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Comment by PreInternet01 | Hacker News Reader

Oh, look, it's another EV hit piece! From El Reg no less, who would have thought... Anyway: yes, extremely low temperatures do affect batteries badly, meaning you may not get to drive your car for very long for that particular reason a few days every year.

But, good news! EVs with 24/7 heat pumps keeping the batteries alive are a thing and work out pretty well in within-the-Arctic-circle locations such as Greenland, where previously "keep your diesel engine running at all times during winter to prevent the fuel from freezing" was the norm.

So, no, keeping the planet alive and getting to the Supermarket or your Job or your Dying Grandparents are not necessarily mutually exclusive, even in cold climates! Exclusions apply, not everyone may qualify for the technological advances mentioned, see dealer for details.

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The fact is, EVs right now give consumers worse experience in terms of range, recharge time, and reliability, and they cost substantially more. You can try guilting them about saving the planet, but ultimately most consumers buy what serves them best.

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)

Objection, your honor: assumes facts not in evidence.

If you *really* care about planet then you don't drive a car but use public transport and/or cycle.

> 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.

For #1, don't folks in cold climates normally use an electric engine heater to get the gas car started?

When I was planning a trip to Tahoe, during inclement weather, I figured my new RAV4 Prime (a hybrid) would be perfect. I'd drive the whole way on gas and keep the battery fully charged; if I got stuck on Donner Pass, I think the battery can keep the main compartment at a reasonable temperature all night without running the ICE. Fortunately that never came up but it was an interesting thought at a time when folks were getting stuck on Donner for 10+ hours.

As a Canadian, block heaters were common decades ago with carbureted vehicles but modern ones have fuel injection and start easier so not many have a block heater today.

I have three cars, two diesel, one electric and well... I do not live now in cold climate, minim hit here was -25℃ and all cars start without issue with a bit of gasoline added to the diesel for the ICEs BUT in the past I've experienced that modern cars can works only at temperature above -30℃. Old soviet UAZ works well also below, at least until a wheel freeze or something similar. It's not common of course in most parts of the inhabited world experiencing such low temps BUT that's is.

About point 4) well... My car suck 20A@400V to run the heating, definitively can't last even few days.

About 6) all BEVs I know do not offer real "keep the battery heated as long as it's cold enough" function, some decide randomly to try heating the battery, but not much is left in users hands. One of the many things those who design ALL modern software do have to learn and refuse: user control first, automation only at a subsequent level...

About 7) well, no. Electric motors spin brutally, witch MIGHT be useful under certain conditions but it's also useful to lose grip in many others, and it's also an issue when parking in tight places...

4) A seat heater typically uses about 50-100W, so yah, big difference.

6) Yah, it's pretty magical, which can be annoying all right. It's the "I want to leave at time X" function on ours.

7) Interesting; not my experience. I'm comparing a Tesla & a Mazda. Top spec winter tires on both. 510 N-m of torque so it'll easily spin if you push too hard on the accelerator, but I find it responds much better to the standard winter driving technique of not too much accelerator...

4) a seat heater ALONE is useless in frozen cold, you need much more, and much more means much more power...

6) some example: I have an EVC300400300 witch offer also a bad integration with my p.v. (bad, because badly designed by Victron), I do not count how many times my car refuse to charge or by EVC refuse to allow charge because of crappy communications between the two and ZERO control on my side. I have HA who handle as much as I can in the actual crappy state of crapIoT but nothing I can do with anything not made to be integrated. Cars actually are one not made to be integrated, even if they offer also V2L, crapplications for remote control and so on. The are just designed as a rolling data collection device, controlled by the OEM not the formal owner. To came back on topic I simply can't makes my car heat the battery when I want it heated to use it in the early morning, there is no way to do so. The car decide autonomously when to heat and the EVC decide autonomously if allow it or not, so the resulting behavior is NOT MUCH BASED ON ACTUAL TEMP but on random interaction behavior between two badly designed devices. That's is.

7) it's not a matter of mere horsepower or torque, with a mechanic gearbox I can dose the torque, with an EV I can not. It's the same when parking in tight places, arriving slowly to nearly kiss another vehicle bumper is easy with a mechanic gearbox, next to impossible with an electric motor. At least not if I can't both accelerate and break a little bit in absence of something better.

Chiming on 7). Not my experience at all on a Kia Niro EV (and an MG3) here in Europe with its tight urban parking spaces. On these particular models at least, torque can be dosed very well as long as tire grip is normal. Uncertain dosage is as good as on an ICE vehicle when grip is bad (mud…), but I don't have enough data points to compare.

ZS EV 2022 in my case, I have to switch to "eco mode" to do precise parking, otherwise, specially in a little steep roads it accelerate too much, no matter how soft I can be on the pedal...

