Fwiw, we’ve had some years when it didn’t break freezing for months at a time (Quebec/Ontario). During those years, it hit temps that are the same in c or f a few days, and was usually -20c or so at night. So I guess EV’s need a “deluxe Canadian battery” or lugs where the dogs could be attached?
I’ve seen them about, but then I saw Lambos trying to drive in the snow in Montreal. Commuter vehicles for those with a good charger in the garage.
Many people enjoys EVs in extreme cold, you just either don’t do winter road trips in them, or live with lots of charging stops when you do (or wear a coat and dont heat the cabin much!)
A 250 mile range cut in half is still more than enough for daily use.
This is one of my major concerns about EV, over the years I had asked about this very issue and all I got was "range will be slightly less" or "no impact". So I decided to stick with fossil fuels. Getting stuck in the middle of no where in the winder is no fun where I live.
I hope this hits the mainstream press, these days, seems all vehicles are only designed for use in Southern Calif.
>AAA found the loss in driving range could be as high as 41% with the heater on full blast.
My main concern was with the heater, in gas engines, heat is "free", I always thought the heater would be a big drain. Finally someone did some studies.
I actually think the same thing (designed for Southern California only) about self driving cars. My car comes with a bunch of pointless sensors that beep nonsense at me incessantly until I give up and disable them. The lane assist goes bananas while I dodge ample potholes or drive around road construction, so I turn that off. But even the panic breaking constantly complains it is no longer working (indicated by an irritating beep) because some combination of salt, road splash and maybe sun has disabled it. Heck, the backup camera requires frequent wipe downs due to salt otherwise I can't see anything out of it but a muddy blur.
I've never owned a self driving car, but I suspect they'll just throw up their hands and tell you to deal with it in the event of any inclement weather. Which would be about half the time around here!
I recall reading an EPA study from the mid 2000s that compared the total fossil fuel emissions from gasoline, hybrid, and hypothetical electric vehicles. They included power usage for battery heaters and even the emissions from fossil fuel heaters in all electric heaters. I can't find the study now.
Your concern is vastly inflated and misplaced. The car always tells you an accurate estimate of remaining range whatever the temperature. Also, the Tesla navigation automatically computes charge stops in real time and ads them to the navigation it makes it incredibly slick.
doesn't really matter if the car 'tells you' you are running low on battery - if you are not near a charging station, it is a real problem, wether you believe it or not.
I own one and drive it in winter including on long distance road trips so this isn’t a belief it is direct experience. The tesla charging stations are numerous and growing rapidly never have I even come close to running out of battery.
I ride a motorcycle and carry my phone in a pocket that's outside the thermal lining. I absolutely see the difference in how much it discharges when it's ~5ºC vs above 15ºC. And I'm thinking of the trip to my parents' house, so same duration, speed, and phone station locations.
It's explained in the article. Batteries work by means of chemical reactions, which go faster at higher temperatures.
Vehicle batteries are designed for the same sorts of temperatures that humans like, say 10 to 30 °C.
In cold weather, energy has to be taken from the batteries to heat them up so that they work better. More energy is taken to heat the cabin of the vehicle for the occupants' comfort. This reduces the energy left in the battery for moving the vehicle.
Thank you! Is it safe to say you want the wires transmitting the power to be cold, ideally, but the battery itself not necessarily so? (Thinking about the electric grid, etc here as well.)
Indeed, pretty much any conductor (that carries high current) would be more efficient (lower resistance) at lower temperatures. So the losses in the cables would be lower. However, that's a tiny part compared to the temperature needed for the battery chemistry to be efficient on its own.
I would guess at some temperatures, chilly wind acts to cool any motors, well motors that move and prouce heat from their actions...But at some lower temperatures, stuff physically just slows down movement. I think the article states why here...
> ...Cold temperatures slow down the chemical reactions in battery cells, which saps range and increases charging times.
>were more efficient in (relatively) colder environments
this is definitely false;
While almost everything (electronics/mechanics/hydraulics/pressure vessels) hates the heat, the operation temperature for Li-Ion cells is not too low, either. In very layman terms: the chemistry is not effective at lower temperatures.
As an experiment: have a two year phone and leave it at -20C, it might shut down on its own even at higher charge (voltage) as the battery cannot provide the needed current.
This makes battery the primary differentiator for me when I evaluated EVs. As a resident of Vermont, where there aren’t a ton of super chargers the the winters were harsh, range is important. Higher rated mileage in fair weather carries over to winter, even with degradation from cold. We opted for a Model Y, and after a year of ownership it’s still offering the best range for a vehicle we’d consider affordable. Would love to see other manufacturers catch up to Tesla in this regard.
