The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter
axios.com
axios.com
I unhooked it and planned to drive 20 miles to the nearest charger, but after 1 mile of travel, it had dropped to 40 miles left. I turned around and drove back, now with ~20 miles left.
I parked the car in an unheated garage and plugged it back in, praying that the car would heat the garage to the point it could start charging. Maybe 2-3 hours later it started to take a charge, and 3 days later it was up to 150 miles, and I drove it to a super charger.
I realized after that, if I ever moved back to Maine and wanted a tesla I
- would need a heated garage
- I could never expect to leave my car overnight at a friends / trip during the winter.
Also - if you arrive at your friend's place in the winter and park overnight, you won't lose a ton overnight if the car's just parked there.
The 30 different requirements for EVs to work in cold weather are too complex and prohibitively expensive. That 2035 deadline is never not going to be pushed back unless the EV industry pulls a rabbit out of a hat.
Sometimes we forget that we have 100 years of infrastructure behind our internal combustion engines and about 10 behind the electric vehicles.
In the first 10 years of internal combustion engines, you bought benzene at the local apothecary and used that to fuel your car.
Three years of EV in a more or less unheated garage and I'm still just charging off my 15A 120V outlet. It's fine. I plug in every other day or so. But you know what I don't do? Freeze my ass off standing in a gas station in subzero temperatures and howling winds! Not missing that at all.
Right! And I suspect by 2035, not having a 220v outlet in the garage will be like not having a microwave in your kitchen in the mid 90's.
By 2035 those streets must be refitted with chargers, one per parking slot and somehow replace the energy distributed as gasoline and diesel with electrical energy. If that doesn't happen people will have to leave their car at a charging station for far more time than what it takes to fill a tank with gas. And that doesn't solve the problem of the energy.
Or having a car will get so expensive that only a few people will afford it and that will solve all those problems, but create others.
What about the millions of people who live in apartments and rowhouses?
Rolling power outages in many states last couple of days. Many forms of energy are being retired faster then wind solar are being brought online.
It's literally as easy as having the right fuel additives on hand before it gets too cold. It's not even an infrastructure problem.
I will say that you left out the most fun part of a good winter driving a diesel, which is when you can't fill up even at a station with diesel on account of the fuel gelled in the pump hose. Luckily the gas station on the way home from work is a truck stop and the pumps for the tractor-trailers were still working.
On a related note, it's not unusual for us to lose power here for a couple hours to a couple days at a time either in the worst of winter, or during summer storm season. What do you do with an electric car when the electricity is out in the neighborhood?
Now compare that to the seemingly endless number of evangelists who think that 10 years from now is a good time to impose a mandate to kill all new ICE vehicle manufacturing, in spite of EV tech being only 80 years (or 30 years of "modern tech hard push") behind ICE infra.
This is how every conversation about EV goes.
Person A: "look how awesome EV is!"
Person B: "yeah, but it won't work for me based on where I live and the needs I have from a car. It seems foolish to push a mandate for a technology that can't be proven to work how the vast majority of people need it to work."
Person A: "you are being unfair in your comparison!" or "no, you are only imagining those problems!"
Filling up the car is the least painful part of driving in the winter. You park up next to a fuel pump with the heated seats slow-roasting your ass (and the car is probably warm by the time you reach a station), you get out of the car for about 4 minutes, and then you go back in the car to continue the slow roast.
Apparently some truck models over there have a built-in metal tray for this purpose.
If you perused the manual, you found out why - it suggested you light a small fire under it to serve as an outback engine heater.
The Niva was, uh, an interesting car to own, but was amazing whenever conditions turned to shite. Nothing short of an anti tank mine would stop it.
It didn't like starting in the cold, and it didn't have battery enough to crank it for long. And failure-to-start was, um, not good.
The solution was a built-in electric heater and charger. Basically it was permanently plugged in so the battery was 100%,and the engine block was "not freezing cold" (I wouldn't go as far as "warm").
Had a push button start that fired up instantly, at the cost of an extra 3 seconds unplugging it it an emergency.
My point I guess is that you don't really have to heat the garage, you just need to warm the battery up a little.
I don't know where you live, but here in Germany my diesel car had no big problems with -19°C around 10 years ago. Biggest problem was heating the interior that the windows remain ice free during driving. I want to see your new electric car driving in this circumstances the 100km I had to drive.
And please note, 2035 means 13 years in the future. I don't doubt that the infrastructure for electric cars can work in 100 years...but what's with 13?
You have a garage. Those who don’t have a garage freeze their asses off in howling winds every second day while plugging the car into an outdoor charger.
You’re right but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not the right time for people in certain areas or with certain lifestyles to have an EV.
Sounds like it's time for you to vote for the prohibition of self-service gas stations!
And if you're talking about extremes - then there's a reason why block heaters with external power connections are very common in certain places - even the best ICE struggles to start in -40C or less.
I actually just looked at my economy graph, and I can't tell how much winter affects it. The variance is less than the variance of my driving habits. So less than 20%.
Even back when I owned a mid 80s Nissan around 2000 I was getting 25mpg (us gallon).
Why is US mileage so awful?
That sounds like nonsense. What were you driving that had such a reduced mileage?
Your car must be faulty.
Luckily for those people they will have millions of older ICE cars to choose from.
On the other hand, I have driven a 2018 Bolt EV for 4 years, 48k miles, and never once had an issue with the car being unplugged and returning to a car with less range than I left it.
