Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

>we would all be driving Priuses by now.

Good news, millions are! Millions more drive non-Prius hybrids, because people thought the shape of a car that cut through the air more efficiently than most was "unmanly"

> Instead of one system, you need two.

That's a common refrain, but in my personal experience I don't think it really holds water because of the additional savings you get:

1. The battery can be much, much smaller. This results in huge savings in cost, weight and environmental impact that offsets a lot of the cost of needing a gas engine.

2. You will end up utilizing much more of the battery. That is, the only reason you need a big battery in EVs in the first place is those thoughts of "what about longer trips", even if you only take longer trips 3% of the time. Plus, I would frequently drive my Volt's EV charge to near zero or zero (but still only use something like 0.1 gallons of gas), but with my current EV I never take it below ~30 miles of charge for fear of getting stranded.

Your other examples don't really hold for plug-in hybrid vehicles. I think the big reason they were largely passed over in the marketplace is they were often "bolted on" to existing ICE models, so people saw them as just an additional expense with marginal benefit. Perhaps a good marketing guru will market them instead as "All the best parts of an EV, but with all the things that you hate/that scare you are fixed!"

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They’re cleaner than a car that burns fossil fuels every time it moves.

The studies say with an EV you come to break-even after two years of usage. This is with today's technologies of course. So if you buy a EV now, only in two years you can claim you were greener than an ICE. But after that, it does its job. Now of course the right way would be to use public transport but I guess some people will care even less about such a strange idea. Yes I am aware in some countries or places PT is not there. But anything can be done if there's a will, so not having public transport in place X means only not enough people wanted to have public transport in place X.

Yes, although it's a market-dependent option. Where I live (Netherlands, not a place where it gets particularly cold), BMW i-series and Audi e-tron definitely offer cabin-and-battery-compartment-covering heat pumps, although I've personally seen it on Volkswagen vans in Greenland (but can't find a reference to that, sorry)

It's often a feature in the higher trim levels. It's an option in the Kia EV6 / Hyundai Ioniq 5.

The heat pump is inside the car. It comes with you. It's no different to 90's cars with block heaters, and just as (un)common a concern

The heat pump is in the car (where it is sipping a bit of battery power, 24/7, in order to keep said batteries alive). Not at the grocery store. At least, not for the purpose I'm talking about...

You go to the gas station in your ICE car in the same place as the story(Illinois), you cannot fill gas because the gas pumps are frozen. That sucks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38990445

In Canada:

https://www.wcia.com/news/local-news/cold-weather-causes-fro...

Because killing the planet serves them best, right. It's not even wrong, we won't die all in 20 years. Not even 40, I suppose. And after that... après moi, le déluge (and it's no metaphor this time)

> give consumers worse experience in terms of range, recharge time, and reliability

My expectation was also that switching to electric cars would involve some sacrifice but for my use cases it has been net more convenient.

For daily commuting I plug in at the office garage where they have dozens of L1 and about twenty L2 chargers. This has been more convenient than remembering to stop at a gas pump a couple times a month.

I initially kept a gasolene car for long trips because I assumed it would be inconvenient to schedule a ~30m stop every ~4 hours or so. In practice it turns out I need to stop about that frequently for family members to stretch, use the restroom, and grab a bite, etc. The major difference has been that it constrains where we stop rather than when we stop.

However, if you are regularly doing 5+ hour trips in rural or remote areas, then a gasolene or diesel vehicle is a more convenient choice. As they build out a more comprehensive charging infrastructure the difference may lessen.

I cannot speak to reliability as we've only had them for a year now.

We have both an EV and a gasoline car. The EV is by far the superior winter car.

1. The EV always starts. If it's below -20, our gasoline car may not.

2. The battery is always charged in the morning. OTOH the gasoline car is only filled sporadically. In the winter I try and ensure there's at least half a tank for safety reasons, but sometimes it does get as low as a quarter tank. Even with cold loss, an EV with a full battery has far more range than a gasoline car with a quarter tank.

3. The EV can be preheated in the garage without killing people.

4. An EV battery has enough capacity to run the seat warmers for a month, keeping people alive in an emergency. A gasoline car can only idle for about 24 hours.

