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Comment by d_watt | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally last winter, had a Model Y up in maine for a trip home. I arrived at a backwoods house with ~60 miles left. It was around 10 farenheit the next day when I hooked up a 110 volt line to the car. Over the next 30 minutes the mileage dropped to 55 as it took more energy to heat the battery than the line could deliver.

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.

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You wouldn't really need a heated garage (at home, anyway) if you had a 220 volt charger. That should be able to overcome any charging challenges in extreme cold, anyway. Relatively easy to get that into your garage.

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.

Meanwhile, with an ICE car, you don't need to worry about having a garage, nevermind a heated one; the right charger, warming a pack, losing fuel overnight, or taking three hours to fully charge. I can pull up to any gas station and fill my tank in 2 minutes. And my gas isn't magically evaporating if it's a little chilly.

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.

Spoken by someone who's never had their diesel fuel begin gelling in the fuel line at night on a frigid, remote highway and trying to figure out if you can make it to somewhere with heat before you stop completely. Then finding out they only have gasoline, so you try to figure out how much gas you can add to the diesel tank to keep it from gelling but still run adequately to move you along.

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.

> 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.

Not everybody has a garage. Cities are full of parked cars in front of residential buildings. It did park my car in a street when I was living in a city.

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.

Cars should be more expensive to cover their externalities but considering that cars spend 95% of the day parked and most people are not driving hundreds of miles per day, it seems likely that the combination of charging points at parking garages and similar structures, homes, streetlights, etc. is going to reach a level where most people can charge more than they need to. In fact, since solar has such massive daylight spikes we probably should be thinking about what we can do to get people to charge their cars at work instead of overnight.

If someone actually believes in democracy, they should try to get politicians to agree with the statement "cars should be more expensive to cover their externalities" on the record. In the US, almost every single one would dodge the question or outright disagree. Even the ones not running for re-election don't want to ruin their and their party's reputation.

I don't totally agree with the magnitude of how much more work needs to be done- we don't have one gas pump per ICE car, and electric cars don't need to be charged every day.

It's fair to say that people hogging chargers even when they're done charging is a problem, there's a public charger on my street that is near 100% utilization. However this seems pretty solvable- companies can just charge per minute as long as the spot is occupied and let the free market sort it out.

Adding public chargers is also a great way for places like malls, grocery stores, offices, etc to stay relevant, since my weekly shopping trips would probably be enough to keep a car topped off

>It's fair to say that people hogging chargers even when they're done charging is a problem, there's a public charger on my street that is near 100% utilization.

Makes sense to charge a penalty every minute a charger is connected but not drawing power (full battery).

Does the street already have street lights? If so, then presumably there already is an electrical distribution network running alongside the street. If it was designed with sodium vapor lamps in mind, but has been upgraded to LEDs, then EV charging infrastructure is withing its capabilities.

Yes, the line was designed for 250W sodium vapour lamps, you replace them with 60W led lamps AND you use some 20% original overprovision and you can have 250x1.2-60=240W per post.

In a city you’re not likely to be farther than a mile away from a high speed charger. It’s perfectly reasonable for a small city car to “fill up” occasionally to cover the short mileage they’re likely to see between charges anyways.

I don’t have an EV or a car at all, but if I did my charging regimen would be “plug it in at the fast charger at the grocery store and charge it while I shop”. It’s just not a big deal.

We certainly don’t need to make our residential streets more ugly than having a bunch of cars parked on it already does by stringing up charging infrastructure all over it.

In Finland we have 220v outlets at every parking spot, since the batteries of ICEs just die during the -20C winter nights without being hooked up.

We all charge our EVs on those same outlets, and I never heard of anybody not having a full charge the next morning.

The main reason why we have so many EVs here -> they are more reliable in the cold. People stopped freezing to death in their Diesels that got stranded on the roadside.

> not having a 220v outlet in the garage will be like not having a microwave

What about the millions of people who live in apartments and rowhouses?

Well, if they're smart, they've built their cities in such a way that cars are only something you hire for your vacation, rest of the time, a bike and/or a train pass is sufficient.

Ah, the Stack Overflow classic “this is a wrong problem to have”

> What about the millions of people who live in apartments and rowhouses?

If they have cars, they have a place to park them, and this place can host a charger. Outdoor parking without access controls may have security issues, but that's true without a charging point, too.

A place where you can’t even park your car outdoors unattended is not a place you want to live in in the first place.

Just got back from the UK. The neighborhood I was in had charge sockets on every 3rd or 4th parking post. You wouldn't even know they were there if not for the tiny little LED.

I can confirm as someone who lives in the uk, that is not normal.

There are a significant proportion of residential developments where it wouldn’t even be possible to install such infrastructure due to the legal framework around how the properties are owned and maintained.

Legislative changes are needed here to make this happen, but alas our government has had its mind on “other things” for quite a few years now and doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.

In some ways the UK is a view into the future of the US.

But this is not it.

Wealthy neighborhoods in the US are going to get these on the streets eventually. Places where poor folks live don't have the ROI needed to justify it. Wealthier folks tend to be older and have more time on their hands to do things like go complain at city council meetings.

You're going to get these chargers in the richest neighborhoods first (of course), and eventually to the decent middle class neighborhoods. The poorer areas where blue collar workers live (apartment complexes) will get it approximately never - the city won't invest in those areas because fuck them, and the apartment complexes won't invest in them, because fuck them.

https://youtu.be/MqkT4B-9MGk

This isn't representative of the UK as a whole though and, likely, never will be. Providing charging points for middle-class homeowners at the expense of basic infrastructure and countless other spending 'priorities' would be considered political suicide in most high-density locations outside of London.

Where do those people park their cars now? Wherever that is, put a charger on a post next to the spot.

And where does the electricity come for those chargers? Huge swaths of the USA are experiencing rolling blackouts right now because there isn't enough electrical capacity.

At least some of those people will continue to rely exclusively on public transportation, the same as they do today. In our urban areas, public transportation + car sharing / rental services make a whole lot more sense than continuing to incentivize everyone to own a car (electric or otherwise)

I have a charger in my uncovered townhouse spot. It’s really not a big deal. Nowhere near what you and other commenters here are making it out to be.

My HOA woulndn't allow that in our common parking area.

2035 US is 2022 Europe, if your garage has power - you have 220v

Or indeed 1960s Europe for that matter. I believe most US homes have a ~240v supply, even if they don't have any outlets that allow them to use it.

in the very early days of utility serice some houses got 110 volt only, but most of them got upgraded to 220 in the 1950s.

I think in Europe other than older buildings, garages have mostly 400V 3 phase. At least in northern parts, probably a lot worse in southern parts.

Land lines are 400 V 3 phase in Germany, as you need those for the elecrric ovens and that is what utilities deliver. Standard plugs and wiring are 240 V. So every garage would at least have 240 V, if there is a plug, and 400 V can be installed.

To be honest, we had 220V in the Garage since I was born about 40 years ago.

How many people in the US do really not have 220V in the garage? I bet a lot of homes have either a sub-panel (and thus could add 220V very easily) or a laundry (dryer socket, 220V).

