...
Average Low (°C) || Record Low (°C)
| Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar || Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar
Oslo | -3.9 | -4.7 | -4.7 | -2.1 || -19.7 | -20.5 | -20.7 | -16.9
Toronto | -3.1 | -6.7 | -5.6 | -1.9 || -30.0 | -32.8 | -31.7 | -26.7
The record low for Feb in Oslo (1991 - 2020 data) is -5.3°F. That's an average winter night for me. https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-...
Another way of looking at this... heating degree days.
https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weatherall-print.php3?s=... vs https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weatherall-print.php3?s=...
Oslo has 6286.8 heating degree days. Toronto, Ontario has 7342.8.
Toronto is substantially colder than Oslo (edit...) when it comes to the extremes of weather.
(edit: correction) - Oslo's is https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weatherall.php3?s=88410&...
which has the heating degree days as 7787.8 which is now comparable to Toronto.
It is very difficult to get it colder than the water. Note also that Oslo is on a warm current - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Corrient... - the Norwegian current is a continuation of the Gulf Stream (compare the California current which is a cold one)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo
> Oslo has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfb)[48] or, if the original Köppen winter threshold −3 °C (27 °F) is used, an oceanic climate (Cfb) in the 1991–2020 base period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_climate
> Examples of oceanic climates are found in Glasgow, London, Bergen, Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Bilbao, Oviedo, Biarritz, A Coruña, Bayonne, Zürich, Copenhagen, Prague, Skagen, and Paris. With decreasing distance to the Mediterranean Sea, the oceanic climate of northwest Europe gradually changes to the subtropical dry-summer or Mediterranean climate of southern Europe
> The oceanic climate exists in an arc spreading across the north-western coast of North America from the Alaskan panhandle to northern California, in general the coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest. It includes the western parts of Washington and Oregon, the Alaskan panhandle, western portions of British Columbia, and north-western California.
Compare this to the continental climates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder,_Colorado#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago#Climate (has the population of 1/2 of all of Norway)
With no large bodies of open water, the air temperature is not moderated by the release of heat from the water and can go further to extremes on both ends.
Oslo, Norway:
Average low, coldest month: -5.3 C
Record low, all time: -26 C
versus
Indianapolis, Indiana, United States:
Average low, coldest month: -6.2 C
Record low, all time: -33 C
Why not Minneapolis, or Cheyenne, or some other North American city that is also away from the coasts? Why not Regina?
I think part of the problem is that because EVs are still new, people are going to expect or demand reliability. It's only better if it's better in every way.
When I worked in a cold city, you would occasionally hear people say, "Sorry I'm late for work, boss. Car wouldn't start, and I had to get a jump."
Because it's new, saying, "Sorry I'm late for work, boss. It's cold, so my car had less range and I had to stop at the Slurp-n-Burp to recharge" isn't going to be met with the same level of sympathy.
The Gulf Stream really works.
e.g. https://cms.accuweather.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/stati...
Crazy thing is this January there looks to be only one night where it went below zero.
Some places say the fluid doesn't actually freeze but becomes too viscous to function properly. Others say it's condensation in the vacuum booster line, effectively making them non-power brakes. And still others say the fluid itself won't freeze, but the water it absorbed will.
I know power steering fluid gets too viscous and can blow out the hoses on a Dodge Avenger because it can’t get through the cooler.
Road salt is our big problem here, but that's true for everyone who has winter.
FWIW my neighbor has a Tesla and loves it...
Edit: and also, some areas are not using salt for environmental reasons, like Portland.
Not if your municipality uses grit instead of salt.
Road salt problems always makes me wonder how much the vehicle plays into that.
I've driven 20+ year old cars without a spot of rust while there are vehicles that are 5 years old with rust problems.
I think the real variable when it comes to road salt issue is vehicle quality.