5. That's if you keep your exhaust clear. I know people who didn't, and died.

6. A EV that's plugged in, but not inside can be kept warm.

7. Our EV handles a lot better on snow and ice than the gasoline car. Perhaps it's because of weight, perhaps it's because it can do traction control with the motor rather than using the brakes.

I highly disagree with this statement. I've owned a Tesla Model S since 2014, In a northern/cold climate. Yes, cold affects range, but not that much; you have to plan for it if you want to do a cold-weather road trip.

For my everyday driving, you know, home->work->home, home->store->home, and the like, I NEVER have to think about range or recharging. For me, it is a much better experience than a gas car could provide. I pre-heat my car in the garage, have charging on auto, get in the car, and go. I never even have to scrape ice off the windshield when it's left outside because I'll turn on the heater 20 minutes before I plan on going.

As for reliability... Tesla's aren't well-known for reliability, but I'm still driving my 2014 car; it got a handful of warranty issues fixed, and since it's been out of warranty, I've only had to replace the 12v battery. This car is far less maintenance than any I've previously owned.

I spend far less time charging my car than I used to at the gas station. Especially in the winter the gas station sucked, now I just plug in at work which takes 5 seconds.

Yeah, earth will survive us but much of life might not.

Where were you when it was air conditioning that jacked up electricity for the rest of us! We could have used that foresight back then.

I'm not aware of any serious studies that support that assertion. In fact, general consensus is that, by increasing time-of-generation to time-of-use flexibility, EVs will drive down electricity prices.

Case in point: during summer in Europe, assuming sunny weather, the 15-minute daytime spot price for electricity is generally negative due to the glut of PV supply. In other words: you can charge your car during the day and get paid for doing so. Then, at night, you feed back, like, 50% of your stored energy to the grid.

You get to drive to work in the morning just fine (where you can charge your battery again, for free-or-less), and the (very little) you got paid for half-discharging your car during the night definitely did contribute to lowering prices during that time as well...

Everything can freeze. The only question is whether something is much more susceptible to freezing.

I mean, you can prewarm them outside too lol. Teslas are always connected

Oh I meant on a PHEV, so there would be a small battery to also drive the motor.

But yeah it's your comment of "pretty rare for some reason" that made me think it was possibly not viable?

> people is proving what

Convince them to buy an EV. In an area with January average lows of -30C, and historic cold snaps that have sometimes reached as low as -60C.

> it's currently 13°F in Dallas right now, so not really sure the point of calling out specific cities. it's winter. it gets cold in winter. things have problems working correctly in that cold of winter.

Only in Texas do things have trouble working correctly when it gets down to 13F. Auto-spec parts are rated for -40C to +105C.

Generally in Minnesota the primary problem with (older) ICE vehicles where the battery is located toward the headlights instead of back toward the firewall is that a battery with low charge will have a cell or two freeze when it's kept outside on a -10F - 30F night facing into the northwest wind, then the engine doesn't start the following morning and the battery needs to be replaced. Very few vehicles have trouble in 13F weather, except maybe in Buffalo, NY when so much lake-effect snow falls that the vehicle can't even drive through it.

Better than nothing. Especially if you panic. It’s even better if they don’t kick in at all.

It does help. Tcs will stop your wheel from breaking contact on acceleration and abs does the same in reverse while breaking

Trip was OK except for round abouts

One that doesn't have ABS at all, though an alternator or charging issue can effect abs because abs relies on high pressure pumps that are powered electrically

Setting aside subjective changes to content on X, the past year has been a lesson in making user experience worse:

* No more third party clients.

* Can't see replies/parents when not logged in.

* Can't see chronological feed of accounts when not logged in.

* Ranking algorithm now favours paid users, not better responses.

Feels like the kind of changes that would happen if a PE firm acquired Twitter and tried to squeeze the userbase for every bit of revenue.

Work, usually. It's not uncommon for it to dip to the -40s for a few weeks in some parts of Canada. Your employer is not going to let you stay home just because it's cold.

Well, their slogan has been "biting the hand that feeds IT" for a long time (although it's not shown on the homepage anymore).

See also this article: https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/07/what_to_call_microsof...