My guess is that older homes in the northeast will have an issue not with adding the outlet but upgrading from 100amp to 200amp service. I was quoted $10k for that upgrade. I had to decide between getting an EV and getting a heat pump. Decided on the heat pump, which I’m very happy with — it’s saving me thousands on heating oil.

I dont have 220 in the garage. Of course 220 is coming into the panel but there is no circuit breaker, wiring or outlet. In my experience this is common. 220 is only provided for washers, stoves, and HVAC. Can a 220 outlet be added, certainly, but it is not default.

I think most of us don’t even have garages.

I don’t right now in my detached garage (though I buried conduits during recent landscaping to permit me to pull them later). Right now, I have a 120V, 15A circuit out there that powers everything.

Regardless, my cheap LEAF turned 8 just a bit ago and I’ve driven it in New England year-round for 8 years without issue, even with only level 1 charging at home. It’s fine for an around-town daily driver (which is what the LEAF is well-matched to).

the 220 circuit to your dryer and the 220 circuit to your electric stove do not have the capacity to add more items to the wiring (the stove is a much higher capacity circuit btw). Yes, it's true that you wouldn't need to use your car charger while you use your appliances, but that's not how residential building code circuits work. I suppose there must be or at least could be a solution to switch the power over? But you can't just go plugging it in and remain within code.

my brother does a lot of stuff with power tools, and whenever he moves he has to have extra lines brought in by the power company. While houses frequently have 220 coming in, they don't have 3-phase.

New house built this year. No 220V in the garage (utility room is inside the house - I used to connect my charger there and run it to garage). However, I was able to easily add 220V, even as a first time DIYer.

I'm in Canada in a house built in 2012. Attached garage - my living room is above it.

The breaker panel is in the garage so it'd be easy to add, but my only 220V devices, the dryer and stove (along with their outlets), are inside the house.

I've never heard of a dryer in the garage before. It isn't heated, and in winter months, it's cold enough that snow doesn't melt. Would that have an effect on drying my clothes?

> How many people in the US do really not have 220V in the garage?

I only have 220V in an indoor laundry room, not the garage. Adding it would only be a small one-time expense.

I'm curious, is 220V (or 230V) more than twice as fast/twice as good as 110V? The discussion here makes it sound like it. All I know is that you'll need higher amperage with lower voltage, but it can compensate proportionally. I guess heat losses and other problems are significant, if it's a problem at 110V?

At the same amperage, it's exactly twice as good, but if you're going to get a 220V outlet installed, you're also going to get a higher amperage circuit installed at the same time, so you can charge at 220V/50A instead of 110V/12A, which is 8x faster.

But you need also the electric company to be able to deliver that power, roughly 10kW, in addition to all your other electric appliances.

Common contracts - at least here (Italy) - are for 3 or 4.5kW, a few are 6 kW, 10 kW or more are rare, and you probably need to get to 15kW to be able to have those 10kW available for charging.

It’s more than twice as losses are lower boosting 220v to the 400v or 800v the pack actually needs.

As an example, a charger in some EVs is 87% efficient when charging from 120v and the same charger is 94% efficient when charging from 240v.

> All I know is that you'll need higher amperage with lower voltage, but it can compensate proportionally.

This discussion is assuming that the amperage is the same. The common "default" AC socket in the USA is AFAIK the NEMA 5-15, which is a 15A socket; the common "default" AC socket in other countries is AFAIK usually either 16A, 15A, or 10A, so at most you'd have one extra ampere.

Of course, if you're adding a dedicated socket where you'd expect to plug a car (or other high-power devices like a large air conditioner), you'd put a higher-power socket like a 20A one. But this discussion is, as far as I understand, about what you could find on a random garage; I believe it would be unexpected to not have at least one common "default" AC socket on am enclosed garage, but finding a higher-power AC socket would be less likely.

Any idea how common or feasible it would be in the US to get ~400v 3 phase power to the garage?

Here in Australia it's possible, though not very common. ~400v is useful for some larger sized machinery.

I don’t know about US but here in Northern Europe the utility outlets we use for stoves and such are not just higher voltage but also distributed over 3 phases rather than just one. This translates into sqrt(3)=1.7 times more of the cable can be used. For a 3x16A outlet you get 400V x 16A x 1.7 = 10kW.

Compared to a normal 220V 10A outlet where your max is 2kW.

Higher voltage also means you get more power for less current, less heat loss in the cables.

If you have an electric car, the example above should explain why you want to get a proper charger with proper wiring installed. Don’t use the ones which plug straight into a shuko.

The battery heater is a fixed overhead, so even at the same amperage (and twice the power), if the weather conditions are such that the heater was taking 80% of the available power on a 15A/110V circuit, it'll only be taking 40% of the available power on a 15A/220V circuit, meaning the charging power is 6 times greater.

Will power even be a thing?

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.

By 2035 people won't be driving car-shaped objects, not unless they're professional taxi drivers.

People will still be driving car-shaped objected until 2055.

People wildly overestimate advances. Look at how much has changed in the last 20 years. Not much.

Not as personal transportation, though. Too expensive and wasteful.

This is super ridiculous. How do you think this will happen? The buyer of the 2022 Toyota Corolla will just be banned from driving it in 2035? In the US they can't even ban guns, you expect individual driving of owned cars to be banned? :-)))

Not banned. The car shape is probably the most inefficient form factor posssible for an electric vehicle, and economic and market forces will do their thing.

Hey, my apartment in Central California doesn't have microwave (although its a good apartment).

In 2035 I will most likely be living in the same home I am now, and putting a 220v outlet in my garage is a lot more expensive than buying a microwave.

I suspect it will get cheaper, esp for the common case where you don't need to upgrade the service to your home, and there's already a panel/subpanel present. The cost is mostly labor, and in that case it can be installed in a couple hours or less. Also, 30% of the cost is already subsidized as part of the IRA. As EV prices become more competitive, such that having the outlet/charger installed in their garage is an actual burden for the ppl buying EVs, I wouldn't be surprised to see this subsidy increase

And then you're replacing the fuel filters when it's below 0 F out because they got destroyed by the gelled diesel. And then you learn your lesson and keep a bottle of Power Service on hand if it's going to get cold and it's never a problem again.

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?

There is no winter diesel in the US?

That's with winter blend.

OK, 10 years behind EV. It makes sense that it is where it is. Please point out anywhere where anyone says the accomplishments are not remarkable on their own, if you are not comparing them to the thing with 100 years infra behind it.

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!"

We should kill all EV manufacturing five years ago. Spend the effort instead on building charging infrastructure, bike lanes, and public transport. Used cars are good for another fifteen years or so to cover edge cases where EV adoption is slower, giving us ample time to figure out solutions that don't drive mass extinction.

Bike lanes won‘t change a thing. Those who don‘t bike will mostly not be convinced by a lane. I know this, being born in a rather rural area with plenty of bike lanes. I‘m in favor of building them, but would take any bet that by itself that won‘t make a big difference.

