For those questioning the feasibility, 100% electric school buses are already on the road in Montreal. I see them frequently, and they seem to handle our crappy roads and winters fine.
There are plenty of EVs operating under arctic conditions in Norway, for example. And not just in Oslo where temperatures are mild. Here's a story about a Norwegian with a model 3 that lives on the north coast of Norway in the arctic circle: https://electrek.co/2020/02/11/tesla-model-3-arctic-circle-w...
It seems that that particular car has some features that are genuinely nice to have when it is minus 32. Like the ability to warm it up before you get into it. That costs energy of course and that explains most of the range hit you get.
Most recent EVs have ways to cool (high temperatures are also a problem) and heat batteries, which older cars and phevs would have lacked. And of course the process of charging and discharging batteries actually warms batteries up as well. That's why heat is a problem and probably a bigger problem from an engineering point of view. Yet nobody ever complains about Tesla's not working in the desert. It's kind of a solved problem. Extreme temperatures affect range and you need to plan accordingly. But otherwise the battery will work fine.
https://news.yahoo.com/cold-hard-truth-evs-winter-103037566....
If you are in a climate where freezing weather is common, you might want to swap it for a different brand. There are comparably priced options that work well in the cold (just look at the chart in the article).
All battery chemistry suffers from degraded performance in cold temperatures, because they all rely on chemical processes that are hampered by cold. Lithium batteries are in some ways more susceptible because they are just a more finicky battery chemistry overall, being far more sensitive to charging currents, temperatures, and voltages.
There's tons of articles and references out there about the cares that must be taken with batteries of various chemistries, and they all talk about the low temperature issues.
- https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2021-08-24-how-extreme-c...
- https://www.fluxpower.com/blog/the-importance-of-industrial-...
- https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-410-charging-at-hig....
- https://relionbattery.com/blog/the-best-battery-for-cold-wea....
Would come down to whether the installation/removal (to lower the "dry" weight for the warm seasons) would be worth the energy savings of not hauling around the supplemental battery weight.
Other options might be to use some kind of thermal mass for heating, perhaps a large heated mass or fluid tank? Not sure if there's any benefit there though beyond being able to swap out the fluid tank between runs faster than charging a battery.