It depends on how much the OEM wants to spend on fancy paint and coatings, how much the vehicle's use degrades that coating, how much salt the vehicle is exposed to, what kind of salt (liquid stuff gets everywhere much more effectively) and what if any steps the owner takes to mitigate the salt.
You can make generalizations like "Volvo loves to galvanize stuff and Toyota DGAF" but without controlling for the life the vehicle will have that doesn't really let you make predictions about a specific vehicle.
The classic, pro: works well even under high temperatures resulting from prolonged braking. Con: absorbs water over time and must be replaced fairly often even if not stressed.
New kind, pro: does not absorb water and does not degrade as much on its own. Con: braking action gets "spongy" when the fluid heats up from prolonged braking.
Unless you actively mix it with water (like you do antifreeze) you are going to have a hell of a time getting glycol based brake fluid to absorb enough water to freeze at any earthly temperature. Maybe if you ran a system without the cap on the reservoir for decades in a very humid climate you could do it but even then I think the odds are long at best.
I vote condensation.
For people who use their EV solely for commuting, it’s not a big deal, since a commute distance is still well below the reduced range in cold temperatures.
It is a huge deal for people who take winter road trips. The range reductions cited in the article could easily spell the difference between getting to the destination in one shot, versus having to take a >30 minute stop to recharge midway. 30 minutes is an absolute minimum figure that assumes there’s an available fast charger conveniently close to the route. If not, detours+slow charging could easily add an hour or more to travel time.
Unfortunately, no such method of travel ever has or ever will be invented, so I guess we'll just have to rely on internal combustion engines for the rest of eternity.
There used to be a private ski bus charter service on weekends but that shut down due to the pandemic.
It depends on how long your "commute" is.
A dozen miles across San Francisco? Not a big deal.
There are plenty of people who commute long distances every day. There are thousands of people who commute to New York City every day from Pennsylvania.
There's none of that with ICE vehicles.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/coldweather.shtml
Also cars in general as they age gradually get worse mileage.
From the link you linked, city driving 15% and "as much as 24% for short (3- to 4-mile) trips". That is not really similarly bad or worse.
ICE are way less affected by cold than battery vehicles. It's been 2 decades since I even had a block heater for any of my cars or pickups - modern electronic fuel injected engines are very good at properly metering and vaporizing fuel to start at low temps. And yes, they do get reduced mpg, but it's not that much, and given the ubiquity of gas stations, hardly can be talked about as a range limitation.
And for the record, they keep the cabin much more comfortable than a lot of electrics can afford to do. Turning those precious kWHs in your battery into heat is brutal on the battery.
I think electric vehicles are the future, and I like ours. But no way the article here is wrong: most are not really yet as ready for cold climates as modern ICE are. You get trade-offs).
(For the record: I drive (drove, actually, don't drive much at since I retired) mostly in Minnesota. Subzero driving has been part of my life for 50 years.)
This EV test however is barely in cold weather, it gets a lot worse when it's cold.
Engine heaters are generally used for long term reliability and comfort. Years of daily cold starts can do problems, but most cars on road can start from cold.
Literally no one is doing this, unless you have a diesel engine, you're parked outside, the temperatures are exceptionally cold (<= -10F?), and you weren't planning on driving for more than a day. It's something you'd see on, like, farms or semi truck lots; not houses.
The risk of not starting isn't really in the engine itself; it's in the fuel "gelifying". Diesel is gross.
But sure; the issue is overblown, especially when the majority of EVs on the list still retain >10% of their maximum battery capacity in freezing weather, and the highest range EVs on the list (where you'd expect to see the highest drop) are only losing a few percentage points. This is not a situation where EVs have a fundamental problem; it's a situation where a few manufacturers (cough Detroit cough) are royally screwing something up.
The guy with the 25yo shitbox that doesn't have enough compression to start in the cold is.
But I don't think that's the kind of ownership experience you want to be comparing any newish car to.