Public transport will also have to be EV based. Trains won‘t cut it in most areas outside cities.

And besides - what you‘re saying is insanely risky. You want to keep going with ICEs for 15 years? This would just push back the necessary transition another decade. We would loose the time we desperately need to make the necessary changes.

It's not a communist state

Where did I ask for putting the means of production into the hands of the workers?

You will still be able to buy and drive ICE cars. What’s the problem?

Where does Person B live? In a hut in Siberia?

C'mon, you have to purposefully be this obtuse. There's no other way it can happen.

Literally any location in the northern US, especially the more rural and more dense urban, and doubly true if you make under 30k per household person and don't already have a circuit in your garage for an electric oven or electric clothes dryer. I suspect the same is true for other locations in the world.

> I suspect the same is true for other locations in the world.

Well, FWiW the Australian (and New Zealand) standard across the entire country is 240v with (most) internal circuits rated for 10 A .. but a call to an electrician gets you a { 15 | 20 | 25 | 32 } amp circuit pulled from the household breaker box (if high amp circuits weren't added at build time) [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/NZS_3112

In other EV news an Australian state (South Australia) had a net 104.1 per cent wind and solar over seven days (ie produced more renewable energy than total energy used and exported the excess) [2], and in my state "Renewables reach 84 pct share of world’s biggest isolated grid" [3]

[2] https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australias-incredible-week...

[3] https://reneweconomy.com.au/epic-stuff-renewables-reach-84-p...

So, uhh, we have the infrastructure to charge EV's in isolated rural parts of the country and have had for decades .. increased generation is an issue but we have plans to significantly increase global green hydrogen production and export excess over local demand.

> and don't already have a circuit in your garage for an electric oven or electric clothes dryer. I suspect the same is true for other locations in the world

Only North/Central America and Japan uses ~100V systems. The rest of the planet uses ~200V systems where more wattage in your outlets is standard.

Yep,but I'm assuming that nearly everyone in the Northern US is on the grid. And yep, economic concerns dominate, I get that.

This is where I'd hope a government looking to encourage EVs would step in and help, if they're trying to make things happen before 2035.

E.g., in my area, the regional council has a scheme where home owners can get a very low interest (or even no interest) loan to install good insulation, and you can also get another one to install a heat-pump.

They're run through banks, but backed by the regional (and maybe central?) government.

But, doing something like this will, initially, only subsidise the people who can already afford to buy an electric vehicle.

TL;DR - it used to be that you couldn't refuel your car unless the servants brought more on horses, as the only service stations focused on oats. But we invested in infrastructure.

In a little under half the US. We get at least a couple days a year where the wind-chill brings the temp below -40F with a thermometer temp of -5 or less as a high for the day. My gas car hasn't been happy about starting the last week. Two years ago, I was working 2nd shift and only had the diesel truck. Got to work fine, got off at 2 PM and even with winter blend and a bottle of Heat in the tank, the fuel gelled and tore up the fuel filters.

This is not an artic circle problem. This is a problem that affects way more of the world than you seem to realize. Sorry that we don't all live in mild climates.

> where the wind-chill brings the temp below -40F

I'm unsure why wind-chill is relevant to a car being charged in a garage?

> This is a problem that affects way more of the world than you seem to realize.

The original commenter was stating that EVs were entirely unsuitable for a hypothetical person.

The only way that it I can envisage it being entirely unsuitable is if they had no access to grid electricity.

My comment about a hut in Siberia is based on that.

Yes, some Americans might need to upgrade certain circuits, but that's not an blocker, it's just an implementation detail.

I'm very well aware of how cold it can get in the USA, but that doesn't prevent EV use, it just requires investment in infrastructure, and that's an investment I'd hope a smart government would subsidise if it's serious about reducing emissions.

Half of the United States feels like a hut in Siberia right now due to freezing temperatures and the lack of electrical capacity.

https://www.fox29.com/news/pennsylvania-warned-of-rolling-bl...

>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.

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.

I heard stories about Russians in the red army setting a pan of fuel on fire under the engine block of their trucks to warm them up sufficiently to turn over and start.

Apparently some truck models over there have a built-in metal tray for this purpose.

I had a Lada Niva 4WD back in the day; part of the winterization package was an extremely heavy sump.

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.

A long time ago, in a land far far away, I drop a fire engine. Big monster, 37 tons, with a giant v16 Rolls Royce diesel moter.

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.

Crews did that while building the Alaska Canada highway too

you can buy heaters that you stick into your engine where the dipstick goes for checking the oil. plug em in overnight. I'm not sure at what temperature you would also need to heat the battery; maybe the residual heat is generally enough, but the warmed engine will crank a lot easier so less strain on the battery that way.

IIRC, that was about heating the oil.

Is that something that actually happens to diesel engines? I have multiple diesels and while they are difficult to _start_ in the cold they are fine once started for me. But yes, cold enough and combustion engines are hard to get going. My Subaru hates cold days, it'll go a few seconds on a below freezing day before ignition. My diesel tractors actually have electric plugs to keep the manifold hot.

The reason diesel doesn't usually gel is that, starting in the fall, fuel stations/refineries start adding anti-gelling agents to the diesel.

If you have "summer diesel" in your tractor during a cold spell, it will gel. And a block heater won't help, since the fuel gels in the fuel lines and tank too. And trying to start the engine pulls in that gel into the fuel filter and sort of strains the chunks out, causing your fuel filter to need to be replaced even once it's warmed up.

I'm not sure at exactly what temperature it happens, but a Kansas winter will typically gel summer diesel at least a couple of times.

Mostly it's the start battery that have problems in the cold. The diesel sold in Norway have anti-gelling substances added; cars run fine in -20 degC/-4 degF.

I live in the southern USA. So it makes sense that I have never heard of this. We had a -6°F night the other night but usually it'll freeze at night and be back above freezing by noon.

It's likely that the stations around you switch to a winter mix.

diesel starts gelling at warmer than water freezes.

number 2 diesel fuel will turn to jelly at a bit over 40f. That is warmer than water freezes. Number 1 diesel will be fine to well below zero, and you can mix them to get different gel points. There are also anti gel additives you can add to prevent gelling. Number 2 diesel has significantly more energy than number 1, and is also cheaper, so you want to run number 2 if possible.

Not anymore, at least in milder “extreme cold”. We live in northern New Hampshire, and never have an issue with our 328d wagon parked outside in -25F. It has a heater for the fuel line, and they add anti-gelling agents to diesel in winter.

It is an can be a pain for non diesel drivers if large trucks grind to a halt and block the motorway. That's happened in the UK in unusual cold spells.

Yes that'd be quite a problem. Our cold lasts so little here that I've never had a need to start any of my tractors in the freezing, just wait a day and it's back to warm.

>Spoken by someone who's never had their diesel fuel begin gelling in the fuel line at night on a frigid, remote highway and trying to figure out if you can make it to somewhere with heat before you stop completely.