I haven't even bothered to read the article because the terrible graph suggests the author has an axe to grind rather than insight to provide.
Further, the data shown in the graph most likely reflects differences in how each car was measured, estimated, or marketed.
I would love to see a better article somewhere else, where the same range testing is applied to 10 different EVs in the same weather conditions. How far does each of these cars actually go when it is cold and miserable? How far does each go when the weather is perfect? Then put that on the graph.
Newer Teslas with the heat pump do great in 30deg F temps, as the graph shows, but for extreme cold like 0 and below they suffer similar to the other cars, as heat pump efficiency can no longer win at that point.
2021 Tesla Y owner here. Midwest location. Took a 150 mile trip yesterday. Temps were 38F. Left my house fully charged at 330mi range, battery topped off. Arrived with 100mi estimated range left.
On the way home later that evening, temps were 28F. Left again almost fully topped off with estimated range of 310mi after visiting a supercharger. Arrived home with estimated 70mi of range left.
I was surprised to see the Model S and Model X doing as well as the (presumably new) 3 in the chart. Do the S and X have the heat pump? I know it didn't make it to the 3 until ~2021 (ours is a 2018).
I still wonder, why nobody builds EVs combined with a small Stirling motor. Such a hybrid could charge a car while parked (if needed) and warm up batteries in the cold too.
It would make EVs much more attractive for me, until charging infrastructure is more widely deploid, and allowing for a more gradual move away from oil.
They're too big and heavy per horsepower compared to regular ICE.
Also, if your car can turn on its engine automatically, Stirlings and regular ICE have the same problem - Something is autonomously generating carbon monoxide and consuming your fuel without a human watching it. Spooky.
From what I understand the size (and thus weight) of a Stirling engine is inversely proportional to the temperature difference it can run off. Running off 10s of degrees requires a very large engine to have any kind of usable power.
Additionally it would at best be a benefit in hot climates where the battery needs cooling. In the cold you want to retain the heat not turn it inefficiently into energy.
BMW i3 with range extender did that, don't know what kind of engine. Not quite intended as a PHEV, but I suppose it could run just on the ICE like most current PHEVs
Toyota's hybrids (Prius, etc.) have used Atkinson cycle ICE, instead of Otto (one maximizes fuel economy, the other power delivered, I heard).
Well, as always, it's a matter of preparation and technology.
Tesla uses battery heaters if I'm not mistaken.
But IC engines do have problems with the cold. Especially if using Diesel or E85. Most of those issues are now invisible because manufacturers do add fallbacks for those.
It's an issue to consider when purchasing an EV and one of the tradeoffs.
It varies model to model depending on the presence of heat pump, how the battery cooling/heating system works, etc. I think longterm we will need more detailed mpgE/range numbers for EVs than the old school city/highway EPA numbers.
Something like a grid of 30F/70F/90F x 25mph/60mph/75mph x HVAC on/HVAC off.
As with many things EV, Tesla is still ahead of the competition on this as you can see on the graph. So Tesla generally has more range to spare (300mi++) relative to competition (mostly 250mi-ish), and then performs better in winter against the stated range.
On the plus side if you have a garage you can plug-in at night, schedule charging, pre-warm the cabin, jack up the seat heaters, and pre-condition the battery all on shore power, so cold won't have as much of an impact on the outbound trip. However on the return if the battery is cold soaked you will definitely see an impact.
The other major EV difference is the range vs speed curve is different than for gas cars.
Gas cars the ICE engine has a certain minimum output which is generally wasted at lower city driving speeds (plus no regen braking unless hybrid). This is why ICE have higher mpg/range on highways.
EVs however its mostly a function of wind resistance so the faster you go, the lower the range. This can be quite noticeable at highway speed going 55-60mph vs say 75mph. Porsche Taycan has made some attempts to remediate this with having a 2 speed transmission, but I think we'll see more experimenting in this space.
Like most engineering problems, smart design and rigorous execution make a huge difference.
Tesla understood that heat management is key to an EV, so they invested in designing a compact and elegant system (Google “octovalve”) to move heat wherever it was helpful to send it.
They also use intelligence to allow the car to optimize itself for charging. For example, you can use the Tesla smartphone app to have your car wake itself up and warm or cool both the battery and cabin while still plugged in. And if you use navigation to plan your charging stops, it will automatically precondition the battery pack as you are getting close for optimal charging speed.
