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Comment by pxeboot | Hacker News Reader

My next car will be an EV. I have no concern about the advertised range. The real worry is what the range will look like in 5-10 years when it is cold out.

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As someone who is 6 years in: It's not that bad. Really the only issue is when it's REALLY cold, like single digits F (negative double digits C) where the car is charging, and the battery is cold, it basically will not charge at home (Supercharger can do it, but takes a very long time). If the charging starts before the battery freezes, it's good.

> it basically will not charge at home

That actually sounds pretty bad to me, especially if that is my primary charging mechanism.

I read the trick is to charge at the end of a day when the battery is warm rather than first thing in the morning when its cold. Its a mind shift, but totally workable.

Single digit F temps is the baseline winter temperature. What should I expect during the 2 to 3 weeks of -20 F temps each year?

> like single digits F

Wait, so in conditions that wide swaths of North America reliably get every year, the car doesn't charge? How is that not a deal-breaking problem?

What vehicle and charging are you referring to? I don't routinely need to charge in very low temps, but I have had the experience of charging at 0F just fine with M3P with home L2 charger.

Sorry to the repliers here, I hadn't checked replies in a couple days...

The car in question is a Dec 2016 Tesla Model S, location is Northern Colorado, USA. I don't have space in my garage, so the car is outside. My normal trips are 5 miles around town.

How is this not a deal breaker? It's happened for maybe 10-15 days of the 7 years I've had it. It's not going to be an issue if you park in a garage. Much further south and it's not going to be a problem. Much further north and you're going to want to have a garage, or...

Charge after you drive, so the battery isn't dead cold. Much of my lack of ability to charge has been due to scheduling the charging to start at midnight, so if I drive the car and plug it in, it will sit there for 4-8 hours before it starts trying to charge. When you drive it, the battery warms up enough that you can charge.

This means that if you plug it in and it won't charge, unless the battery is nearly dead, you can go drive it for 10-30 minutes and plug it in. Also, if you drive more than I do in a day (10-20 miles a day), if you plug it in after driving and start charging immediately, you'll probably be fine.

The more time of the year and the further down you tend to go, I'd expect more issues with charging if your car is outside.

But, this is from my perspective. If you live in a dramatically different climate, see if you can find someone in your area with your usage patterns to get their opinion.

Depending on the weather my 2018 Model 3 will get 285-300 miles per charge. It was around 300-3015 when I got it. I've had zero issues. Range has never been a problem with the superchargers.

That's new to me. I thought cold only impacted peak power, not total energy.

Apparently people are noticing very steep drop-offs in observed range based on temperature, eg. a Mazda CX-90 (26 mile rated range, and gets it pretty consistently at 70F) can only go around 12 miles at 40F.

https://old.reddit.com/r/MazdaCX90/comments/18ib2cz/battery_...

A big component of it is heater use. In an ICE vehicle, you heat the car with waste heat that is going to be lost anyway. In an EV, you heat the car with energy from the battery. Heating takes up way more energy than most people realize.

It's been a pretty cool area to see innovation in. Newer Teslas (Model Y at least) have a really complex heat pump system that really helps reduce range loss dude to cold weather.

That is a shame. I was looking at that SUV and 40F isn't too terribly cold around where I live. That stinks that it over halves the range of the PHEV.

It depends on vehicle.

The range on my EV6 is noticeably less in the cold. It feels like I get 0.5-1.0 fewer miles per kWh when temperatures are around freezing (roughly 15-30% less).

On our last couple of trips in freezing temps, we had to hop on backroads so that we could safely reduce our speed enough to make it.

I cannot fathom a non-linear or even random decrease in range due to external factors while driving a vehicle. This is making me rethink getting an EV for my next car. I can only hope/assume this will get solved for in like 10 years.

FWIW, with that downside (and really that plus the range are the biggest two downsides), these are by far outweighed by the upsides.

It is practically zero maintenance, so much more fun/pleasant to drive, and no more trips to the gas station every week or two.

I have considered replacing our other (ICE) vehicle with a second EV, but the article hits on the main reason stopping me: we still take enough road trips that the (current) lack of infrastructure would make those tough for an EV.

But I think I will always own at least one EV, and I’m hoping the infrastructure improves enough to allow me to get rid of our ICE vehicle.

Lithium batteries do have less usable capacity in extremely cold weather, but the real killer is heating. ICE cars have abundant waste heat to warm the cabin, but an EV has to use battery power. For a short journey on a very cold day, it's possible to use more energy for heating than propulsion. EVs are increasingly equipped with heat pumps, but you're still unavoidably going to see a reduction in range as soon as you turn on the climate control.

I've got an 11 year old Model S. The range is reduced somewhat, but overall it's fine. Fine when it's cold out, too, you just set it to preheat before you go. Plug it in overnight.

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