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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

People must be pretty on the fence about the car if all it took was one article to sway their opinion into not buying a car.

The NYT article did highlight a major problem with electric vehicles: when you get the batteries really cold, their reported charge can be non-reflective of their actual range.

I never leave my Jeep overnight and wake up to seeing the gas gauge report only half of what is actually in the tank. If this was a thing that was possible, Jeep would be back to their drawing boards figuring out how to fix it, not chiding a reporter for pointing it out.

I hope everybody following this read the NYT reporter's response: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-w...

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Musk has a convenient scapegoat here. The reality is that we haven't seen really cold weather in a long while here in the NYC metro area, and the NYT article revealed a major issue. Many people believed we wouldn't see such weather in the future, so that risk wasn't on their minds (and as mentioned ad nauseum elsewhere, tesla didn't mention this in any marketing material except for saying that you can leave the car unplugged at the airport). Now having seen cold weather, people are asking what happens, and Musk's response installs little confidence in the Layman's view

Except you're comparing apples to oranges.

Cold weather pilots never let their aircraft sit outside for too long if they intend to fly within the hour since the fuel starts to gel. They plug in to the hanger if a power source is available or keep the engines running (although that's rather expensive these days). That doesn't mean those aircraft are in any way inferior to their warm weather counterparts.

The system is fundamentally different. Different is not inferior. Different means it can't be treated the same way as a fossil fueled vehicle.

FYI... The batteries do have heaters to improve efficiency, however that too drains power so a glance at the manual (and some common sense) would have told him to leave it plugged in. A bit like having to run a diesel engine a bit to make sure the fuel won't turn to gel in the lines.

I'm not sure if deliberately sabotaged the test drive, but I do think there's some driver naivety (negligence?) at play.

A car is not a jet aircraft, and comparing the two does absolutely nothing to help electric cars.

I'm not talking about jet aircraft. I'm talking about Pipers, Cessnas, Aerostars and countless other piston engine aircraft used in general aviation by hundreds of thousands of people.

The same people also go through a pre-flight checklist that covers all major safety aspects of the plane. When was the last time you saw someone walking around a car with a clipboard before they commute to work in the morning?

Last month in Minnesota.

My point is that EVs take a different type of preparation than fossil fuel engines and it's neither fair nor productive to expect them to behave 100% identically. But it seems a lot of people are deliberately missing that point for some reason and focusing on the fact I brought up aircraft.

A clipboard, really?

We are not talking about small differences in use, what is not being disputed is the large drop in range from parking overnight in cold weather. This is a big deal to northern climate folks. This is not a characteristic of gas or diesel.

Going further, I fully charge at home, leave for work, work a longer than average day, then get in my car to go home. Cold isn't only at night. I can see problems and I'm only commuting 40 miles to work (almost all highway).

He is comparing apples to oranges because the readers of NYT are orange buyers. All the NYT article says is that this is an apple... not orange.

> Except you're comparing apples to oranges.

So a Tesla can fly, eh?

Nice straw man. No.

Look, I'm getting tired of explaining this over and over to people who are deliberately being obtuse, but the whole point of bringing up aircraft was to illustrate that different types of fuel require different care, especially in cold weather. And with that care, those engines are able to function in cold weather just fine. This was the refutation of the ridiculous assertion made above that "EVs don't work in cold weather".

Regardless of fossil fuel or electric, cold weather requires additional preparation and planning to get to a destination in whatever type of vehicle you choose... As many people who've had trouble starting their ordinary gasoline car after a frosty morning would attest to.

I wish I never made the original post.

That's it. I'm done.

There is a huge difference though - when your engine is cold, an ICE still has as much fuel in the tank as last night, but an EV has 'lost fuel'. That's something new.

That's very true, but both ultimately have the same end effect: "Lost range". But can be mitigated by caring for them differently.

In the case of the EV, it's leaving it plugged in and in the case of ice, it's adding de-icer to the fuel. You just care for it differently. Arguably the EV still is a slight advantage since traditional engines still need to be warmed first whereas the EV can just start and go as long as it was plugged in overnight since the heater pads on the batteries will make sure it won't drain too quickly. Can't keep a fossile fuel engine running all night like that.

The amount in the tank is entirely different from the range it represents, which is also modified by environmental conditions such as altitude and temperature.

The difference between the two situations is the number of places that you can refill the tank. Diesel drivers (in the US), have similar concerns to the electric car driver.

The number of places you can, the speed at which you can, the relative frequency at which you have to refill all work against electric cars at the moment.

Diesel, AFAIK, is better of in the sense that you can drive farther without refilling.

Also, for both petrol and diesel, customers can somewhat reliably estimate how far a tank will carry them. Part of that is experience, but for now, I have the impression that Tesla, with all its electronics, cannot even break even with 'normal' cars at that single measure.

They are working hard on refill speed and refill locations and I expect they are working hard on their battery control systems to improve remaining range estimates. I think they need all three to create a viable mass market product.

Their concerns may be similar, but EVs still have it far worse for range anxiety.

Diesel drivers have the advantage of their fuel being quite portable once you've found a source. The energy input required to move a diesel truck 100mi. is still pretty portable if you get a ride, no tow required.

An EV has to be _moved_ to a charging source; it's very hard to bring energy to the EV in the quality/quantities required.

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