I do, as do multiple members of my immediate family who park our vehicles outside. We have block heaters so we can start them on those -10F mornings. None of us have diesel either - Toyota 4runner, Ford Explorer, GMC Sierra. Every winter we get at least a couple weeks where it's that cold in Wisconsin.
Factually incorrect. Block chargers are ubiquitous in Alaska where I grew up and you should probably use one well before -10F to reduce wear on your engine.
Living in a cold-weather climate, it is the local norm to plug a car (gas or diesel) during winter even if you're only parked for a couple hours. Most cars purchased locally come with engine block heaters installed and most private parking spaces (houses, apartments, office buildings, surface lots, parking garages, etc.) provide an outlet.
The range is about 70-80 miles of general town driving 30-40mph in the UK winter, so cold, but not freezing most of the time. The range doesn't seem to be noticeable different between warm and cold days. Average temp is probably around 5c.
The range does drop noticeable on motorways. I haven't done a proper test, but I suspect it's probably only good for 40ish miles at 70mph.
As a second car it's brilliant. It's saved us a load on petrol doing the local trips, school runs, short commute, etc. Even with the current high power prices in the UK. It very much depends on what you plan to use it for, but if your usage profile fits what the car does well, it's a really nice car.
I plan to do a proper blog post at some point analyzing some data on it. Maybe after the summer and I'll see if the range improves.
I did look at a few other used models, one a couple of years newer, but a lot of miles on the clock and quite a bit more expensive. This one I got just had the best balance of price, age, condition, etc of the cars I saw.
I briefly looked at new ones, but prices started at around £27k, and I didn't really want to spend that much. I tend not to buy new cars.
It charges to 80 miles in the summer and 60 (effective) in winter. Keep in mind that I lose about 10 miles of range if I run the heater the whole time. So that's really comparing 80 to 70, and that's with 2 bars lost off the battery after 9 years. The only time I ever got range anxiety was last minute shopping once around the holidays when I got home with 7 miles left. So I'm happy to live with 10-15% less range in freezing whether.
A few details:
* It uses a lithium manganese battery, which I believe performs better in the cold, that is kept warm by an internal heater that I've never observed to reduce range. Personally I prefer lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), as it's the easiest/cheapest battery to make, arguably the safest, but also tends to be about 10% heavier. I really wish there was an open source approach to building them for hobbyists, since the only complicated part is maybe the carbon fiber, but I digress
* I almost bought a (2015?) Fiat 500e, as it had a little better performance. But the one I test drove had a conservative white pearlescent paint job that made me consider my retirement, so maybe I dodged a bullet. But holy (mackerel) was that thing fast. Also the smaller roof size wouldn't have left much room for the planned solar panel(s)
* I always charge overnight on ordinary 120 V for about 8-11 hours (I think, from memory?) and never notice an issue. They say that trickle charging is bad, but the physics just doesn't support that. My feeling is that the rush towards 240/400 V fast chargers was to appease a fossil fuel industry that wanted to preserve the muscle memory of filling up with gas, but I certainly don't miss the gas station. Our electric bill is $20/month more to drive 300-400 miles on electric to commute to a neighboring city, which is like 1/7 the cost of driving my 15 mpg truck (electrics get around 100 mpg equivalent)
* The battery is 24 kWh, but they also have 30, 40 and 62 kWh upgrades. At some point I may opt for the 40 with a small LiFePO4 reserve battery in the trunk to buffer the solar energy and roughly double my range, but haven't decided yet, maybe I'll max it out: https://leosons.com/nissan-leaf-battery-upgrade-frequently-a...
Edit: how could I leave without mentioning the heated seats, steering wheel and instant-on electric heater/defrost. Most comfortable winter driving I've ever experienced. Also I'm not affiliated with Nissan, they just won me over for finally doing going engineering: good/fast/cheap pick any THREE!
