EVs work fine in the cold in Norway | Hacker News Reader

EVs work fine in the cold in Norway

fastcompany.com

36 pointsbookofjoe53 comments

My 2019 Model 3 is using more than twice its normal energy use in the Calgary cold; 293 wh/km vs 143 wh/km normally.

Thankfully, charging on a 120v output is fine but I only drive 30-40 km per day at a maximum.

It is not the same as a gas car or a hybrid; I knew this beforehand (and am only using it in winter due to an accident) but creating the impression that cold weather is easily handled is just not accurate.

Although, if I am being completely transparent, I think the main issue is that the roads are covered with snow and that is significantly increasing the rolling resistance. Clearing the snow between the tires and the wheel well is also super annoying when it is -30 C outside. (I wonder if this problem is just a design issue and not inherent to EVs, but it's not something I am knowledgeable about..)

In the end, unless you're down with having the cabin be freezing during your drive, you're going to spend a good bit of energy warming the car. This energy was "free" in an ICE, but it has to come from somewhere in an EV, and that somewhere is the same place as where you get your range energy.

> This energy was "free" in an ICE,

Does that mean it comes from burning gasoline and it can be filled quickly anyway. Or that heating cabin is byproduct of running engine while driving?

It's the second one, and ICE typically uses energy that is otherwise wasted when it isn't cold outside. Mind you it has the effect that it takes longer to warm up an ICE car because you need to warm up the engine etc. before the habitacle gets warm where you cet there very quickly with an EV.

the latter

Yes but once the car is warm, it doesn't consume that much to keep température unless you open the doors, at least on my 2019 Tesla 3.

I found that pavement conditions, how much snow and ice is stuck to the car etc. have a bigger influence on range than temperature once the car is warmed up. The trips I did during or just after a snowstorn always required some careful management of charge and keeping a good buffer.

I do agree, snow/ice stuck to the car changes the aero drag a good bit and pushing slush definitely adds a lot of tire drag as well. This can definitely be a major factor.

I live in an area where it can get pretty cold, but usually in quick cold snaps and rarely a lot of snow on the ground. I've found preheating when plugged in completely negated the extra energy needs on shorter drives, but the longer 100mi highway drives still ended up needing a lot of energy to keep the cabin warm. And yes, it takes a ton of energy to go from a freezing cold cabin to warm compared to trying to keep things warm. Every time you stop for a few hours and then go again without having any external power to preheat you use a lot of energy.

My MY definitely builds up ice in the wheel wells a lot worse than any other car I've had in snow climates (VW R32, F150, 4Runner, Subarau Crosstrek). If we don't remember to clear them every day, they can build up and freeze into glaciers that limit the car from turning.

I'm impressed 120V works for you! The first year we owned it, we had to get a charger once the winter hit. At 120V, it was estimating up to 24 hours of pre-conditioning before it would start charging. And our winters are pretty mild in comparison (Tahoe, CA).

I was not planning on driving it in winter; sadly my main drive got into an accident and I had to pull it out of storage.

However, even at worst, I might use 60% of the battery in a day. I can easily charge 20-30 overnight so I generally make it back over a few days. Having a few bad days might result in me hitting the free L2 charger at the grocery store for an hour or two.

It isn't optimal so I've been looking at switching my garage door to a 240V charger. However, in actuality, I haven't had any major problems so holding off until I renovate the garage makes a lot of sense (I am planning on adding ground mount solar from which I intend on charging it but that's another story)

Oh; and likewise, I've never had a car build up so much snow. I assume it is due to efficiency or whatever, but my Toyota Sienna and my old Ford Mustang never required me to really get rid of all the snow to drive normally. Calgary also doesn't really plow the snow, so it's a problem on the once or twice a month that it snows and a few days after (until the snow melts)

I think the main issue is that the roads are covered with snow and that is significantly increasing the rolling resistance. Clearing the snow between the tires and the wheel well is also super annoying when it is -30 C outside.

Those also apply to ICE cars. EVs are getting hit in three vulnerable vectors at once: Cold decreasing battery capability, increase in friction, increase in aerodynamic drag.

Does your 2019 Model 3 have a heat pump? From watching Bjørn Nyland on YouTube, it seems like having a heat pump makes a HUGE difference in a cold climate.

Sadly no heat pump on a 2019 M3; no way to retrofit it either. A companies offers battery insulation solutions —but I don't know if I trust a solution that alters the heat transmission properties of a battery.

(The previous owner of my car had a heated garage but that might be too extreme a solution for me.)

Fortunately it looks like we'll be back above freezing next week (was winter really this brief?)

Northern central U.S. experiences yearly temps down to -20f (-28c). Some years this nightly temp lasts for weeks. It's common to see dozens of cars at an auto store replacing batteries in gas cars. The solution is simple - keep it plugged in. But that's only useful advice if you own a home. Apartments largely refuse to have outlets available. Even ones that physically have them have disabled them to prevent "electricity theft". This is a fancy term to describe apartment complexs owned remotely. Property managers "don't want to deal with it", even if the cases are insignificant it's an easy excuse to eliminate costs.