100W per person isn't enough to keep you comfortable, but it's more than enough to keep you alive, unless you're not wearing clothes or you have the window open or something. A candle is enough, and it's less than 100W, and warms the air rather than your body.

7. The torque an EV puts out is infinitely controllable. Give DC current to an AC motor and you get 0 torque. Give it full current with the appropriate waveforms and I get enough to spin the tires on dry pavement. And anything in between, fully controlled by the accelerator pedal.

Never once have I had to rock the EV back and forth to get it uphill out of my driveway when there's snow on top of ice, I just feather the accelerator. I have to do it quite regularly on my Mazda.

100W in a car at -30℃ i doubt can do something more than gives you extra minutes before freezing... An Webasto-alike with a 20l diesel tank might last a bit, if anything is inside, 12V included to keep the webasto on. But nothing more. At -1 well, that's another story.

About torque: no doubt that an electric motor can dose, actually the car pedal sensitivity do not allow the same, specially on slippery or steep roads, at least that's my experience with my modest MG ZS and few others EVs I've tried. Of course, someone might add a "parking mode" to help, but who have done that so far?

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.

Can I buy this tech now in a mass-market car?

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 people who accuse every legitimate criticism as being a hit piece are insufferable.

This is a very real problem - especially because, imagine the heat pumps you just mentioned. You go to the grocery store. There's no heat pump at the grocery store. You are quite limited in your travel by how long you need to be at your destination for - which sucks.

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

Unless the heat pump is in the car and can't run because the battery is frozen or died...

I mean, real scenario here: It's the Yukon, it's -30C outside in January. You run in for groceries and the battery is low. You get haggled a bit. You come back outside, your battery is dead because it's cold. You can't run your heat pump either, because the battery is dead. You can't use, say, a fire or a blowtorch either. Time for hundreds of feet of extension cords.

What % of the population of Earth falls under this “real” scenario?

Most people won’t drive when it’s this cold anyway

You don't need to 'run the heat pump'. It is running already, whenever required, even if you're not around.

And, because it is running, your batteries will not reach a temperature where they start degrading. And, yes, this means your driving range is reduced slightly, but because heat pumps are so efficient, and because the alternative is, as you so eloquently observe, "car is dead", it's... sort-of worth it?

And the wonderful thing is: this works in both extreme cold and extreme heat, because heat pumps are reversible! So, for a little bit of battery power/range reduction (let's call it 20%?), you keep your EV (and the planet!) alive a little while longer.

Now, I don't have any experience with 'the Yukon', but I can tell you from personal experience that: a Volkswagen Transporter, used for staff and goods movement in Greenland (so, short distances only: all serious travel is done by plane or boat), that in its fossil-powered incarnation would need to run 24/7 on diesel for a good 90 days a year, works perfectly fine year-round in its heat-pump-upgraded EV life.

Isn't this the exactly same problem you have with an ICE at -30?

My EV is doing just fine in -20C weather right now. Cold weather concerns are simply more FUD pushed by a dying industry that doesn't need help from people parroting them.

At -30C or -50C people leave their ICE cars running to keep warm, too. I once ran a truck out of fuel doing that. (In my defence the fuel gauge was broken, but the logbook I was using instead was not well kept...)

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...

Illinois is not in Canada.

Because you think EVs keep the planet alive? They require enormous amounts of raw materials. Unless they are also shared with car sharing or car pooling. Then yes.

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

But dirtier during construction. More difficult to repair most of the time too. Pros and cons. If you keep an EV for a long time, than it is cleaner. But a lot of EVs are thrown out instead of being repaired. The real solution is to share cars and, ride a bicycle, walk or use public transport when possible.

> But a lot of EVs are thrown out instead of being repaired

That's not true. There are battery recycling plants going bankrupt because the expected surge of dead EV's didn't materialize. EV's are staying on the road longer than expected, and the batteries are being reused rather than recycled or thrown out.

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.

With "an" EV? Like all EVs have the same carbon footprint? That's definitely not true. Furthermore, even an EV has a carbon footprint and its far from 0. The real solution to be greener is to walk, ride a bicycle, or use public transport instead of a private car. And if you use a private car, then try to use car sharing so as to split the carbon footprint of the car's construction between all its users.

EVs are going to jack the price of electricity for everyone, including those of us don't drive at all.

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...

The only problem is that these assumptions rely on non-existent infrastructure which costs a ton of money to build and maintain. The overwhelming majority of parking spots don't offer EV charging, so people would have to charge their car at night when energy is expensive.

Even if we did have EV charging available everywhere, excess of energy during times of peak production is the reason why energy might be cheap or free. As soon as you actually start utilizing that excess, the prices will stabilize around the average market rate.

The planet is not going to die, and pointing out important shortcomings of a technology is not a hit piece.

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

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