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?

my diesel car had no big problems with -19°C

It depends on the formulation of your diesel. If you had a tank of "summer diesel" it would be gel at that temperature. Generally the supply chain starts changing the formulation as the weather gets colder and everything is good until you get to arctic temperatures. But if you fill up at a station that doesn't sell a lot of diesel and they still have summer diesel and its an early cold spell, or you are driving a vehicle you don't fill often, you can be in trouble. There are also additives you can add on your own if you know you have summer diesel.

Just yesterday I drove 75km in -22C, parked outside all day, then back home the same distance in -19C. Took my Model Y from 80% to 12%. No problem with heat either (that's part of why it used so much charge). I was a lot more worried about sliding off the road than running out of battery...

I believe you that it's no problem for a diesel. But it's no problem for electric either.

What if you wouldn't make it home and have a night outside? Two times 75km and down to 12% charge is not inspiring confidence in such situations!

When I left for the second drive, the car's navigation app estimated I'd have 13% left when I arrived, and the estimates have been impressively good so I just went for it.

But I also was in a good sized metro area with a couple Tesla superchargers not far off my route, so my backup plan was to stop at one for 15 minutes if it ever looked like I might not make it.

> 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.

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.

Diesel passenger cars aren’t popular in the US, certainly not in the segments that compete with EVs.

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.

Why is it that when it comes to transportation the discussion is always talking past each other?

"Trucks don't belong in cities for personal transportation."

"I need a truck for my farm."

"Vehicle transportation is a huge chunk of global warming contributing fuel consumption, so we need to reduce car usage in cities towards more and better public transport, and EVs when possible."

"I don't live in a city and the bus only comes twice every day and I have to drive 30 miles to work."

These are not mutually exclusive statements!

EVs aren't great for long distance transportation. Particularly ill suited for long haul trucking in winter. But that's not what most people do. Most vehicles drive short distances in fair weather. Many American families have more than one car. That second car doesn't need to be able to drive cross country in the winter. I don't complain that my sneakers are not snow shoes so they are useless to me and anyone else. No one is talking about making ICE vehicles illegal. At most there might be restrictions on usage in cities, no different to how some european cities keep private cars outside of historical city centers.

> No one is talking about making ICE vehicles illegal.

Certainly in Europe. Not directly but via a back door:

Must not enter the city center in a diesel car

No new ICE cars after 2035

Which doesn't make them illegal to own, just impossible to register new ones. And that's ok, especially since all major car makers are in on it.

Diesel cars are an issue due to dust emissions. Most modern, read Euro 6 temp, and above, engines should be more or less fine. How the latter will be controlled and enforced so, excluding older cars from certain places, is trickey.

I have to point out so, this will be a social issue. Well off people will most switch to EVs, one of the reasons I guess why VW and others are diverting marketing budgets from EVs (read Diesel) to EVs. Those that cannot afford EVs will face issues, since it either used petrol cars, with higher consumption, or used diesels, with issues going to some places due to emissions.

> 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.

Sounds like it's time for you to vote for the prohibition of self-service gas stations!

But......EVs do work in cold weather? You lose a bit of range, but so what? My ICE car also gets worse mileage in winter.

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.

At those temperatures you're up against the flash point of gasoline, which is already the lowest of any (liquid) fuel I can think of.

Remember that compression raises the temperature.

18Mpg becomes 10Mpg or worse in the winter in my experience. EV driving can be more efficient if you don't let your battery cold soak for hours, or equally inefficient if you do leave your car unplugged overnight.

I live in place that routinely goes below freezing in winter. I’ve never noticed gas mileage change because of temperature. I would definitely notice a difference of 8 MPG. Where do you get that info? Is it personal experience? If so, where do you live?

I easily notice the difference in my car, it goes from about 8L/100km in summer to 10L/100km in winter. That's on the same tyres in both seasons.

Driving through snow?

Cold air is denser. Pushing it out of the way saps more energy and drops the effective work done. You're oblivious to it because a motor vehicle has so much available power on tap. It is very noticeable on a bicycle at high speeds.

Conversely. Sailboats get more efficient in cold temperatures because more energy is imparted on the sail.

>Cold air is denser. Pushing it out of the way saps more energy

ICE mpg tends to drop in cold weather, but this isn’t why. It’s usually because it takes longer to reach optimal operating temp or due to changes in fuel composition. Cold air can produce more drag but that problem exists irrespective of ICE or EV.

The pumping efficiency is unaffected as any losses on the exhaust side will be offset by increased pressure on the intake side.

> It is very noticeable on a bicycle at high speeds

Huh? I've been cycling for 15 years, many of those years doing 15k km a year, all year round. Mountain biking on mountains at -15C, down to urban cycling in 38-40C scorching summer heat. I've never noticed speed, effort, stamina changing with temperature as you suggest.

And I've done lots of road cycling at constant 35-40km/h, descents of up to 70+km/h.

Colder air's increased density and bigger temperature gradient also improves the efficiency of internal combustion engines.

Increased rolling resistance from displacing snow is a far bigger cause of winter driving inefficiency.

Hmm, I wonder if the increased resistance is overcome by the fact that ICEs can put out more power with colder denser oxygen rich air.

This is why performance cars sport cold air intakes. This is also why your car won’t hit its quoted 0-60 time in a warmer environment — those tests are normally performed or normalized to cold air conditions + 0% humidity. Just what counts as cold depends on manufacturer / reviewer.

Anecdotally, I track efficiency and drive consistent routes, and don’t notice a diff.

this is the textbook definition of confidently incorrect.

Winter fuel efficiency is worse because of a winter fuel mix, not because of air density.

> You're oblivious to it because a motor vehicle has so much available power on tap.

Dropping from 18 mpg to 10 mpg would increase your cost of fuel by 80%. It'd be hard to be oblivious to it.

> Cold air is denser. Pushing it out of the way saps more energy and drops the effective work done.

That makes absolutely no difference at all.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, driving both last winter in BC and currently in the mix of snow, freezing rain and slush. I'm using the same three peaks rated all season tires as I was using in the summer, and driving the same routes as well.

In colder climates, it's common to have an engine block heater, which to some extent mitigates this. A significant chunk of the lost "mileage" is from cold starts.

Something must be wrong with your vehicle. I've tracked every tank of fuel I've put in either of my vehicles, and the efficiency does drop in the winter, but nowhere near that amount.

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%.

Got it. So just make sure your vehicle is constantly consuming energy and you'll never have an issue... unless the power is out for an extended period of time.

If the power is out for an extended period of time you’ll find gasoline hard to come by as well.

Want to see how quickly the petrol supply line breaks down in an emergency? We had severe shortages for a month after an earthquake. People hoarding fuel contributed significantly, at least you can't hoard electricity.

Also, electricity supply isn't prone to supply shocks when Russia invades Ukraine, or the Saudis want to flex their muscles.

You never started your car and just let it warm up before setting off in winter? How much energy do you think that uses?

Letting the car consume a small amount of constant electricity to keep the battery above freezing is thankfully not very expensive compared to a standard space heater (usually 1.5kW at 720 hours a month, costing $150 a month in Seattle).