Most of the cars that performed poorly on that graph were because of shoddy engineering by people who don’t understand the problem space.
That’s not a problem with EVs, it’s a problem with bad engineers and management who care about the wrong things.
To be fair, they’re also secondary teams with limited budgets. There is a huge difference between having a founder ceo who is actively trying to make the specific product succeed vs being one of 40 teams producing a niche compliance vehicle. I’m honestly shocked how decent the ford/vw/Chevy vehicles are honestly.
I have a VW ID4. The infotainment software sucks but can be avoided for the most part by using CarPlay. The comfort, build quality, and turning radius (!!) are all exceptional.
I bought my wife a Chevy Bolt and myself a Model 3 Performance. I don't have the Tesla any more, but we do still have the Bolt.
The Bolt has CarPlay. The screen is much nicer in the Tesla, but CarPlay brings a lot of additional functionality and flexibility.
The Bolt is lighter, more nimble, smaller. For city driving, it's really handy.
The Bolt has normal door handles that don't require any special movement to open them. Normal locks, mechanical glove box latch, full windshield wiper controls, a normal shift handle to select regen (good because my wife hates regen, I love it).
The Bolt has slightly stronger regen, especially with the paddles. And it has a saner regen-to-stop mode, which only functions in drive. Unlike Tesla, which makes you use the accelerator pedal to get the car to reverse down the driveway (which just feels weird).
The seats are crappy on both. I prefer cloth to vinyl, though. And I especially don't like the slippery vinyl on Tesla's steering wheel.
The Bolt is vastly cheaper. Like, half as much.
The Tesla charges much faster with DC fast charging. If you only charge at home they are identical in this regard.
Overall, I feel like the Bolt is a much, much better deal if you factor in the cost. The Tesla is much faster, has more range, heated rear seats, and it makes fart noises. Of course, it also has AP, which some people like.
The Bolt feels like a car that happens to be electric. The Tesla feels like a computer that happens to have wheels.
My wife would be happy with another Bolt when the lease on this one expires next year. I won't buy another Tesla without CarPlay and proper wiper controls, but my next EV will need to be faster than the Bolt. So I'm thinking Taycan.
The Bolt makes me wish that VW would make an electric Golf R. Same size, better interior, more power. Aside from getting screwed over by LG's flubbed manufacturing of the batteries, the Bolt really over-delivers compared to what I expected from it.
VW is making the ID.4, and next year they'll start at $35k. While it's bigger than the Model 3 and Bolt, it's still a crossover and not full SUV size. It's more value like the deal that the Bolt is, than like Tesla.
Fords electric cars have gotten very good reviews. I've driven the Chevy electric cars, and feel they'd be pretty popular among hacker news types. It's a normal car that happens to be electric, bringing all the advantages motors bring(silent, incredible torque), without feeling like the half baked feel Tesla can have.
I own an id.4 for about 6 months now. It has problems but nothing insane, it was also a good 10k less then a model y, 20k less if you factor in autopilot. I think Tesla should be commended for getting electric cars to happen, and I hope they continue to improve, but I wouldn’t count ford, Volkswagen, or GM out yet, they don’t have to be better, just close enough to feel like preference. I really think we’re only 2-3 model years from them reaching near parity on evs.
Right, if anything the Tesla results prove that this isn't some inherent problem with all EVs...but rather a very addressable problem by the engineering departments.
Is Tesla this far ahead because they're the only mfr heating the battery? Or do all mfrs heat the battery, but Tesla has gone above and beyond with the octovalve?
Active battery management is common to all EVs now - only the first gen Leaf and other weird niche vehicles like that don't have it. What Tesla does is an incredibly refined, efficient and integrated hardware coupled with great software. If you watch Munro's teardown of the new Model S, they basically state that they don't think it can really be improved.
Bad engineering has nothing to do with it. Engineers have been making ICE vehicles for more than a hundred years and EV's are relatively new.
ICE vehicles have endured every known failure you can think of and car manufacturers have fixed all of these...over time.
It will take some time before all the snafu's with EV's are ironed out. Tesla is at the forefront since its more of a tech-company than a car manufacturer.
BTW: Volkswagen and Mercedes already have heat-pumps in their EV's.
actually electric vehicles predate ICE but this guy named rockafeller who owned a really big oil company, and had a lot of this really volatile byproduct from his kerosene production he was looking for a use for...
In 1909, there were thousands of Baker Electric cars cruising the streets of NYC quietly and at 35mph. You didn’t need to go much faster inside the city. 100 miles to a charge, good old fully recyclable glass lead acid batteries.