I'm pretty sure it's fast charging that is more detrimental to the battery life. The included charge cable that charges from a regular home socket charges at 3.3kw, which is the max you can do with the type1 socket on the car even if you use a dedicated home charge point (unless your particular car has the optional 6.6kw onboard unit upgrade). My charge point can deliver 7kw, but the car limits it to 3.3kw.
The ChaDeMo socket can charge much faster (50kw I think?), But you aren't easily going to do that at home.
My Leaf doesn't have the optional 480 V charging port, to anyone reading this who might be interested in the Level 3 fast charging. I hadn't researched it yet, but that's a CHAdeMO port, thanks for mentioning that, this article claims a 40 minute charge to 80% on a 40 kWh Leaf:
https://www.davidaltmejd.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-charge...
55 kW @ 480 V DC would be 115 A and can go up to 400 A or 192 kW (258 hp)!
I also realized that I left out the detail that my car has about 60,000 miles. I test drove almost the same model from the same year with 90,000 miles and from what I could tell, it performed the same. Batteries today are so much better than when they were first used in laptops in the late 2000s and only got 300 cycles. Li-ion batteries today are getting more in the 4,000-40,000 (in the lab) cycle range.
Oh! Another details is that my Leaf was $7900 + ~$1000 taxes and fees or $8900 total. They were about $6900 right before the pandemic. The dealers don't really understand how well batteries hold up, and demand is low in flyover states like mine. But word is getting out, and I think that when people are powering their home off their electric Ford F-150, demand is going to rise substantially even for older used electrics.
It varies model to model depending on the presence of heat pump, how the battery cooling/heating system works, etc. I think longterm we will need more detailed mpgE/range numbers for EVs than the old school city/highway EPA numbers.
Something like a grid of 30F/70F/90F x 25mph/60mph/75mph x HVAC on/HVAC off.
As with many things EV, Tesla is still ahead of the competition on this as you can see on the graph. So Tesla generally has more range to spare (300mi++) relative to competition (mostly 250mi-ish), and then performs better in winter against the stated range.
On the plus side if you have a garage you can plug-in at night, schedule charging, pre-warm the cabin, jack up the seat heaters, and pre-condition the battery all on shore power, so cold won't have as much of an impact on the outbound trip. However on the return if the battery is cold soaked you will definitely see an impact.
The other major EV difference is the range vs speed curve is different than for gas cars.
Gas cars the ICE engine has a certain minimum output which is generally wasted at lower city driving speeds (plus no regen braking unless hybrid). This is why ICE have higher mpg/range on highways.
EVs however its mostly a function of wind resistance so the faster you go, the lower the range. This can be quite noticeable at highway speed going 55-60mph vs say 75mph. Porsche Taycan has made some attempts to remediate this with having a 2 speed transmission, but I think we'll see more experimenting in this space.
They should have normalized everything as reduction relative to their actual warm-weather range, not relative to 100% of the EPA stated range.
Alternatively, they could have discounted the warm weather range to the 100% EPA number.
As is, it's a mess. The point of the article is that cold weather reduces range, and an explanatory graph should support that directly.
Further, the data shown in the graph most likely reflects differences in how each car was measured, estimated, or marketed.
I would love to see a better article somewhere else, where the same range testing is applied to 10 different EVs in the same weather conditions. How far does each of these cars actually go when it is cold and miserable? How far does each go when the weather is perfect? Then put that on the graph.
Most manufacturers have not opted for a fully integrated system (thus cannot transfer waste heat to where it might be best used) or have not incorporated a heat pump (and are really wasting a lot of energy on resistance heating), and pay the price in cold-weather range. Heat pumps are the obvious engineering solution, but integrating them with the rest of the vehicle systems is not straightforward due to quirks of heat pump performance. The Model 3 was the first Tesla model to use the integrated heat pump system, and only after selling for 3 years using a resistance heater. I guarantee Tesla knew about the heat pump approach but spent years getting to a productizable, performant solution.
Cold weather range loss will be a reality for both ICE and EVs, but there are no physical reasons why the range loss can't be kept to a modest amount.