Doesn't matter whether it's Level 1 charging at 1.5kW (120v) or Level 2 at 6.8kW, or if it's -11F out, just plug it in and give it time to charge.
Leaving your car unplugged in a frigid environment will cold soak the pack and cause your pack to spend an hour or two worth of energy heating up to temp on Level 1 charging, or 10 to 15 minutes on Level 2 charging. This is normal and you just need to leave the car plugged in.
With an ICE car your heating generally takes minutes to heat up, versus I can have my car ready in a minute or two with just turning on the heat to melt off the quarter inch of ice build up on my windshield and windows.
It's also not something you can expect to find anywhere other than at another EV owner's place. Admittedly over time that will become less of an issue but for now it's going to be pretty rare.
Cause it seems perfect to me. Run electric day-to-day when the weather affords. Run gas for long trips or bad conditions.
No need for a giant 300 mile battery made with minerals from a developing country. Nor a huge ICE, since you can shrink it to a very narrow power band and rely on the batteries for peak power like take-off.
I'm really curious to see what Mazda will do with the MX-30 next year. It's an dismal failure as a pure EV, but apparently they're planning to add a rotary engine as a pure generator to it (i.e., not driving the wheels). If the car keeps the current version's 100 mile electric range that could be a very interesting combo.
Disclaimer: I never owned a Tesla and only ever drove ICE.
ICE cars still need electricity to start
My first car? I had to constantly give it gas for a while even once it started. People gave me funny looks when I was essentially revving my engine like I was showing off in my ‘88 Grand Marquis at stop signs in the year 2005.
Canadian BMWs will all have the “cold weather package”, which for me means heated seats and an H8 battery instead of a smaller H6.
For my mom’s old Corolla, it means a 1.6kw starter instead of the 1.4 in the US models (which became a sorta problem when I bought a refurb at a Canadian parts store…)
As for EV's I am going to wait and see how the UPS trucks manage here. That should be some time in early 2023, hopefully before spring time.
I live in an area that does get below freezing, and my car preheats the battery before I unplug it to go somewhere while the cabin warms.
If they're good enough for only most people, why are they mandating it for everyone?
Remember that a lot of people have to spend 10-15 minutes warming up their cars before they drive them in cold weather.
I do not want to go into details, better car mechanics than me should, but there is all kind of chaos that can happen if your engine freezes and you try to drive it immediately. And it is much more complex and can be much more expensive. Once you start getting cracks in various things and liquids flowing where they should not be you will wish for the simplicity of just plugging in your EV.
So lets not pretend that driving in the cold is some kind of new problem that EVs introduced.
People choose to do this. This isn’t required and it’s recommended against in modern vehicles.
> I do not want to go into details, better car mechanics than me should, but there is all kind of chaos that can happen if your engine freezes and you try to drive it immediately.
Engines do not freeze in the conditions common in most of the US, even with winter like we’re currently having. The engine coolant is a mixture of anti-freeze and water.
Your electric car can fail randomly for an obscure reason too, and good luck getting anyone at all that can fix it.
> Remember that a lot of people have to spend 10-15 minutes warming up their cars before they drive them in cold weather.
Only because they're idiots. No-one needs to leave a vehicle for 10 minutes to "warm up", even in the coldest of weather. Drive gently until the temperature gauge is a bit off the end stop, and then drive a bit less gently until it's at its proper operating temperature.
Alternatively, start the engine from stone cold and immediately drive off at full throttle taking it up to 70mph before there's even a sniff of warm air from the heater. This is *still* better for it than letting it sit for a long time to "warm up".
I really hope that alternative energy storage like hydrogen make the race.
Present battery technology for cod winter Europe is not practical.
Although, if you're filling when it's hot, you're getting slightly less gas than when it's cold.
But you don't have a gas station at home, don't you? So you have to worry about gas stations and how far they are. And your car makes you and other people sick(i.e cancer and various diseases due polution)! That's so 2020!
On a more serious note you are comparing the shortcommings of an emerging technology with a mature technology. Saying that the old tech is better makes no sense to me.
It's call h2, and multiple cars on the road (kia, toyota, hyundia) work just fine.
One federal funding/grant program, and refuel stations will abound.
And h2 is every bit as green as electric, for both can be supplied via green methods.
I have an uncovered space and it’s fine. Yeah, the battery sucks in the cold, and it takes longer to charge, but realistically it’s not like you need to use your car 24/7. Leaving it for a few hours overnight charges it to full, and you can schedule defrosting or do it from the app so the car is warm when you get in.
It’s far from “a huge pain”.
In Sweden there were lot of reports of people being unable to charge with 230V 10A.
Sure, you'd make sure to install a more powerful charger if necessary. But that requires you and everywhere else to be adapted for EVs. Which is a pain.
(Funny thing, this is kind oversized for domestic applications and the driver behind it is that the law says you pay fee based on maximum amperage of your connection, so electricity companies refuse to install anything smaller than 25A and give everyone they can three-phase so they make more money.)
Also, how adapting to EVs is a huge pain but LITERALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE is not, I don't get it.
> It’s far from “a huge pain”.
You name "a huge pain" and someone will disagree. Not having a car at all is far from a huge pain but you still have one, even at a significant price.
My car is always plugged in and therefore always at 80%. It takes a few hours after returning from a trip to charge it back up, regardless of the weather or other conditions, and the car is warmed up by the time I get into it using remote defrosting. In fact, during this snowstorm, my car always was consistently completely defrosted every time.
None of this sounds anywhere even remotely in the same ballpark as “a huge pain”.