Defrosting and toasting the cabin to 92F in freezing conditions usually burns about 1.2kWh to 3kWh while plugged in, but that is just a few tens of cents (or free depending on the charger) to get nearly instantly toasty and ready to drive.

No. That's a waste of a useful resource. It's also illegal in various places.

In city driving my ICE gets 6-8km/L in summer and 8-10 in winter. On the highway it gets 10-12 in either season

18mpg is 21mpg with U.K. gallons. My fairly large Skoda gets 45-50 in the real world, maybe dropping to 42 if I’m pushing it to 85mph on the motorway.

Even back when I owned a mid 80s Nissan around 2000 I was getting 25mpg (us gallon).

Why is US mileage so awful?

Large SUVs with overcooked engines to meet emissions requirements (lower PM2.5 emissions at the cost of slightly worse fuel economy) get bad mileage.

Having all wheel drive or 4 wheel drive, high ground clearance, a poor aerodynamic design (driving 70mph or 80mph sounds bad in many of these cars) also hurts efficiency.

Even when it comes to cars, often the US base model has a larger engine than the EU base model.

No idea why: speed limits are often higher in EU and often with more hills.

18mpg would generally be a pickup truck. You'd be hard-pressed to find a regular sedan that has mileage that bad.

> 18Mpg becomes 10Mpg or worse in the winter in my experience.

That sounds like nonsense. What were you driving that had such a reduced mileage?

Yeah additional electric heaters and stiff oil reduce mileage but Nowhere in that range.

Your car must be faulty.

But most of those “worries” are things you do upfront when choosing where to live or what car to get. And most of those worries have analogous worries for ICE vehicles if you’re really going to be living or frequently driving in extreme cold temperatures or snowy/icy weather. If you live in the Bay Area you probably can’t just take your ICE vehicle to Tahoe on a whim in the winter. You’ll have to consider for a moment what car you have, what kind of tires are on it, and what the weather and road conditions are. Again, it’s upfront “worrying,” not some constant sense of dread that you can’t eliminate with a bit of upfront consideration.

All things have defined limits; Your gasoline will stop working at like -40 F. And while ICE vehicles have reliable mileage in the winter, they are absolutely prone to issues related to extreme weather. Also, I'm curious where you get the 30 requirements from, since for the most part it's basically just having an outlet installed. Not everyone can do that, sure. Not everyone can ride a bike to work, either. What's the point of this flippant crap?

Yeah, the biggest thing EV proponents seem to miss is that you don't need to force it to be 100% for everyone. Confine any mandates to urban centers where it makes sense, you can get buy in from everyone and solve 95% of the problem. At that point there will be lower hanging fruits than the last 5% or w/e.

You think it's the proponents that miss that it doesn't need to be 100%? The arguments I see that act like it has to be 100% EVs are basically all anti-EV arguments.

States are mandating no ICE sales by 2035. That is why people are becoming anti-EV. No one would care about EV policy if it wasnt being forced on an insane schedule.

No new car sales, and PHEVs are included which should solve edge cases. That's very different than all cars. Also, most of CA doesn't get cold enough that any of this discussion is relevant.

PHEVs really seem like the best of both worlds. What's the downside?

Chargers are a problem for apartments in urban centers though.

It’s not a technical problem, it’s just an effort and cost thing. As soon as people start demanding it, the problem will be solved pretty quick.

I’ve seen new developments advertising electric car chargers already.

People in apartments must be parking their cars somewhere. You just need to put chargers wherever people are already parking their cars.

It can't "just" put for mechanical parking system.

> mechanical parking system

Are those common? I know they exist, but I thought they were unusual. I've certainly never seen an actual one.

I fully agree that not everyone needs to get an EV, there will be edge cases where it won’t be feasible.

Luckily for those people they will have millions of older ICE cars to choose from.

Also all the "no more ICE by 2030" mandates I've seen allow plug-in hybrids which solves the biggest complaint people have (range)

Do you just assume all EVs lose massive amounts of battery state of charge while unplugged? There's a reason Tesla vehicles lose battery while parked and unplugged; they have cameras and other computer systems continuing to run, sapping power.

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.

Charging EVs is easy and simple if you just plug in when arriving at a location.

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.

I mean by that metric, it's hard to figure out how to install a dryer in your house too. It's the same circuitry.

With the difference that the dryer connections are usually installed when the house is built so there's easy access to run the wires to and from the breaker box. Installing them afterwards is more expensive and complicated to do because of the limited access.

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.

Right, so you’re only saying that EVs are new, not that they’re more difficult to setup than a dryer.

No for existing construction they will be more complex because the walls are all closed in so routing the 220V cable to the outside or garage is more difficult. Electrical is done before the walls are finished for a reason...

Maybe not if you're lucky and the existing dryer connection is already in your garage but it's not going to be that simple for most people. Again dryer connections get installed at build time and have for the last couple decades so most people already have them.

I'm an opponent of EV, but bring a cable from power input to garage is really not a big problem. Done that for many things over the last 20 years, including network cabling for internet access.

I'm just saying it's more work not that it's impossible work. Also a high current 240V cable is way more trouble than a CAT cable.

Plug-in hybrids are strangely missing from online discussions. Are they too heavy or something?

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 have much the same question -- it seems like PHEVs would be perfect for the next 10 years or so, while we improve batteries and build out charging infrastructure. And yet there are relatively few PHEVs on the market, and most of them have <40 miles of electric range, whereas I think you'd really want something like double that number (especially in the context of this article!).

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.

Yeah, strangely people talk as if hybrid id a thing of the past although its the best of both worlds.

It's also the worst of both worlds at the same time, since you have the issues of both petrol engines and battery electric cars. Your 50 km of pure electric range drops to like 20 km in the winter, and after that you're driving on your cold-ass petrol engine and lugging around a heavy battery.

I drove my mom's BMW 530e plug-in hybrid to the store and back (5 km in each direction). At the end, I think we had 5 km of range left. Granted, it did handle a grocery run just on battery and the heating system worked well, but that was about all that it had. The NEDC rating for the car is 50 km of electric range.

A plug-in hybrid, while eminently practical, has the unenviable position of being perceived as a half-measure

True, with an ICE car you only need to worry about things constantly and randomly breaking down or wearing out and the fuel prices bankrupting you.

Disclaimer: I never owned a Tesla and only ever drove ICE.

You sound like somebody who's never had to plug your car in at night to make sure that it'll start in the morning.

ICE cars still need electricity to start

Eh. I’ve found with modern cars they can still start at -30f just fine. At least, mine can.

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.

Eh?

A gasoline powered car will struggle in the cold because:

- the battery used to spin the engine is going to have less capacity in the cold - the engine oil is thicker and requiring more energy to spin the engine - gasoline won't atomize as well when it's being sprayed into a cold environment (this is why your engine runs richer right after a cold start)

A diesel powered car will struggle because:

- the temperature of the engine may be too low to allow ignition - the battery used to spin the engine is going to have less capacity in the cold - the engine oil is thicker and requiring more energy to spin the engine - the devices used to heat the engine (glow plugs or intake heaters) require plenty of electricity - the fuel itself may turn into gel (although I think most places in the US only ever sell #2 diesel year-round) - the engine itself may not stay warm enough to run especially if you're also trying to pull heat out into the cabin

None of that's changed dramatically in the past 40 years although engine management has gotten better.