Overall, I'm very happy with my plug-in hybrid as my commute to work is about 10 miles each way. If I drive anywhere outside the electric range, the car simply switches to burning gas. I find this car extremely pragmatic. Obviously YMMV.
Every thread about EVs is just like the ~discourse~ about LED traffic lights. [1]
"We must stop making pure ICE cars"
"But pure EVs aren't ready"
"But we must stop making pure ICE cars!"
"But pure EVs aren't ready!"
Back and forth for _literally 20 years_ in which this little-known Japanese company, Toyota, has been producing an insanely popular line of hybrid sedans called "Prius". [2] I live in a small town and I can't really drive anywhere without seeing at least one Prius. They are everywhere. The used ones are not super-expensive, either, especially compared to a pure EV that needs a bigger battery.
Hybrids have been viable for _twenty years_ and people are still debating ICE vs. EV.
Plug-in hybrids are now becoming more common, and even big pickup trucks are talking about mild hybridization. And a Prius can go 500 or 600 miles on a tank and then just refuel. A pure EV means no spontaneous road trips. Not a problem with any hybrid.
Pure ICE should be out of the picture for 50% of drivers, but we are still using pure EVs as a weak man [3] to pretend that ICE cars are still viable in the post-Prius-plugin era.
It makes me a little mad.
[1] Technology Connections made a video on this ~discourse~ and how dumb it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prius
[3] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap... Like the Nissan Leaf. Short range, cheap, bad in winter. No excuse to not talk about Priuses.
Teslas are not super expensive to repair if you compare them to BMW instead of Honda Civic. And they are much more reliable than BMWs and require almost no maintenance. Source: I repaired about 10 teslas.
AKA, I doubt we’ll see them in cars designed in Cali anytime soon.
On the way home later that evening, temps were 28F. Left again almost fully topped off with estimated range of 310mi after visiting a supercharger. Arrived home with estimated 70mi of range left.
Do (Li-ion) batteries store less charge (Coulombs) when charging cold?
Or is it when discharging cold, they convert some of the energy to waste heat?
Or do the same charges translate to less energy (e.g. less voltage difference at same current) when the battery is discharged cold?
Maybe someone can give a good explanation, I found it hard to get a straigt answer :-)
Most people I know report that their formerly 350km vehicles only drive 250km if it is really cold outside. Of course you also have heating withing the cabin that is not an insignificant factor. So cars perform worse, but they don't completely break down.
Although I had it happen with a company car once when it was very cold outside. Display told me to stop as soon as I can. I did so and the car went completely dead. Left it there, the next day was considerably warmer and the car worked normally again.
I hope this hits the mainstream press, these days, seems all vehicles are only designed for use in Southern Calif.
>AAA found the loss in driving range could be as high as 41% with the heater on full blast.
My main concern was with the heater, in gas engines, heat is "free", I always thought the heater would be a big drain. Finally someone did some studies.
I've never owned a self driving car, but I suspect they'll just throw up their hands and tell you to deal with it in the event of any inclement weather. Which would be about half the time around here!
I recall reading an EPA study from the mid 2000s that compared the total fossil fuel emissions from gasoline, hybrid, and hypothetical electric vehicles. They included power usage for battery heaters and even the emissions from fossil fuel heaters in all electric heaters. I can't find the study now.
You realize FUD about EVs is almost constant in the press, right?
The other is battery chemistry. Unfortunately nickel is expensive and I'm not sure if there is enough for large market penetration of electric cars. But high nickel (and potentially cobalt) batteries have less degradation from cold.
LFP batteries don't have nickel or cobalt. They might work in the cold with more management. Björn Nyland has tested a large amount of vehicles, including a made in China Tesla Model 3 that uses LFP batteries, in cold conditions.