But you need it anytime you need it - some rank reliability very highly, at "requirement" level.
> from the app
And this already is a loud warning bell.
Did you miss scheduled defrosting, where the car does it automatically so it’s ready in the morning? Does your car even have the ability to do that without you in the car? I didn’t think so.
Be realistic about what is a pain and what isn’t. None of your rebuttals are much of anything except “woe is me I have to take out an app to do something I couldn’t even dream of doing on my car and that’s scary”.
That’s only a warm climate thing. Plumbing (of the associated washing machine) that’s prone to freezing is unlikely to be in the garage in cooler climates.
(But, of course, that would require even better cooling for a battery on a summer +95F day. OTOH ICEs have a similar problem.)
The weight of the battery pack is great for traction in warm / dry conditions, but when driving on ice that weight is just momentum sending you sliding into snow banks.
After a bumper or body panel gets ripped off during the inevitable extraction from above mentioned snow bank, expect to wait 6-9 months for the most basic of body work.
The self driving is an absolute clown show in anything but perfect conditions (mounting evidence it sucks in perfect conditions too~)
Nothing in the world excites me more than expensive nerd toys with electric power trains, but as a Minnesota native I'll take a $900 rolling trash can beater car over a top of the line Tesla six months out of the year. There is a very valuable lesson in observing the legacy auto industry existing in Michigan where the winters get very cold and cars need to perform with snow or ice on the roads. Meanwhile Tesla mostly engineers their cars to be good at driving from LA to SF and back.
Not necessarily. In Minnesota, people often put sandbags in trunks/truck beds to get better traction in Winter. Also, one has to be careful when following semi tractor-trailers, as in some Winter conditions, they actually have a shorter stopping distance than your car.
Putting a pair of sandbags in the back-end of an unloaded rear wheel
drive pickup is not the same thing as driving a 9000 lb sedan.
A heat pump should be able to do a lot better.
Also you're probably only going to get 16 amps of actual draw on a 20 amp circuit.
Yes it is. I don't have a large dataset of exact temp conditions and charging curves (Elon certainly does though, someone go ask him!) I can tell you if the outdoor temps are below 15F a standard outlet has negative net energy input.
A heat pump solution would certainly be more efficient, knowing Tesla I can only assume it's peltier junctions.
All the hype about the efficiency of an EV goes out the window when it's blowing 16kwh+ a day just keeping the battery above freezing.
Also it’s just cheaper: electricity is much cheaper over night and if i have to charge 24x7 I’m paying much more.
- if you install a 220v charger with a 60a circuit breaker, you can charge up to 48 amps
- keep the car plugged in all the time - not only to charge, but to keep the battery warm and even preheat the car for a toasty drive.
What strikes me is that people in some markets have unrealistic assumptions about the current battery technology. Spending more money does not change physics.
EV technology is rather good. But there are bad products in the EV market.
This review of the F-150 Lightning is interesting for the surprise of the reviewer that the vehicle isn't fit for purpose. https://www.guideautoweb.com/articles/68882/ford-f-150-light...
(Google Translate is your friend.)
TBH, I think mankind just needs better energy storage. Lithium ion, and lithium iron phosphate are great, but I do not believe these are going to work for us in the long term. I do believe, however, that within 30 years electric vehicles will be more practical than ICE if some kind of better battery is made at a low enough price point.
Yes exactly why things like govts banning ICE vehicles in 2035 is unfair on poor people without homes.
My BMW came with a 6/10 amp (software selectable) emergency use charger.
I bought a 16 amp 110V charger from Amazon, and it is more than enough to keep up with my daily commute. (It is equivalent to an 8 amp 220V charge cable.)
Not plugging in when arriving and letting the battery freeze (cold soak) overnight, unplugging after 30 minutes of 1.5kW level 1 charging and basing his entire decisions on what the car's guess-o-meter says for remaining milage is pretty crazy IMO.
Seems like OP chose to do the worst thing possible at each juncture to ensure a bad charging experience.
It is normal for cars to use 2 or 3 kilowatts (an hour or two of charging) heating the battery up to temperature in freezing conditions, but once the pack is up to temperature it charges close to normal speed.
What are you supposed to base it on? Does your EV come with a working crrystal ball? Should I read the car's horoscope?
I mean, really, I've read stupid statements, but blaming the user for trusting the displayed battery capacity on a device really takes the cake.
If all the factors you described are understood by humans, why aren't they factored into the display algorithm? If the car is going to drain battery for an hour getting warm before it can start to charge, then say that on the display.
All of these factors combine to make the range estimator a guesstimate on both gas and electric cars.
Teslas have great big dashboard screens. There was no need to leave OP thinking that the car was unchargable unless it was brought into a warm place.
Honestly, it’s kind of a joke how badly people want to defend the tech despite its current shortcomings.
Yeah, I (and everyone else) totally do that…
You can also leave it overnight just fine. I think plugging a 110v during the cold is kind of an edge case, the car tries to charge but it makes thing worse. Maybe a software update would cure that.
I doubt if it could make things worse, despite what the range indicator says.
Another thing to keep in mind is: Charging speeds of cold temps. While the Tesla seems to do great at range, charging at cold temps is not great. When it's below freezing, home charging can be tough to impossible. A few days ago (when it was merely "cold", before the huge cold snap hit us), I drove the car and then parked it to charge for the night. It charged at a rate of 1 mile per hour. Usually it'll hit 30-40. I have it set to start charging at midnight, which meant that the battery cooled down after driving for ~6 hours, before it started charging. I could have started charging as soon as I got home, but then I'm in the 3x higher electricity pricing... I could bump that up to 9 or 10pm to help.