I don't disagree, but I can only tell you my experience. My car (a freakin' Camaro that I drive year round) has yet to fail to start, and it's 11 years old at this point too. The radio doesn't work when it's below 10 degrees though, so that's fun.

There’s a reason why many northern areas (esp. Canada) have diesel trucks that come equipped with a plug-in block heater.

There’s often not-very-visible differences between Canadian and US car models, even base models.

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…)

I lived in the south and moved to Denver for a period. I had a RWD 4-runner at the time and got stuck in snow. The people I knew in Denver had no idea they even sold non-4wd 4-runners...

I'm guessing only FWD/4WD version of vehicles are also sold in Canada.

My ICE vehicle would like a heated garage. At -10F -23C she gets upset with me. At -25F -31C she tells me where to stick the key. I work around the issue with an oil pan heater and a couple of heat lamps but I do need to build a garage and stop waiting for wood/steel prices to come back down.

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.

The majority of the country doesn't live in an area that regularly gets extremely cold and even fewer people drive 100 miles every other day. EVs are always getting better, and they’re already good enough for most people.

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.

> EVs are always getting better, and they’re already good enough for most people.

If they're good enough for only most people, why are they mandating it for everyone?

Nobody is mandating EVs for everyone today.

„It works on my computer”.

With an ICE car, if you park regularly in very cold weather, your car can fail randomly for an obscure reason and it can take a long time to figure it out or you will need a trip to the mechanic. Or you may need a massive and expensive repair.

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.

> Remember that a lot of people have to spend 10-15 minutes warming up their cars before they drive them in cold weather.

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.

> People choose to do this. This isn’t required and it’s recommended against in modern vehicles.

I’m curious about that recommendation, do you know why that is?

You need N joules to heat up the 300kg of the engine. It doesn't matter if you sit there for 15 minutes freezing your ass with an engine running at 1500rpm (and all other car parts still freezing) or 5 minutes actually driving at 3000rpm - you still spent N joules on heating, difference is the time. And the car heater runs on the engine heat, not on the electricity, so the sooner you would warm the engine the sooner your car interior start to warm and stops seeping the heat from engine.

It's actually more importantly to have enough viscosity in ATF, but again, the sooner you would go the sooner it would warm.

It's possible you need to idle for 10 minutes just to scrape the ice off your windows though :)

Because it’s much more efficient to heat up a modern car by driving it than it is to let it idle.

> I’m curious about that recommendation, do you know why that is?

I was always told (since the 90s, anyway) that it's better to drive off slowly with a cold engine and let all the components come up to operating temperature together than to drive off with a hot engine, and cold gearbox, driveshafts, tyres, etc.

I generally let a cold engine (i.e. overnight) idle for maybe 30s before driving off slowly, and it reaches operating temperature in about 5m or less.

Because your car engine does not get the right mixture until you start driving.

In a 2022 car I have now even the cabin doesn’t get proper heating from the aircon until it’s driven.

> your car can fail randomly for an obscure reason

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".

> Only because they're idiots.

Even if we ignore the "heard bad advice" versus "idiot" issue, that's still untrue because there are other reasons besides what's best for the machine.

Maybe they aren't in the car, and they're warming it up to be comfortable.

Maybe there is ice on the car they need to melt.

Use deicing spray to get the ice off the car. If it's too cold for you in the car, then just sack up and get on with it. You're not going to come to any harm being a wee bit cold for a couple of minutes, and the heater will actually start working quicker if you drive. If the weather is as cold as it gets here in Scotland in winter, the car will *never* warm up sitting idling.

So I'm an idiot if I avoid things that are unpleasant but won't harm me? And again, speed doesn't matter if I'm not in the car.

Or I'm an idiot if I would rather idle than pour alcohol on my windshield?

> If the weather is as cold as it gets here in Scotland in winter, the car will never warm up sitting idling.

Okay, then that person is an idiot, but it doesn't extend to the people actually warming up their car.

'all kind of chaos that can happen if your engine freezes and you try to drive it immediately.' the coolant in ICE vehicles is called antifreeze, only an idiot would substitute H20 for that in cold weather, or any other time for that matter as it is designed to help protect the interior of the engine.

That are only problems when you live in russia or maybee canada.

I really hope the way EV infrastructure is set up in the US wil not take over to Europe.

I really hope that alternative energy storage like hydrogen make the race.

Present battery technology for cod winter Europe is not practical.

Much of the interior US has colder winters than most of Europe barring the far north of Scandinavia and Russia.

> And my gas isn't magically evaporating if it's a little chilly.

Although, if you're filling when it's hot, you're getting slightly less gas than when it's cold.

>> I can pull up to any gas station and fill my tank in 2 minutes.

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.

ICE cars were built without thinking about efficiency in a way, there were plenty of heat to go around due to the nature of combustion. The EV seem fragile but it is because it's so efficient so anything that affects the efficiency becomes quite noticeable... nothing wrong with being a bit more efficient everywhere we can.

It sounds like just 1 requirement

Perhaps warmer states won’t need to worry about the cold and the issues it brings?

unless the EV industry pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

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.

30 you say? Please list them.

I guarantee that you don’t own a all Electric V. I own 2018 model S and I concur with the Op of this thread that’s the case. Charging is a huge pain in cold weather. I have insulated my garage doors and am able to keep the temp at around 45 in cold winters ( I am in Redmond).

A 240V charger, as parent commenter said, more than makes up for whatever losses are inherent in heating the car and battery.

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”.

Surely depends on how cold it is? As well as amperage...

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.

Is 10A common in Sweden? Around here, every basic socket is rated 230V 16A and even apartments typically have each phase 230V 25A. And then you can go to multiple phases.

(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.

> Also, how adapting to EVs is a huge pain but LITERALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE is not, I don't get it.

That's a very "you-centric" view of the world. Convenience is convenience, regardless of whether it destroys the world or not, and more money is expected to bring more convenience. So very few people say "I'll suffer this winter so the world is destroyed just a little bit less". That's why they have EVs but can still have a "factory sized" carbon footprint due to their huge houses, multiple cars, etc.

Case in point, you probably get how adapting to public transport is a huge pain but LITERALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE because you want a personal car is not.

> Case in point, you probably get how adapting to public transport is a huge pain but LITERALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE because you want a personal car is not.

Oh for sure. That is why people saying "what about people living in apartments? checkmate, EVs!" annoy me so much - if you live in an apartment you probably don't need a car.

But people are used to their comforts, so saying that doesn't win any favors or votes. Nor does saying "it's good that EVs are more expensive, since fewer people will be able to afford cars".

At least in Norway cars will limit the charging to 10A when using a normal wall socket instead of a dedicated car charger on a connection with extra protection, I think there are some Eu regulations around that to.