A 250 mile range cut in half is still more than enough for daily use.I own a Chevy Bolt in Maine and the figure listed in this article is far off from what I have experienced over several winters here. At a temp of 20 F my bolt loses ~20% of its range from the EPA estimate, going from 236 to about 190miles of range. Conversely, my friend owns a Tesla Model 3 up here and his range degrades severely during winter on the order of 30%.
edit: He owns a Model 3, not a Model Y.
The temperature today in my area varied between 9 F at 9AM and 25 F at 3PM. My girlfriend happened to need to drive to several different towns/cities for her work so her total trip was 135 miles. Our Bolt says it has 50 miles left.
I only charge to 90% and just received a new 259 mile range battery as part of the Bolt recall. So the EPA range of my Bolt at 90% charge is 233 miles. If we take the Bolt's 50 mile left range claim at face value (which I have found to be overly pessimistic), then it got 185 miles of range today out of the expected 233, or a ~20% drop in EPA stated range.
So I just don't believe the numbers provided in the linked article. They are completely out of whack with my every day experience owning a Bolt through three winters in Maine.
https://insideevs.com/news/566954/bev-epa-range-comparison-f...
If you mean salt, then you can get a mechanic/etc to spray an undercoating reach year to keep the rust away.
The surprising part of this graph for me is that I thought all EVs had a similar magnitude of loss in the winter... guess not! Kudos to Tesla on this particular metric.
Tesla uses battery heaters if I'm not mistaken.
But IC engines do have problems with the cold. Especially if using Diesel or E85. Most of those issues are now invisible because manufacturers do add fallbacks for those.
Seems really harsh, my own hybrid (not Sanra Fe) does that at around -13C.
Is this true?
I assume there would be an optimum where heating would offset the reduced charge at colder temperatures.
I ride a motorcycle and carry my phone in a pocket that's outside the thermal lining. I absolutely see the difference in how much it discharges when it's ~5ºC vs above 15ºC. And I'm thinking of the trip to my parents' house, so same duration, speed, and phone station locations.
Vehicle batteries are designed for the same sorts of temperatures that humans like, say 10 to 30 °C.
In cold weather, energy has to be taken from the batteries to heat them up so that they work better. More energy is taken to heat the cabin of the vehicle for the occupants' comfort. This reduces the energy left in the battery for moving the vehicle.
> ...Cold temperatures slow down the chemical reactions in battery cells, which saps range and increases charging times.
this is definitely false; While almost everything (electronics/mechanics/hydraulics/pressure vessels) hates the heat, the operation temperature for Li-Ion cells is not too low, either. In very layman terms: the chemistry is not effective at lower temperatures.
As an experiment: have a two year phone and leave it at -20C, it might shut down on its own even at higher charge (voltage) as the battery cannot provide the needed current.
EVs also have to heat the cabin without much "waste" energy (ie-- ICE).
MBTA should be putting up more wires, not taking down what they currently have. Battery buses aren't much cheaper than trolleybuses, if it all (they have significant infrastructure costs too), and in every other aspect trolleybuses are far superior
> °F
SOMETIMES electric vehicles are not as efficient, so ALWAYS electric vehicles should not be used.
It would make EVs much more attractive for me, until charging infrastructure is more widely deploid, and allowing for a more gradual move away from oil.
Also, if your car can turn on its engine automatically, Stirlings and regular ICE have the same problem - Something is autonomously generating carbon monoxide and consuming your fuel without a human watching it. Spooky.
Additionally it would at best be a benefit in hot climates where the battery needs cooling. In the cold you want to retain the heat not turn it inefficiently into energy.
Toyota's hybrids (Prius, etc.) have used Atkinson cycle ICE, instead of Otto (one maximizes fuel economy, the other power delivered, I heard).
The cold hard truth: weaker product offerings (see the domestic US companies outside Tesla) have very poor response to colder weather all other companies have accounted for it and the drop off is pretty minimal.
Thanks Axios for wasting our time and pointing out that if you buy an inferior product expect and inferior outcome under the guise of some winter boogeyman for EV performance.