This also impacts road trips. If you are traveling in freezing temps, definitely charge before checking into a hotel (unless the hotel has a charger, which is fairly rare), rather than in the morning. Instead of 30m charge time, it can take 60-120 minutes to charge at a Supercharge.
Of course, within certain latitudes, more robust infrastructure is less necessary (the closer you get to the equator). Texas, Florida, and California have most of the US population and will rarely see these conditions (US centric).
As long as you have 30+ amps of 240v, you are fine charging in winter. It will spend 5-15 minutes warning the pack (and show only a little charge rate) and then kick into your full charge rate.
The only time you are screwed is in like 15-20 amp 120V, it takes nearly all the power to keep the battery warm so almost nothing left to charge. If it weren’t for winter I likely would have kept only a 120 in my garage as that is plenty for summer charging at home.
Don't mix up "home charging" with "level 1 charging". A lot of EV owners will get a NEMA 14-50 receptacle to level 2 charge, and then there's no problem at all charging while below freezing.
That being said I’ve not noticed charging issues with my Model 3, this is my 3rd winter, last week we regularly had -7 C in the night. Does seem to be a lot of variability
I have a suspicioun those cars that seem to have no impact on range due to temperature just increase the deepth of discharge in colder weather.
I.e. Tesla and Jaguar.
Ya EVs aren't fun in cold areas if you don't have a garage or on a road trip
Americans, can we stop this failed experiment and let’s (re)build our cities with public transportation and alternative forms of transportation (ie, biking, walking, micro-mobility). Return the spaces occupied by parking lots, parking garages and use that space to house people. End these implied subsidies on “car housing”.
Death to the suburban experiment.
I feel like every post that shits on the suburbs should include how many kids do you have, for transparency. No family or kids, of course the city is better for you.
The only other option is some kind of technological silver bullet for carbon capture that manages to arrive in time.
Personally I'm fairly pessimistic about this problem. I don't see a political path to widespread mass transit in the US, and I don't know how you remove the incentive that developing economies have to pollute. It feels like a prisoners' dilemma.
Science evolves as does technology, and inevitably both factors will change over the coming decades. To base your life around the worst case predictions of models (where the disaster moment keeps pushing back as time progresses) is not logical.
And then specifically. I work from home as does my wife. Most of my driving (in a hybrid btw) is 2 miles to drop our kid at school or go to the grocery store. Really hard to connect this lifestyle to dooming the plannet honestly.
Operating on the basis of the most extremist "worst case" scenarios that are very unlikely (like your "peak oil" example) probably doesn't make too much sense, but it's probably not a bad thing to be rather pessimistic about these sort of things when making policy.
We can take no thought for the morrow and trust that future technology will sort it all out. Maybe it will, but what if it doesn't? There are no guarantees and hard constraints on our physical universe and planet. It certainly wouldn't be the first time in history human-made ecological changes caused large problems.
Or we can be more pessimistic today. Maybe it will later turn out that won't have been necessary, but it still would have been the smart thing to do as a matter of risk management, since we couldn't have known in the past how things would work out in the future.
As with all things, you can of course exaggerate, but it's a mistake to throw our the baby with the bathwater because some extremist said something extreme.
If you wanted to be extreme in CO2 reduction, I guess your best bet is to kill every living human and animal on the planet (to be clear, not advocating this!) Clearly that's "too high" a price to pay.
On the other hand, you can be very practical and look for CO2 reduction in ways that don't harm people's current lives. Increasing vehicle mileage is an example of this - mileage has doubled and emissions per vehicles halved since 1975.[1] In fact, I suspect this is going to get even better very quickly. My Highlander Hybrid, which is a large vehicle, gets roughly 50% more MPG than in this chart.
So we can say we're already doing a lot (and that's just one thing.) The idea that somehow the line between acceptable and unacceptable just happens to be right between suburban and city living feels a little too convenient for me.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...
1) There are trillions of dollars in petroleum reserves in the ground. This is money in the pockets of people, e.g. Putin. They aren't going to let go of that easily.
2) China and India have no realistic pathway to zero carbon and will buy the oil that isn't bought by the G7 sustainable nations. Most of the world's population will follow them.
The only valid response is mitigation. Amsterdam is below sea level. It is far easier to detect and solve real problems than try to predict massive problems in the distant future.
In a bike-friendly country, you'd do that by bike, not by car.
Of course, if your whole world is built around owning and using a car, then doing this by bike becomes dangerous and doing this by car becomes less insane. Then you find our you're dedicating a very large portion of the ground to those machines you use twice a day for 10 minutes - making them unfit for other purposes the remaining 23 hours and 40 minutes.
I really like driving - but I really like the outside to be fit for other things than driving as well. American suburbia falls way too far short of that.
But yeah, would I try this in downtown LA? No, never. (Although you could argue that LA is weird because it's neighborhoods are like suburbs. Would I try this in k-town? No. You need a car, for everything.) Of course I have to admit that there is some circularity with the LA situation - no-one wants to live in the city center, so only the destitute live there, which makes it less desirable. In many places in the world, this situation doesn't apply. Would I try it in Manhattan? Maybe.
