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Comment by boh | Hacker News Reader

The only place where they provide specific examples of how things are "largely sorted" is Norway and they themselves admit:

> the majority of people in Norway live in houses, not apartments, and nearly 90 percent of electric vehicle owners have their own charging stations at home, he said.

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I was in Oslo 5 years ago and even then, the parking meters outside apartments had been retrofitted with charger, and this was on parallel parking spots.

A lot of cold countries have plugs at every parking spot for block heaters. It's not too big a leap to retrofit those for some level of charging.

There are a lot of cold towns in the US that didn't have the same issues as Chicago. There's more to it than just "Cold weather".

TBH, perhaps the more general problem is that EVs aren't fully ready for dense cities yet. Or maybe dense cities aren't ready for EVs.

To be clear, when this problem was happening in Chicago, the temperature was a lot colder than Oslo. Like -30°C with a wind chill approaching -50°C. That's not "cold weather", that's "insanely cold weather".

According to Wikipedia, it has never been anywhere close to that cold in Oslo. And yet, due to the climate change effect on the arctic jet stream, Chicago sees this kind of temperature for a few days in 2-3 out of every 5 winters.

Is the wind chill more than marginally relevant to a car?

People lose heat through evaporation, which is worse if there's wind.

Objects don't, and normal wind speeds are usually well below driving speeds anyway.

The magic of water in clay makes objects cold, like the Olla pots for water or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator

I have no clay cars sadly, not sure how ordinary cars handle wind chill.

When the car is stopped and trying to warm the battery so it can begin fast charging, the wind makes the vehicle surface dissipate heat better. Which you don't want. But... batteries are fairly insulated so wind chill probably has a marginal effect at best. I was just emphasizing how much colder it was in Chicago than in Oslo :)

My first vehicle in high school was a diesel pickup in Alaska that wouldn't start at -20F.

Wow, that is almost as cold as Harbin!

I think it is just people needing to get ready for EVs. Care and maintenance is different from ICE's, and folks are still learning what to do and when.

I'm not sure how an Uber driver can solve the Chicago problem for himself. More infrastructure is really needed. Although the amount of additional infrastructure needed isn't necessarily vast. It sounds like they had enough chargers for normal days.

-> sounds like they had enough chargers for normal days.

Normal warm days. They sold too many teslas for the number of charging stations available for the cold climate.

My take is that this is one of the inevitable complications discovered along the energy transition path. Lesson here: Making and selling cars is the first hurdle, and they got over it. Build a factory, build a marketing apparatus, get them out there. Placing fixed assets to support the service needs in individual markets is lagging behind - a process may not be in place to anticipate and support market adoption at current pace.

I think is just that EVs need to get better. I don't care what temperature it is outside, my truck will start just fine.

This last quote just showcases a few people’s ignorance (at a minimum the author, the editor, and the person being quoted) of the fact that nobody needs a “charging station” at home. All you need is an outlet and a charging cable.

I have to assume you either don’t drive much, or don’t actually own an electric car. Those are the only explanations I have for making such an inaccurate (I hesitate to quote the word “ignorant“) statement.

—

Owner of an EV that would take days to charge on 120V

I used an EV for years with a 120V. It also would "take days to charge", but 12 hours would net ~24%. It is surprisingly usable, especially if there is a nearby DCFC bottom charge at if you ever get a little low.

Of course, there are caveats. If it is cold and the vehicle has to be charged at the street, charge times will be much longer. But he's right that people often underestimate the usefulness of L1 charging, even though it would literally take days.

Coincidentally, in this thread we have people talking about a car that ran out at the airport and required a tow. L1 is perfect for airport parking.

If the vehicle is cold soaked and only has a minimal amount of charge left, won't most of it be consumed by the EV trying to preheat the battery?

Seems like you're then trapped in a corner case that you can't get out of: not enough energy to allow for any kind of charge at all.

Yes, and it sounds like this is exactly what happened in some cases. People would charge hunt until they were out, wait in line for hours, then get to the unit with a cold soaked battery.

Even if the charger is working perfectly, the first 30 minutes might be spent just running the battery heater. It might even be worse with rear drive model 3, which unfortunately might also be a big part of the Uber rental fleet.

It is a really odd situation, so most people would likely be seeing it for the first time.

No what happened in the case on the news is a charging station was malfunctioning but did not report itself to the system as such.

If it has been in operation, there would have been no problem charging in the cold.

This is a video from last year. It shows the cold soak but also shows that maybe the car itself won't latch to the NACS connector?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c

Yeah, that's the video that I was thinking of that explicitly tested it. It usually isn't a thing that happens in the real world.

The last couple of days have been different. People have left their cars in the parking lot for hours, which effectively is what OOS did in their test.

Seems like all the Superchargers in Chicago were having trouble as well:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/chicago-area-superch...

And then you have a cascade of drivers going from charger to charger looking for an open plug.

Preheating is not an absolute necessity for charging. It is done because it helps the charge go faster.

True, but in an extreme case, the battery may not take a charge at all without being warmed up. This may take 30+ minutes if it is extremely cold soaked.

If we’re going to extreme cases, even worse, the battery won’t work at all if you disconnect it or grind it into small bits.

Or, you could take care of your car as recommended and if a battery preheat will help, use scheduled departure features and plug it in if needed and possible.

I can see what you are getting that there. The problem is that Chicago actually caused a pretty extreme case, mostly due to infrastructure issues. Cars waiting in line for hours at low states of charge effectively couldn't precondition.

I've never seen this scenario happen in the real world, but I guess we've found one weird edge case where it can happen.

A North American outlet can provide a continuous power of around 1440W.

The comment could be someone in Europe (etc) where "an outlet" means 220-240V, with a continuous power of around 2500-3500W, depending on the regulations in that country.

But most people also aren't draining their battery every day.

I live in Toronto, own a Kona EV, and am lucky enough to have a garage. I've literally never needed anything more than 120V except when going on >300km car trips. Any daily commute that wouldn't be handled by an overnight charge at 120V probably isn't a commute I'd put up with even with an ICE vehicle.

We own three BEVs for quite some years now and no ICE cars and I drive a lot so your assumptions are wrong right at the start.

You seem to be making a common mistake of thinking that one always needs to charge from empty to full in every charge. Not so. A common scenario would be arriving home with 190 miles of range left on the battery, and plugging in. After a few minutes, you have to go out again, no problem. Eventually you come home for the night with 160 miles of charge left, and plug in again. Overnight you get let’s say (super slow case) 40 miles and now you’re at 200 or more. Not the problem you are envisioning.

You may also be forgetting that public fast chargers which can be used in a pinch do exist.

220 is also an option so let’s not restrict ourselves to 110/120.

But if we must talk about 110, I’ll point out that we survived just fine for 2 years with 2 BEVs sharing (alternating cars) ONE 110 outlet in an apartment after laboring, like many mistakenly do, under the false assumption that you still carry that it was not an option, for an entire year, before we realized that it was totally doable. It worked great. We also used fast chargers when needed but they were not needed very often.

Ignorance is definitely a thing, but it works both ways.

This is what I keep saying. The EV transition is bound up with the housing crisis. Not only do you need to find a place to go to sleep and recharge yourself each night; now you also need a garage for your car to do the same.

Solve that, and EVs will become more viable. Only the "road trip problem" will remain.

Edit: Let me be clear. I am not saying that EVs are causing the housing crisis. That would be crazy. But I am saying that the housing crisis is blocking the adoption of EVs.

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