Gasoline vehicles eventually outcompeted them by reaching 60mph and having more range (sound familiar?) but the parent isn’t wrong about Rockefeller, cheap and abundant fuel came 2 years later:
> …growing electrification of lighting produced a drop in kerosene demand, creating a supply problem. It appeared that the burgeoning oil industry would be trapped into over-producing kerosene and under-producing gasoline since simple distillation could not alter the ratio of the two products from any given crude. The solution appeared in 1911 when the development of the Burton process allowed thermal cracking of crude oils, which increased the percent yield of gasoline from the heavier hydrocarbons.
It is not so simple. The engineering in a Chevy Volt is equally impressive. You are partly correct about amount of focus but you cannot compare a budget Nissan or Chevy to a Tesla that costs twice or thrice as much.
For example, GM can add a heat pump to improve their winter performance (Bolt) but if it is a new part that needs to be integrated into their assembly, there’s a cost to it that cannot be recouped. Batteries are already expensive. Tesla is less sensitive to costs as it had no profit pressures.
Startups and large companies necessarily need to have different thinking and that’s ok. When the giants turn around, they can quickly copy the upstart. Car engineering is not as complicated as rocket science.
I just looked up the cost of a '22 Chevy Bolt, MSRP is $33k for the cheapest model. I payed $42k for a model 3, so its not like a tesla is 2x the competition, and saying "twice or thrice" is pretty disingenuous when the real difference is closer to 30%.
I was in the market for both vehicles. On ground prices for the Bolt did not approach Msrp. You had deals lowering them to 25-30k. And Tesla sales were typically not its cheapest models.
I've noticed the difference in my plug-in Prius. In summer I had up to a 30 mile battery range. This winter it's been down to at worst 22 miles.
Overall, I'm very happy with my plug-in hybrid as my commute to work is about 10 miles each way. If I drive anywhere outside the electric range, the car simply switches to burning gas. I find this car extremely pragmatic. Obviously YMMV.
Finally! Someone finally said "hybrid", thank you!
Every thread about EVs is just like the ~discourse~ about LED traffic lights. [1]
"We must stop making pure ICE cars"
"But pure EVs aren't ready"
"But we must stop making pure ICE cars!"
"But pure EVs aren't ready!"
Back and forth for _literally 20 years_ in which this little-known Japanese company, Toyota, has been producing an insanely popular line of hybrid sedans called "Prius". [2] I live in a small town and I can't really drive anywhere without seeing at least one Prius. They are everywhere. The used ones are not super-expensive, either, especially compared to a pure EV that needs a bigger battery.
Hybrids have been viable for _twenty years_ and people are still debating ICE vs. EV.
Plug-in hybrids are now becoming more common, and even big pickup trucks are talking about mild hybridization. And a Prius can go 500 or 600 miles on a tank and then just refuel. A pure EV means no spontaneous road trips. Not a problem with any hybrid.
Pure ICE should be out of the picture for 50% of drivers, but we are still using pure EVs as a weak man [3] to pretend that ICE cars are still viable in the post-Prius-plugin era.
The hybrids aren't going to be much help when the internal combustion bans come in in approximately 2030-2035 for a large fraction of developed countries. People talk about pure EVs because legislation is demanding pure EVs.
Exactly, the regulation is needlessly extremist. Hybrids offer the advantages of both types of vehicles. We could make meaningful progress towards carbon reduction with vehicles that are more inclusive of the needs of people in many climates. Instead, the regulation demands perfection and limits us to vehicles that are practical only in southern California.
Most people expect that internal combustion ban to be delayed, or expanded to allow hybrid vehicles. It just isn't practical to shift the manufacturing base and transportation infrastructure to electric in such a short time. There will be too much political pushback.
Fuelly users report an avg of 45mpg for 3rd gen (2010-2015) Prius at 11.9 gallons fuel. That's 535 miles. 4th gen (2016-present) is 51mpg at 11.3 gallons, 576 miles.
Some bad surprise with plugin hybrid too. Many hybrid use the gas engine for heating the car, they don't have electric heater. My Santa Fe PHEV will never use the battery under 15C because the gas engine need to always run to stay warm. You can drive hour and come back with a full battery.
I have a Bolt and it definitely loses a lot of range in the winter. I still have plenty of range for what I need to do, so no worries.
The surprising part of this graph for me is that I thought all EVs had a similar magnitude of loss in the winter... guess not! Kudos to Tesla on this particular metric.