Stories like yours are great but unsaid are things like: do your kids have a back yard to play in? How fresh is the air? Do they get to watch dad take care of a house and yard so they learn skills like that? Are they dodging shit on the street as they walk to school ( always was the case in NYC but extra bad now). Are their neighbors families with minimum two kids, or are they a much less family friendly demographic? Etc.
I used to not think about these things until I experienced the better version of these things in the burbs. The self-selection of neighbors who made the move to a family friendly location alone is a game changer
Maybe I’m missing something but that was never my understanding for the need for EVs to replace ICE, a need based in lowering reliance on fossil fuel and decreasing air pollution.
These are still required, whatever urban policy we end up with.
I see the urgent need for improved public transports to be paramount in these goals too, so both EV to replace the billions of ICE cars and better urban transportation alternatives are needed.
Whereas it can also be seen as kicking the can down the road.
In the kind of cold weather that cuts EV range, per the OP? I've been there, and thanks but no thanks -- I'm too old for that shit. I'll stick to my car even if its range is reduced.
> Return the spaces occupied by parking lots, parking garages and use that space to house people.
This I heartily agree with, but it can be compatible with cars if we can get self-driving finally sorted out. Just have your car drop you off, then go out of the city to wait for you (and perhaps charge itself at the same time).
> Death to the suburban experiment.
Suburbs have different problems than cities do, but I'm not convinced they're particularly worse or more plentiful, and there are certainly other (dare I say better?) ways to solve them than abolishing suburbs outright.
Between buildings, build an elevated walkway above the roads. With ventilation these walkways could cover a large part if not all of the area above roads. Promote social spaces, commerce areas, and open areas between buildings without sacrificing cars. Just build above them.
This is just an idea to reclaim walking space in our cities without making the enormous leap to banning cars/roads in cities, which we’ll still need to cart the enormous amount of products and raw materials a city needs.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/2/5/suburban-infras...
Re: costs to cities, mostly focused on the extensive roadworks to serve solo car commuters - those are expensive and converted a lot of neighborhoods into something which consumes but does not generate tax income, and things like parking don’t generate much income, and all of that comes at a hefty cost to health & quality of life.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
As for this:
> I don't see how suburbs are incompatible with GP's proposal
Look at the last line of that post:
> Death to the suburban experiment.
> Land doesn't have any rights, so suburbs can't infringe upon them.
Slaves didn't have rights back then either, as I understand it. Can't infringe upon those!
More seriously, I haven't done the math myself but given concepts like "earth day" it doesn't seem like we're doing too well in providing for everyone, and that's with a large majority of people not living in the usa suburb style. It only seems fair if everyone (eight billion people) were given the opportunity to achieve an equal standard of living if they are willing to work for it; the kind of thing one would ideally codify in a binding human rights statement (e.g., ECHR). Under the ideal of giving everyone equal opportunities, freely taking however much land you fancy would almost certainly infringe on others' basic rights.
But anyway that's just about land use. I don't know that the amount of land taken is the restrictive factor here, it's probably more about how you get to and from your daily needs (transportation and heating being big factors in personal energy use). The fundamental limitation usually boils down to energy in the end (could live in the Sahara if you build a lot of AC and desalination and pipes to get it there -- spaceship earth style). Currently, we don't have a lot of energy available in a way that maximizes total happiness, considering global warming. We might have to take it easy with personal consumption rates until we do have the energy.
I'm traveling in Taiwan right now and it's just night and day. Outside of NY and small areas of Boston/Chicago/Phili/SF proper it's just a disaster in the US.
Fix the crime, and the pollution, and the noise.
Give people a way to live without constantly hearing their neighbors through the walls. Give people transit options where they don't need to fear for their physical safety. Give people a place to raise children without worrying about them picking up used needles on the street.
Give people space to be something other than interchangeable sardines in boxes in high-rise apartment buildings -- what about people who want to do woodworking, or welding, or work on cars, or hunt?
City live is only one of the valid lifestyles available to humans, and arguably it is the most unnatural, the most harmful, and the least tolerable. Change that before you call for the death of the lifestyles that other people enjoy. Otherwise, don't be surprised if "death to cities" is the response you get.
It's been pretty successful for a "failed experiment".
Either someone is going to have to come up with an ingenious solution or electric vehicles are going to be of limited use in cold weather locations where space is not abundant enough for garages (quite a lot of European cities). Infrared heating seems quite efficient, maybe the solution lies there.
Based on the article, that Tesla is looking pretty impressive though!
Also the solution is easy - when the car is plugged in, just heat the battery so it charges at optimal rate and is ready for your journey. Some cars already do this(the new BMW i4 and I guess the iX too)
That was kind of the point though: they wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible. There's a good quote attributed to Leonard Bernstein:
> To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
I feel like the project pushed Harley Davidson and Rivian to achieve something a lot quicker than they would have done otherwise. I hope they do another one in a few years though to see how far the technology has come along, although they've covered quite a lot of the world now so I'm not sure what route they'd choose exactly. NZ -> Aus -> SE Asia -> India -> Stans -> Turkey -> Europe would be my guess.
We seem to stumble on new chemistries that get to production every few decades so cross your fingers
We have a 220 mile Nissan Leaf that drops to 180-200 in the winter. We also live in Cincinnati which is a metro area about 75 miles in diameter at the widest span. Most drives are 10-30 miles. The range drop doesn’t matter unless you are doing a road trip.
Recharge time does matter more but any drop there due to slower chemistry is somewhat offset by less thermal down-ramping since everything is cold.
What we need most of all is more fast chargers between cities. There are enough in California and several other coastal states but nowhere near enough between cities in the US interior.