10A circuits was the norm in houses years ago, but now the normal is changed to 16A and one 25A for the stove. We do not have any fee based on the maximum amperage of the circuit, the changes are only demand driven. If you want to put the kettle on and vacuum at the same time you need 16A

Usually it's 13A from a Shucko plug. They're rated for 16A but you're not supposed to run that continuously so it's 13A to be at 80% of maximum for a continuous load.

Mining all that crap that goes into any EV destroys our planet properly.

If you want to actually help environment, you need to live in cold through the winter by using heating at minimum, you need to use public transport, do adequate sustainable shopping of everything and so on and on. Which hits the general consumerism and comfort western society is so used to like a concrete wall of WWII bunker.

I get why prople want to feel they are not passive when global catastrophe is coming, but just buying EV and saying you have done your part is a fucking bad joke, sorry cant put it in milder terms. Kids in african cobalt, lithium etc mines would object, at least if they could.

You're hand waving away a lot of things here. People have the expectation of convenience and the current standard is whatever any regular car can do. When things fall short it can be a major inconvenience or even a deal breaker.

> 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.

What, exactly, is being hand woven away? I’m describing the realities of EV ownership.

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”.

I drive a 1972 Toyota Conora in the winter of 1990. One time it stopped and I had to walk to school. I got there late with MY HAIR FROZEN. That was a huge pain. Using a few extra amp hours of green electricity for 3 months a year to charge my 2019 Zoe is not a huge pain.

I wouldn't buy one anyway, but first thing that comes to mind is not the convenience but the energy waste in battling the cold to keep the battery charged

> it’s not like you need

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.

Do you use your car 24/7? No, you don’t. Nobody does. And if you did, there are charging systems outside of home charging.

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”.

> Do you use your car 24/7

Yes, we need it reliable: always available in case of need.

> take out an app

I do not see any chance of ever using a car that requires a smartphone.

The HN system just refused an edit, I will have to reply instead:

I am reading the words of former NATO supreme allied commander James Stavridis,

> Every year, the number of devices connected to the internet grows rapidly. By some estimates, the count is up to more than 50 billion devices, from around 7 million a decade ago. The benefits are real and obvious. (Hooray, I can close my garage door from a thousand miles away on my household Nest!) But so is the fact that each of those devices is a unique point of attack for hackers. We have created a vast, undefendable threat surface

You simply do not put unrequired attack surfaces on critical devices - it is cretinous -, and you do not encourage the practice - it is criminal.

Check their post again their car lost loads of charge over a very short range because of the cold so in effect it was losing range overnight. It lost 15 miles over 1 mile of driving and another ~15-20 on the next mile driving back.

But it was on level one charging (110v). A level two charger, even a slow one, should be able provide enough current to heat the battery and still charge the battery at the same time.

Most of the time if you're not at your own home you'll be on 110V chargers. To get 220V charging at someone else's you're likely either at another EV owners house who's gone through the trouble of installing a 220V port or you're lucky and they have a conveniently placed dryer in the garage you can steal 220V power from.

Unless you are not in North America. Most of the rest of the world have a base voltage of, and all domestic outlets are 220-240.

In the US "220V" refers to a high current outlet normally, in a country where household outlets are 220V, you still need a high current outlet and, for safety reasons, most outlets are not high current, just like in the US.

U.K. is 220v @ 13A for an average socket. That's almost double what a common 120v 15A does in the U.S.

In the US it's 30A minimum for an average "220v" (it's actually 240 V) outlet such as a dryer or AC, that's more than double what 13A 220V gives in the UK.

You will not find a 240 in the u.s. outside of specific installations, while in the UK a common plug already is 220 13a.

It depends on what you call "specific installations", in my house I have two 240V 30A outlets for the dryer hookup and for an electric oven and one 240V 40A for the air conditioner.

Wait, this is terribly confusing. Why would "220 volts" not refer to a completely objective measurement of current?

The Volt is a unit of electric potential. The SI unit of current is the Ampere. You can have very large potential differences (in V) with very small current (in A). The unit of power is the Watt, and 1 W = 1 A*1 V.

So, a given power can be obtained using any voltage, with the proper current. In practice, high currents are unsafe so we tend to avoid that in unprotected sockets. Different norms correspond to different tradeoffs.

The voltage and current combined is the actually important number which is the total wattage available on that circuit. The US standard 220/240V outlet will provide ~30A of current usually while a UK outlet usually has a 13A fuse in the plug matching the circuit's rough availability.

A 220V outlet will always give you more power for the same current limit than a 120V

A 220V outlet won't always have the same current limit though.

True, but in the US most 240v outlets are 30-50A, whereas in countries that use 240v for their normal household outlets, the current limit is usually 13-15A. Still double the wattage of a typical US outlet but not up to the standards of a “Level 2” charger.

> conveniently placed dryer in the garage

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.

There’s no particular reason that a dryer and washer have to go in the same room. I have my dryer in my garage, because it’s a hybrid heat-pump model that is very efficient when the garage is warmed up from the afternoon sun, but can provide its own heat in winter. It captures all the water in a tank, so doesn’t put any moisture into the room. Modern dryers are really quite neat :)

> There’s no particular reason that a dryer and washer have to go in the same room

Uhhhh convenience? People prefer them right next to each other so that clothes washing isn’t a long journey. At least that’s why the plumbing and electrical/gas connections are usually built close to each other.

Serious question, do Americans use clotheslines? Our dryer is only really used for towels/sheets in wet weather.

The rotary clothesline [0] was standard in Australia and New Zealand for decades, although with the move to smaller sections, people tend to install compact linear lines instead.

[0]: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/hills-hoist-iconic-ro...

Some do but it was considered a poor thing for much of the 20th century to the point where many cities and HOAs had rules against them. This is changing but it amazed me when I lived in California where in the summer you could line dry in similar times at zero cost.

Generally no. Line drying has a connotation of poverty in the US and many cities have ordinances like this that make it tough to do. Also houses being generally larger and detached in the US we have an easier time installing them compared to row houses in Europe. They're also just built more recently so they have accommodations for them built in already.

"No person shall place or allow to remain exposed to the elements laundry, clothing, rags, or other cloth items hung or stored on a front porch or front or other street yard of a dwelling."

I wonder when batteries will come with better thermal insulation to work during cold weather. A battery which is not near-dead has enough energy to heat itself to the point where its capacity increases a lot, given adequate thermal insulation.

(But, of course, that would require even better cooling for a battery on a summer +95F day. OTOH ICEs have a similar problem.)

If it's cold enough a Tesla plugged into 120v/20a charging circuit will actually lose voltage over time. It's consuming over 2000 watts just to keep the battery at an acceptable temp for the chemistry to function.

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.

> 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.

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.

  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 Model S weighs less than half of that.

At what temperature would it consume 2000 watts keeping the battery warm? Surely it uses a heat pump, so it is pumping 8000-4000W of heat into the battery pack. That would be a large steady state heat loss!

From what I can find in a quick search: On a normal plug, drawing 12 amps, older Teslas without heat pumps would start losing the battery heat fight around -15C.

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.