It is another example of how rent is destroying the Midwest. A democratic society would have regulated that all rentals provide such services.

California has a law on the books stating that the landlord has to let the tenant install chargers for EV’s, but at the cost of the tenant. I feel like this is a fair compromise.

This is not a fair compromise. The costs of a singular install are significant and far more expensive to do in a retrofit. It is economical to do them all at once. Access to a power outlet is necessary for society to operate, you need your car to get to work, get food and access society. Renters have the money to do it, but they won't spend until forced to.

You can choose an apartment that has an outlet (of your own indoors such as in the kitchen) near a sliding door or window that opens and allows a cord to reach your parking space. I didn’t say every apartment has such a setup, but choices can be made and the gap in the window can be blocked with insulating material. People can make it work if they want to.

Good luck to anyone not on the first floor. Or anyone who's windows don't face the parking lot. Or anyone with on-site property management since that's very much not allowed in most leases.

I don’t think state or provincial governments who are trying to enable conversion to electric in any way they can will look kindly on any lease provisions that have unreasonable restrictions on electric vehicle charging when one can safely use a proper cord plugged into a proper outlet in one’s own wall in a rental unit.

There isn't a choice. Its -20 out. Are you keeping your window open in the third story to run a 150' extension cord down the parking lot?

Before commenting it is useful to test your position instead of replying on someone else to invalidate it for you.

I tested the position for 2 years. The cord doesn’t have to be that long. It’s not always -20 out and air gaps can be blocked with suitable materials. Not all apartments are on the third story. Second story reaches just fine with 25 foot if you are positioned well. Choose your apartment accordingly.

Before commenting it’s useful to consider that the person you are responding to may already have thought things through and tested their scenario in actual practice in the real world.

I imagine offering even a 120v NEMA 5-15 socket (normal north american modern sockets) would be a competitive advantage per parking spot for new construction, without needing regulation, if builders knew it was a widely requested (or soon to be widely requested) feature.

From the abolish rent crowd, I mostly hear that they want more affordable high density housing and less car dependency. Not more parking lots, garages, and chargers.

I gave up reading, does it ever get to the point of telling us what to do to make batteries work in the cold? Or does it just endlessly attempt to say that petrol cars have similar winter issues?

https://www.tocn.no/travelling-in-norway-during-winter/

It talks about keeping the cars in garages or wrapping them up in blankets.

Warming with blankets only works if the thing is itself emitting heat, to be partially reflected back via the blanket, or emitted more slowly through the blanket than without the blanket.

So how would a frozen car become warmer with a blanket, unless some subsystem within it is emitting energy?

The battery would be emitting energy because you're discharging and recharging it as you drive around.

Under the blankets?

Presumably the premise is for the blanket to insulate the battery, i.e. the thing that needs to be warm, not the windshield.

But even once the car is stationary, a blanket would help it retain the heat generated while driving, or generated from charging now that it's plugged in.

I wonder why EVs don’t have a built in functionality to keep the batteries warm in cold weather. Presumably that would consume a bit of energy to keep batteries functioning in full capacity.

They do. My BMW does for example.

> So how would a frozen car become warmer with a blanket, unless some subsystem within it is emitting energy?

Probably a reference to the well established practice of using block heaters[0] on diesel engines in cold climates... which AIUI are effectively just electric blankets. It's why you'll often see what appears to be a short extension cord dangling out the front of a big old truck where it snows a lot.

Obviously on an EV you already have much of the parts necessary to generate the heat, esp. if plugged in to charge... so it could just need the blanket/insulation part.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater

It gets A LOT colder here in Minnesota during winter than it does in Norway. I know we're an edge case for EVs and cold temperatures in the US, but it does seem a significant difference in the EV and temperature conversation. Is there an understanding around the "degree" at which specific degrees affect EV performance?

http://education.greenemotion-project.eu/the-big-picture/how...

> It gets A LOT colder here in Minnesota during winter than it does in Norway.

As someone who hasn't spent a lot of time in Norway or Minnesota this seems very surprising—if only because the southernmost part of Norway appears to be substantially farther north than the northernmost part of Minnesota.

And the data I'm finding suggests that the average winter temp is about 5 degrees lower in Norway than Minnesota. Though none of the data I've found in a few minutes of googling seems very reliable and understanding that Norway in particular is a big place. The average temperature of Norway weighted by area is surely much lower than it would be weighted by population.

Does the gulf stream have an impact here, at least on southern Norway?

It gets colder in Minnesota during the winter.

https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/68697~10405/Comparison-of...

Worst of both worlds - hotter in the summer and colder in the winter.