For some reason they put a bunch of DC chargers in the city and none between which is the inverse of what you really need. Is there a grid capacity problem in small midwestern towns or did they just get the priority wrong?
Likely ROI--Return on Investment. You can predict quite well the usage of chargers in cities from other charger installations. In between, not so much. On my latest trip between San Diego and Austin, the fast-charging stops were almost completely empty. This is in constrast to the summer, for example, where most of the fast charging was completely full and not a small amount were broken.
People have forgotten that gas stations at every convenience store is a relatively new thing in the US (starting about the mid 80s). Prior to that, part of the advantage of the Turnpikes and major interstates were regular gasoline station placements. And that happened because the governments subsidized them.
The ironic part is that "gas stations everywhere" has been absolutely terrible for groundwater--contamination is now ubiquitous. Paying gas stations to dig up old tanks and replace them with electric chargers would be a big environmental win.
-electrics with proper planning work well, but there is a nasty wives tale in the service industry that batteries are safer to work on in a cold garage and that you can skip the safety gear. a tesla battery still has easily enough juice to send you to jesus even at -50c.
-gas engines need block heaters or its like starting an engine in a tar pit, and the mileage takes a 20-30% haircut.
-diesel engines are finnicky beasts in the cold. most of your environmental reclamation stuff has to be heated along with the block, and anti gelling agents are hell on them. mileage and waxy soot particulate from stacks are equally bad. california has special requirements and bans on certain gel agents as well.
in colder places like nunavut or the northern territories, heavy truck drivers without reliable electrical power light a small fire under their engine to warm it. not for the faint hearted.
oh wow, that is a pretty dangerous bit of misinformation
Part of the EPA methodology is to penalize EV range using either a fixed constant or measurements of performance at reduced temperatures. Because Tesla cars perform better in the cold, they use the measurement method when calculating EPA range.
That results in the perceived under-performance of Teslas compared to the competition in the so-called “real world” tests. But when cars are tested at low ambient temperatures, we see the results…
See the chart here. (source from article)
Maybe EVs need more complex testing ?
I would like to see a 75 mph constant-speed test at 0F, 50F and 100F
I don't think this is very surprising. This is not the first winter for many EV manufacturers, or owners. And of course EVs are pretty popular far into the arctic circle. E.g. there are super chargers in Northern Norway, people use them throughout the year, and it seems fine there.
I think at this point there are very few surprises for manufacturers and they are pretty well aware how their vehicles perform under different conditions.
I'd be interested to know in how those shiny new F 150s are holding up providing power to people who are in areas with power outages. It seems that these are exactly the type of conditions that justify owning such a vehicle. Presumably, Ford did a lot of testing in cold conditions to make sure they work fine there.
ICE vehicles also run less efficiently when the engine is cold, so this part is roughly analogous even if there is more extra energy required to heat the battery pack.
The main difference is that once the engine is warm, ICE vehicles can then heat the cabin "for free" using waste heat because an ICE is so incredibly inefficient. This waste heat is useless when it is warm but a nice bonus when it is cold. EVs must expressly spend energy to create warmth for the cabin.
But this is also why most EV owners know to schedule your vehicle to warm up while it is still plugged in before you depart. One advantage is that you can do this in a closed garage with an EV and not worry about fumes.
Cold weather reduces range on all vehicles, it's just more noticeable on EVs due to having less excess range and the aforementioned heating concerns.
But I drove a 2014 Leaf for 8 years here in Michigan, without issue. That's a low range vehicle in a very cold climate. It's totally fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c
I Deep Froze My Tesla And Immediately Plugged It Into A Supercharger To See What Happens.
I believe Bjørn Nyland did some similar testing too a while ago.
One of the folk tricks with cold starting regular vehicles is to run the radio for a little bit, in order to warm the battery up just a little to help with cranking the engine. If you conserve the waste heat in the battery banks until the batteries hit 50ºC for instance, then they would spend less time at ambient temperatures once you start moving. Some of that could offset/be offset by the cabin heating system, if you did it right.
But I think the math comes down to the question of whether cooling a battery to freezing reduces the potential energy in the battery, or just the recoverable energy. I think it's the latter, and if so then how much recoverable energy can you increase by converting a given amount of that energy into BTUs to warm the battery?
With home air-to-air heat pumps I took COP of 2-3 as a base for heating, it seems that COP=1 is a big deal in a car.
Proper SOF control is loosely required for ECE R100 which most manufacturers would have, but OTOH I am convinced that it’s possible to fudge that certification.
Source: battery controls engineer.
Teslas[2] (and a handful of other models) have heat pumps to warm the batteries. It's as simple as that. The same system is integrated with navigation too, because even on warm days unused/empty cells will be colder, and you want those to be warm when you reach the supercharger.
[1] Which is to say this isn't strictly a change in "range", if you can drive somewhere warm you can keep going to the rated distance.
[2] Ones built over the last three years anyway -- older ones didn't have this. I think Y's and all but the oldest 3's have heat pumps, but older S/X models might not. Something to be aware of when buying on the used market.
Last winter we got up to freezing maybe 5 days.
I’ve driven in Canada for 40 years. Until modern low-viscosity oil capable engines — cars were required to be plugged in to block heaters for hours before attempting to start, at -20C and lower.
I didn’t expect EVs to perform better than gas vehicles; why would I, at this level of their maturity?
Diesel vehicles are even more brittle; oilfield workers simply don’t shut off their diesel trucks for days at a time, at low temperatures.