>That would be a large steady state heat loss!

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.

The entire country of Norway would like to have a word with you, my friend. (And about 10% of Switzerland as well.)

You could also just make sure to have a L2 charger. There’s some guy on HN who barges into these threads and insists that no one ever needs an L2 charger, but after I had mine installed there’s no way I could live without it.

Yeah living in Canada and having only outdoor parking, no way i could live without it.

Also it’s just cheaper: electricity is much cheaper over night and if i have to charge 24x7 I’m paying much more.

The easiest solution here was just to plug it in when you arrived, not the next day.

That’s a lesson EV drivers in Norway learn very quickly. If you can’t charge at your destination, plan to visit a quick charger nearby, before arrival while the battery is warm from driving. Even using a quick charger, charging is very slow when the battery is really cold. Admittedly, I don’t have personal experience below –20 °C (–4 °F). If it drops down to –40 °(C or F), I am not so sure what will happen. But the strategy should remain the same.

- even an unheated garage will mitigate extremely low overnight temperatures

- 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.

Question: As a consumer, had you done any research or calculations before the trip? Were your expectations realistic?

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.)

Normal EV owners have high amp 220 plugs. A 110 20a feed is TERRIBLE for charging in all cases.

I bet if you had just left it plugged in, it would’ve started charging after the battery warmed up. You freaked out because in cold weather the battery won’t start charging right away, energy will be used to heat up the battery first.

It could have been much worse. A battery that froze solid can develop some interesting issues when used after it thawed, such as thermal run-away (or interesting exothermic episodes, as we call it, but funnier to watch in a reinforced calorimeter than in your driveway), or short-circuits (lots of smoke if you are lucky, otherwise a fireball). Batteries have operating range for a reason, and that operating range is exceeded routinely in winter and summer, even in nominally temperate regions.

The Wrangler 4XE has a temp controlled battery. Not sure about other vehicles, but it works.

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.

> - would need a heated garage

Yes exactly why things like govts banning ICE vehicles in 2035 is unfair on poor people without homes.

This is also why claims of round trip energy efficiency for BEVs need a disclaimer. You need to put energy in to heat the battery, so under certain conditions, your roundtrip efficiency can hit 0%; i.e. all input energy going towards heating the battery, and none going towards charging the vehicle.

Not all 110v chargers are equal.

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.)

I wish i could afford a house with a well insulated, heated garage. This whole discussion, shows that ev are not for the mass.

Better have a gasoline generator with you.

The 115v lines just arent enough, it may have been quite ok using a 240v though (from say a dryer plug)

OP should have gone by percentage of battery left, and just left the car plugged in.

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.

> and basing his entire decisions on what the car's guess-o-meter says for remaining milage is pretty crazy IMO.

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.

The guess-o-meter doesn't reflect the actual state of the battery, but rather what it has seen in the recent past, hence OP should toggle to battery percentage and trust that instead of a known inaccurate estimator.

If the "guess-o-meter" is so bad that it leads reasonable people to wildly wrong conclusions, I'm hesitant to blame that on the user.

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.

The car can't predict the severity of weather, whether or not your going to preheat the car or your driving style.

All of these factors combine to make the range estimator a guesstimate on both gas and electric cars.

But it could make a better guess than it does, or even leave the numerical guess untouched but give the driver other useful information. Specifically, the information you gave in your first comment.

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.

It's hardly crazy to expect that the car should display an accurate range estimate based on the current temperature.

Gas car range predictions are also regularly nonsensical. I thought this was well understood.

People have extremely high expectations of range estimates. These displays are known as Guess-O-Meters for good reason, they only account for past weather, driving conditions and style.

On my car (2013 mini) the range prediction is actually a more accurate indicator of how much fuel is in the tank than the (separate) fuel tank meter. Not sure why, you’d think they’d use the same input data for both, but it’s true.

By giving you a less precise fuel tank indicator (eg: 8 segment fuel display) versus xxx Miles of Range, your cajoled into trusting the estimator, and the range being so high on gas cars usually allows the estimator to end up closer to accurate thanks to bad and good economy driving and conditions averaging out.

Perhaps that used to be a problem. The range estimates for gasoline cars that I've owned and rented in the past few years have been accurate to within a few percent, even in cold weather.

I expect that’s true over a full tank of gas but not when e.g. only 20 miles are left.

I am all for EV, but if besides needing to take care that I plug my phone and my watch every night I must also not forget to plug in the car and if I forget, I must apologize at work for not coming in, or my kids cannot go to school... just because it easily can get to -15°C here... then it feels like a technology issue and not like me doing the worse thing possible...

Regular EV user here - plugging it in is something you do every time you park, the way you lock your doors. It takes five seconds. Press the «open charge port» button on the charging cable and stick it in the charging socket. Done.

I’m cracking up that you’re making this sound so simple and matter of fact, but reading this description of how one is “supposed” to charge their EV makes me realize i’m many years from wanting one.

Honestly, it’s kind of a joke how badly people want to defend the tech despite its current shortcomings.

Not sure why "supposed" is in quotes here. You're "supposed" to fill your car with gas by waiting til you come across a gas station, driving in, parking at a pump, getting out, pressing the button to open the gas tank, plugging in the hose, pumping gas for as long as it takes to fill the tank to the desired level, paying, and so on.

Compared to plugging in an EV at night and forgetting about it and this being sufficient for 99 percent of my driving needs, getting gas sounds like it has vastly more shortcomings and that's before you look at any of the other crappy things about it.

On the flip side my GF loves it.

When she got home late the last thing she wanted to do was to spend an extra 10-15 minutes or so filling up. Which frequently led to a panic the following day when she'd forgotten. She even ran out of gas a couple of times when she was really stressed the following day.

She much prefers the EV since it's always full. When she gets home it takes literally less than 10 seconds to plug it in. Next day it takes literally less than 10 seconds to unplug, and she never has to think about filling up for the rest of the day.

Filling gas and changing oil is also pretty inconvenient, it’s just habit that makes you discount it. A good EV is more convenient for everyday use. Cheaper too.

Yes, plugs are very confusing. They'll offer a course in college for the younger generations.

You gotta plug it in to charge, man. I don't know what you want. Just leave it plugged in whenever you can and that's it.

I think the GP was saying “it doesn’t have shortcomings”, not trying to defend any that actually exist.

If you plug in every night and miss a night you can almost certainly make it to work the next day, unless your a supercommuter with an older EV that had a small 24kWh pack.

But that's a thing you learn. Just like you learn to check your oil level before starting in a conventional vehicle. Everything has its own set of things you have to know

> Just like you learn to check your oil level before starting in a conventional vehicle.

Yeah, I (and everyone else) totally do that…

Not even once.

I’d estimate I have driven cars 10,000 times and I have never done that. Just take it to a mechanic every 5k miles. And nothing that touches the oil has ever gone wrong.

You only need a 220volt plug, then its fine.

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 think plugging a 110v during the cold is kind of an edge case, the car tries to charge but it makes thing worse

I doubt if it could make things worse, despite what the range indicator says.

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