The Gulf Stream and generally just being close to the ocean has a massive effect at making the climate a lot more mild in the North Atlantic.

Not only that, but due to the way the winds move in the US places like Minnesota and the Dakotas also tend to get absolutely hammered from the jet stream by arctic air.

Gulf stream but also just being near an ocean at all. Lots of factors other than how far north a place is impact average temperatures. Also, if you're looking at the average temperature of the entire country of Norway versus the entire state of Minnesota, that isn't going to reflect where most people actually live. A whole lot of Norway is Svalbard and north of the arctic circle with virtually no permanent human settlements. Most of the population is in the south on the coast. Most of Minnesota's population will be near the lake, which is still more moderate than deep on the plains, but the difference likely won't be as stark as it is in Norway.

Heck, there is a pretty big difference between the coasts and the midwest even just in North America. I grew up in Los Angeles and currently live in Dallas. Dallas is farther south and it actually does get hotter, but it also gets colder. Los Angeles had seen something like a quarter inch of snow in the past century when I left. It snows in Dallas every year. There was snow last week. Even though the currents in the Pacific flow from the north and the water is cold, it still has a moderating effect compared to living on the plains.

The Gulf Stream has a massive impact so latitudes can't really be compared (temperature wise) in North America and Europe.

Barcelona is actually north of New York City.

What temperature difference are we talking about between Norway and Minnesota? Medium and lowest expected temperatures would be interesting.

That sounds a bit hyperbolic. Norway is a long country with multiple climate zones. Average temperature in March in Longyearbyen [1] is 3.4 F. Meanwhile, Embarrass, the coldest city in Minnesota according to Google, averages 8.3 F in January. Cold record in Norway is -60.5F, which is about the same as Minnesota's -60F.

According to folks living in Karasjok, the problem with EVs in extreme temperatures is the 12V starter battery capitulating once you dip below -40F. Petrol cars usually fail to start for the same reason.

[1]. https://en.climate-data.org/europa/norge/svalbard/longyearby... [2]. https://en.climate-data.org/north-america/united-states-of-a...

While this is true, the comparison is meaningless without taking population into account.

Only 1700 people live in Longyearbyen. The majority of Norway's population lives in the southern part of the mainland, especially Oslo, with much warmer winters.

By contrast, the majority of Minnesota's population lives in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro, which is considerably colder than Oslo or Bergen or Stavanger.

Slight tangent, but same issue with the ongoing heat pump hype.

"New heat pumps work in the cold now!" where cold is defined as down to 10 degrees F.

That's probably sufficient for most "cold" places, but in Minneapolis every winter we have multi-day stretches where the high temperature is below 10. Large swathes of the northern states are in a similar boat.

Hopefully we can solve these issues, because I don't want to be left behind technologically and environmentally!

Resistive heaters for those situations work fine. They'll be unused for 95% of the year and are extremely cheap/simple.

Exactly. My heat pump (or rather in this case the air handler) has a single resistive heat strip (but can take up to 4) in it that's used when the temperature is too low. It'll also kick on the heat strip to change the temperature quickly if the target temp is far from the current temp.

The combination heat pump+heat strip does struggle to keep things comfortable when we hit -15, but that's a once a year type deal here, and if it bothered us enough we could add another strip.

Frankly I don't think most of the folks with gas heat fare better during those snaps. Either system can be made capable of course, but it's uncommon enough here that nobody's system is sized to maintain a cozy 70 when it happens.

I'm reminded of my great granddad telling me when they first used cars to deliver mail in the rural US. He told me the first winter he would often harness Nellie instead of trying to take the new car out when it got wintry. They took the horses away though, so he was stuck (heh) with having to use a car

EVs definitely are affected by the cold in a very negative way, and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t drive an EV in the cold. When it’s really cold out I greatly prefer to drive my ICE vehicle.

A huge amount of energy goes to just warming the cabin even before you talk about the resistance changes in battery chemistry.

Why? Compared to my gasoline vehicle, in the cold, my EV:

- starts more reliably - warms up quicker - handles better on ice - plows through snow better - the app lets me prewarm it so I don't have to clear ice - I can do the above in a closed garage without killing everybody with carbon monoxide

Sure the range is reduced but I plug it in every night so I don't care.

We’ve just gone through a streak of -8C temperatures. Every weekday morning my EV is fully charged and defrosted automatically based on a schedule I set.

I definitely don’t miss scraping off ice or standing around a petrol station waiting for a diesel tank to fill.

"The country’s winter temperatures—which average around -6.8 degrees Celsius, or around 19 degrees Fahrenheit,"

Oslo isn’t that cold really. And Bergen is also Norway, however, it’s just a rainy place. I wonder how many EVs are there in Tromsø.

Tromsø, iirc, is warmed by the remnants of the Gulf stream. Cold, snowy, but not Fairbanks cold.

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