We have found that a 100 AMP service can effectively serve up to about 20 EVs, so long as the chargers can communicate among themselves to manage peaks. We use all EnelX Juicebox 40A networked chargers and they have that capability.
So how can you charge so many cars effectively with a small service? It is based on load factors.
The average commute length in the US is around 15 miles one way. So most nights for most cars they only need to replenish 30 miles worth of charge overnight. So there are plenty of hours and plenty of amps to cover that.
Of course, some folks come home from a long trip and need a full 300 mile charge, while some didn’t even drive that day and need no charge—basically it all comes out in the wash.
There are other considerations, but the takeaway is that you CAN support a lot of EVs charging for modest investments if you do it smart.
I wrote a white paper on this in case anyone is hoping to do this where you live: https://localforce.io/misc/Cost_Effective_EV_Charging_for_Mu...
Complex systems are convenient in ideal conditions but they suffer in extreme conditions.
Expect more extremes winters in the coming years (as mild winter trends reverse).
This Axios article is from March, 2022 and has incorrect data. In particular it's wrong about the Tesla results.
The Axios chart claims the Model Y achieves 97% of its EPA range in 70°F and 98% of its EPA range in 20-30°F. They're claiming the Model Y does better in cold weather.
Here is updated data from Recurrent as of December 2022:
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss
What's new in the updated data is that Recurrent has included verified real world winter range tests. Previously they were relying on dashboard data and Teslas don't give you good information. Recurrent says, "As evidenced below, it appears in the Model 3 dashboard data that there is almost no change in available range in cold or hot conditions."
But now, "New to 2022, we have added observed, real-world range fluctuations to our Tesla data. The dotted line below shows the range as observed from on-board devices and energy usage. This shows a more expected decrease in winter range, although Tesla's thermal management is still great at controlling cold weather range loss."
What Recurrent now says for the Tesla Model Y Long Range AWD is:
> Observed Range at 20-30F: 49% of Original EPA Range
> Observed Range at 70F: 64% of Original EPA Range
So even at 70°F the Model Y only attains 64% of its rated EPA range in their data.
Tesla inflates their EPA numbers. You always need to do real world testing.
My Tesla model 3 actually does very well although of course there is a range reduction. This is one of the areas where Tesla shines compared to other auto manufacturers because they have always viewed themselves as a battery company first. There's not really much you can do to beat years and years of data on BMS and various battery conditions. Tesla's are collecting and transmitting data on current temperature state of the battery etc all the time.
Things like fit and finish of body panels are something that the other manufacturers have decades of experience with in Tesla doesn't. But on batteries we are now talking about 10 years of data Tesla has that they don't. And the culture in the Detroit Auto industry isn't exactly a good one when it comes to promoting competent engineering management.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/04/tesla-f...
You can't judge today what an EV will be like in 50 years the same way you couldn't judge what would happen from the first Model T (1908) to the best selling car of 1958, the VW bug. I mean, safety and mileage weren't even primary concerns in `58. It was still novelty. You have to jump almost 100 years for mileage to finally get significantly better in automobiles! As well as airbags, antilock breaks, shatterproof glass, seatbelts, crumple zones, etc. EVs are nowhere near internalizing all of the issues, let alone solving them.
I think this is an opportunity to work on the problems, and not say EVs are dead because they aren't perfect. Maybe they only fill a niche in the future, and don't take over, but that's still a big deal for emissions. Hopefully the issues with lithium mining & recycling, and infrastructure, and chargers, and battery tech improves. It doesn't mean don't try to make it better. I'm glad more companies are exploring the tech.
The one area I would think is a justified complaint would be if companies were getting unfair tax-funded subsidies to produce inferior products to make their shareholders rich rather than improving their technology for society.
> can't judge today what an EV will be like in 50 years
i can't wait for 50 yrs to have EV be better than ICE cars. If they aren't better _today_, i cannot switch. I would assume the majority of consumers have this attitude.
Therefore, in order to transition to EVs for environmental reasons, you either force consumers to have a lesser product by legislation, or improve EVs so that they are the natural choice to purchase.
I don't believe consumers would be willing to suck up a legislated rule that forces them to consume an inferior product, and so they would choose not to elect someone that stand for such.
Therefore, the only realistic way is to have EVs be _better_ than ICE. I think they are on the cusp today though, and soon will surpass ICE.
It is interesting that you managed to use three logical fallacies in one post: a strawman, a false dichotomy, and a no true scotsman.
A strawman because you invented "legislation to have a lesser product." This is a deadly product we are talking about. It is a public safety issue. You should probably clarify what you mean by this because I only assume you referring to banning misleading labeling of dangerous products, like calling something ADAS5 that really isn't.
A false dichotomy because there are more than two choices. You can have competing products that excel at different areas in and some cases are better, depending on the context. In this space you can have "inferior" EVs (I'm imagining cases where they are inferioir, like mileage and ease of use) to ICEs and still be a choice for short commuters. You don't offer that choice, and that's just one alt, hence the fallacy.
No true scotsman because you made up the term "natural choice" to imply the answer is obvious without giving and justification: basically set it up so that whatever you decide as "natural" is the correct answer, and anything else is not a correct answer, and that can move based on your argument. This undermines the choice you give.
I can go further: consumers will absolutely "suck up" (putting aside the issues with your framing). For example I'm fine with legislation that delegates the size, speed, and efficiency of cars, and so are hundreds of millions of Americans that vote for things like this. In fact I wish there were more laws to shrink the size of vanity trucks that are simply monstrous for no reason. There are decades of evidence showing the damage that fast, huge, inefficient cars inflict on society.
