Newer models have heat pumps that greatly improve efficiency in cold weather. They also have better battery chemistries that store more energy in the same form factor. Unless you live in a very remote, very cold location (eg: rural Alaska), an EV is a fine choice.
I am strongly pro-EV, and think they're broadly fine in every part of the US, and having just gotten back from Norway they're 100% on the right track, but they're nowhere near comparable to even my hometown of Minneapolis (8.8 degrees F lowest mean minimum).
Turns out there's more to climate than just latitude. Lots of the US is colder than Western Europe on average despite mostly being far further South. NYC is colder than London in the winter even though it's coastal and a much lower latitude.
A massive chunk of the US population wouldn't have any cold related struggles to EV adoption. Nobody is really losing a massive amount of range in Phoenix or Houston or Dallas or Atlanta or San Francisco or LA or Raleigh or Austin or Oklahoma City or Kansas City or Nashville or Tallahassee or San Antonio or Asheville or Richmond or...
EVs are fine for massive chunk of residential car owners. Not everyone, sure, but a massive percentage. Most suburban households could easily make their next car an EV without a hassle.
It’s simply not a concern. Only a range reduction. A non-issue.
montana is very spread out
If you developed a hyper-efficient ICE engine that didn’t generate a pile of waste heat, you’d have to actively make it less efficient in the cold, or install heating hardware and burn extra gas to power that hardware - but nobody would criticize that hyper-efficient engine for being “worse in the cold”.
If you lowered the efficiency of an EV by turning half of its energy output into heat all the time, you’d greatly narrow the gap between warm-weather and cold-weather performance.
If it’s less than like 100 miles (161km) I think that the vast majority of EV batteries are going to get you where you want to go, even with 25% reductions due to cold weather. FWIW, the American average is around 36 miles/day.
There is a semi famous YouTuber named Hank Green that lives in Montana and daily drives an EV. He occasionally makes videos about his experience.
we typically have at least five 1000+ mile trips in a summer
the gas/diesel infrastructure and refill times make it the most viable option for now, but i'm hoping that changes w/solid state technology
How so? A full battery can run your seat heaters for about a month. That's a lot better than the hours of heat you'd get out of a full tank of gasoline.
Not to mention that you'll never get carbon monoxide poisoning from a gasoline engine with a tailpipe blocked with snow.
None of the ‘answers’ address the range issues with batteries in the cold. Or how you can be totally fucked if your pack drops below a certain temp, and you don’t have enough charge to heat the pack and get home.
Probably even more fucked than if your diesel tank gelled. At least you can heat it up directly if you really need to.
If I let my electric car sit overnight with at least 20% charge, I know it will start in the morning, even if it was -45 overnight. You can't say that with a gasoline vehicle. It'll take almost all of that 20% to get up to temperature, but once it's up it maintains it well.
And anyplace cold has ubiquitous block heater plugs. At really cold temperatures it'll barely charge on a block heater plug because it'll use all the energy keeping the battery warm, but it means you start with a warm battery and a warm car, so the range drop is massively reduced.
EV’s at these temps are very problematic and much more likely to get you actually killed if something goes wrong, because of how they work. That’s just the truth.
Thinking that somehow it isn’t is the delusional part.
With enough care can you potentially avoid getting into a situation where you’ll actually get in deep trouble? I guess. But the margins are way thinner, and it requires a lot of range reduction, and your worst case scenarios are much more likely to happen.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00039929.htm https://www.rearviewsafety.com/safety/news/news-release-dead...
But it sounds like it's hard to get a handle on how common it is. It feels like it's more on the level of "a handful a year in North America/freak occurrance", rather than "common way to die".
I was recently stuck in a 3 hour backup in sub-freezing temps in moderate snowfall, and it was nice to be able to leave the engine running for heat. In the winter, we have a contingency where it's possible to be stuck in your vehicle overnight in heavy snowfall, and my plan was always to wake up every couple of hours to ensure the snow was clear of the car.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/local/3-young-women-found-dead-in...
What kills in the winter is unpredictability. Range is predictable and easy to mitigate.
It's the winter. You've slid off the road. You're probably in the ditch. You've probably taken some damage to the vehicle. Whether or not you've taken damage, you're now stuck. Something is preventing you from safely walking for help. At -30 or worse after an accident that's more likely than not.
The above is not an uncommon scenario in the winter. So you wait in the vehicle for help to arrive, hoping you don't freeze to death before it does.
You're safer in an electric vehicle.
- If you've plowed into a snow covered ditch, your car may be partially or fully entombed, and you're at risk of a carbon monoxide poisoning.
- there are stories of such vehicles not being found for days. Having heat for days might save your life
Yes I learned to drive in Canada. In a snowy region (3-10 metres of snow yearly depending on elevation). And I ski 50-100+ days per year. And will drive extra for powder snow.
Amount of times I've got stuck in snow? Zero. If you learn to drive in the snow, have winter tires, you just don't get stuck. Especially when you're putting in thousands (tens?) of kms and hundreds of days on snow covered roads.
Did YOU learn to drive here? Guessing no if you get stuck in the snow or slide off the road...
Edit - should add, around here (Alberta Rockies to the BC interior) there's as much as hundreds of KMs between towns/cities. Bad place to ever get stuck. Which is why you simply don't. Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
But every single time I go out in the winter I have a plan for what I'll do if it does happen. Because it happens to people, good drivers and bad, snow tires or not.
> Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
You shouldn't be trusting any vehicle. Both an electric car and a gasoline car might let you down when you need it. The gasoline car is more likely to let you down, though. I presume you have a proper winter kit in your vehicle so you don't have to trust your vehicle.
Is it road-accessible? What kinds of vehicles can get there?
The cars in the article have twice as much range as a gas car or more, even in the cold. And it's easier to charge them at remote locations than to get fuel deliveries to those same remote locations.
I'm sure a scenario could be contrived where any type of car wins, but on average I expect a long range battery car to do quite well.
https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Q...
Swasticars don't sell well. Musk needs to leave the company to give Tesla a chance to recover.
I drive a gas-powered Subaru because the Volvo dealership in Montana was being insufferable when I wanted a C40. My neighbour can easily go 200+ miles in the winter. (Apparently pre-conditioning is a thing.) Works fine for road trips to Missoula and Salt Lake City, for them, from Jackson.