It got totaled thanks to someone hitting us, and we ended up with a 24kWh Leaf. It doesn't have much in terms of thermal management, so with that we really notice the winter. Like, to and from work is just fine, but any significant trip in sub-zero (Celsius) conditions ain't fun. We knew it wouldn't be great, and we're looking to replace it.
I'd say for our kind of weather, which have many days below -5C during winter, and living in a city or suburbs like we do, the Leaf is fine as a second car. The i3 was good enough since we didn't do lots of long trips during winter, just a few to the cabin and such. Both the i3 and the Leaf (and others) have climate timers, so you can get the car nice and warm in preparation for a trip, using power from the grid. This helps a fair bit both in comfort and in range.
More modern cars are even better though, obviously more range to start with but also with things like battery preheating which sacrifices some of the battery energy to heat it up in preparation for proper fast charging.
I admit I do get a bit of range anxiety during winter from time to time, mostly because the consequences of running out with -10C or so outside isn't fun. If I was living more on the countryside, there's few competitors to Tesla I think just due to the range and thermal management.
All in all, we're definitely not gonna get another ICE. There's just too many things we like about the EVs.
A bit annoying for longer trips. Typically "going to the cabin" type trips. Normally I wouldn't need to stop, or perhaps stop once. With a Peugeot e208 I had to stop twice, and the charging was a bit slow. Still, only turned a 4 hour trip to a <5 hour trip, and since it's not exactly something I do every week the consequence is basically zero.
When there was fewer chargers it was more of a problem. Had to time it so that from the last charger you could reach the cabin and back. But later years with longer ranges and chargers everywhere I don't really plan anything. Except when going to Sweden...
The Kia e-soul I've been using lately feels like it holds it charge much better than the e208, so probably even less of a problem.
And never had troubles getting an EV to start during winter. But may be a bit unfair comparison as the ICEs I've had troubles with are all older generations.
I know that technology can make surprisingly rapid inroads even into far and poorly developed corners, but this applies most of all to either easily or centrally scalable things. The requirements around EV cars are neither. I can't even imagine how quickly or easily much of this stuff will be in any way practical for hundreds of millions of people living in places where EV charging conveniences and personal garages or etc simply aren't the case at all or possible.
These péople won't give a shit about going EV "for the sake of the planet" until they can do it without being screwed in so many ways.
Some of you truly do live in pleasant little bubbles that simply don't consider the wider human world.
Winter & Cold Weather EV Range Loss in 7,000 Cars
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34038582
(182 points, 317 comments)
The later is something my Diesel never could manage, taking about 20 miles to get temperatures above the freezing point. While my EV is nice and cozy after about half a mile.
I imagine today's battery chemistry won't be viable for mass adoption further North, but other than that, I wouldn't let it stop you. Anecdotally, every other aspect of owning the car is wonderful.
Surly that's where we should be developing. Last I heard they're very efficient.
In theory it has no ceiling, storagewise. And it certainly isn't constrained by a chemical reaction.
The only downside is keeping it from blowing up. Right?
- They are VERY heavy. Typical energy density for flywheels is 10-40 kJ/kg (if you account for the whole flywheel), while Li-ion batteries and gasoline store 300-1000 kJ/kg and 46700 kJ/kg respectively (the latter does not account for ICE efficiency).
- They are relatively big, since you can store more energy with a bigger diameter (limited by material's strength-to-weight ratio).
- Flywheel is a big gyroscope. You do not want to rotate it around while it spins.
So back to my question.
For naturally-aspirated motors with aggressive timing, going from 80F to 32F can feel like someone bolted a small supercharger to the engine.
Other manufacturers that have just started may be playing significant catch-up to Tesla's lead.
Lessened range may have more to do with the system spending energy to keep the battery at optimal temperature.
Contrary to what others are saying here, Tesla had no "head start" or lead. The Volt came out the same year as the Model S (2011/2012) and the battery pack in there (LGChem + GM) is extremely well engineered.
(In general GM is far more cautious about many aspects of battery life than others. One of the reasons the Bolt has weaker/slower fast charging. They also have tended to focus on a lower segment of the market than others, too. Comparing a luxury vehicle Tesla against a Chevy Bolt is not exactly apples to apples)
Another couple of red flag in the AXIOS article was: "AAA found the loss in driving range could be as high as 41% with the heater on full blast." Hmmm, even with the recent Siberean cold air mass blast here in Colorado, I don't need the heater on full in my ICE cars with outside temps of -5F. Also, the recurrent.com study show some of the vehicles ratings based on verified range versus estimated range - why? Perhaps it's accurate, but mixed methodologies in the same study.
Is there a source for this claim? I am suspicious that _most_ Americans are shopping for an EV.
Thanks!
>Start the vehicle while it’s plugged in to allow the battery to warm up. “The key is warming that battery up,"
But yes I take a 15% range hit
You cannot beat the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels. Thermodynamic efficiency of an ICE actually increases in cold weather because you can reuse the engine heat for the passengers. In an EV you have to channel your motive fuel into electric heaters which are far less efficient than the drive motors themselves.
The current policy movements towards EV only are suicidal. We are nowhere near ready to support it. It's also discriminatory because EVs cost much more than ICEs and do not have the lifespan of ICEs. Economically disadvantaged peoples of color often depend on older used vehicles.