Performance degrades of course, but modern EVs are quite popular in e.g. Norway where they drive them well inside arctic conditions. It's not like they stop working under conditions where ICE vehicles definitely face challenges with both range and reliability. Unless your ICE vehicle is plugged in to keep the engine warm when it is parked, it might not even start at all. Those same systems are great for keeping your EV topped up of course.
Anything liquid might end up freezing. In an EV that's electrolytes, cooling liquid, brake fluids, etc. Of course, batteries can be heated in an EV and that helps. Simply using them heats them up. That's why many EVs have battery cooling. Also many owners might want to turn up the heat remotely so they enter a nicely warmed car instead of an ice box. That costs energy and range of course.
So, it's not all that black and white. But overall, it seems EVs can do well under arctic conditions. All the big vendors test under those conditions. The cold hard reality (to paraphrase the alarmist title) is that it isn't that big of a deal.
The article mentions Norway, and it also highlights how many electric vehicles perform nearly as well in very cold conditions, though some (particularly from GM and Ford) do much worse.
> In Norway — where half of all new cars are plug-ins — tests show that EVs lose about 20% of their driving range and take longer to charge in cold temperatures, according to the Norwegian Automobile Federation.
> some (particularly from GM and Ford) do much worse
Naturally people who don't like EVs are going to cherry-pick these problems, but the mixed results suggest to me that it's down to a deficiency in the design and testing process at some companies. I had a 2009 Prius where the rubber pad on the metal hatchback handle melted, fell off, and left a thick streak of rubber adhered to my license plate. It was a known issue in that model of Prius and affected a lot of people in the southwestern US. Was it a great engineering challenge to create a handle that could handle such heat? Did they consciously decide to sell something that would fail in an ugly and embarrassing way right below their brand logo? I doubt it; I suspect it was a new design that they failed to test rigorously enough.
> Most of Norway like Oslo isn't really arctic cold though
Oslo is colder than like 90% of the inhabited parts of the planet...it's probably fine to use it as an example when talking about cold weather performance of EVs
Average temperature in Oslo is colder than 90% of the planet - but average winter temperature in Oslo is a fairly normal winter temperature for nearly half the planet, especially for the more affluent parts of it. The hottest large city on Earth - Ahvaz, Iran - with a record high of 54C, still recorded a record low of -7C
This is like saying Canada is cold because Yellowknife, when in reality 90% of the population lives within 100 miles of the US border. Like yeah, we can still get a decently cold winter in southern Ontario, but it's not remotely comparable to the actual arctic, or even places like Saskatoon and Edmonton.
Average Low (°C) || Record Low (°C)
| Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar || Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar
Oslo | -3.9 | -4.7 | -4.7 | -2.1 || -19.7 | -20.5 | -20.7 | -16.9
Toronto | -3.1 | -6.7 | -5.6 | -1.9 || -30.0 | -32.8 | -31.7 | -26.7
The winter in Oslo starts earlier and lasts longer... but isn't as extreme as Toronto's winter.
Oslo is on the ocean. While the arctic ocean is cold, it's still water. If the air temperature drops below the temperature of the water, the ocean will release heat and warm up the air.
It is very difficult to get it colder than the water. Note also that Oslo is on a warm current - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Corrient... - the Norwegian current is a continuation of the Gulf Stream (compare the California current which is a cold one)
> Oslo has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfb)[48] or, if the original Köppen winter threshold −3 °C (27 °F) is used, an oceanic climate (Cfb) in the 1991–2020 base period.
> Examples of oceanic climates are found in Glasgow, London, Bergen, Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Bilbao, Oviedo, Biarritz, A Coruña, Bayonne, Zürich, Copenhagen, Prague, Skagen, and Paris. With decreasing distance to the Mediterranean Sea, the oceanic climate of northwest Europe gradually changes to the subtropical dry-summer or Mediterranean climate of southern Europe
> The oceanic climate exists in an arc spreading across the north-western coast of North America from the Alaskan panhandle to northern California, in general the coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest. It includes the western parts of Washington and Oregon, the Alaskan panhandle, western portions of British Columbia, and north-western California.
With no large bodies of open water, the air temperature is not moderated by the release of heat from the water and can go further to extremes on both ends.
Why did you choose Indianapolis for the comparison?
Why not Minneapolis, or Cheyenne, or some other North American city that is also away from the coasts? Why not Regina?
I think part of the problem is that because EVs are still new, people are going to expect or demand reliability. It's only better if it's better in every way.
When I worked in a cold city, you would occasionally hear people say, "Sorry I'm late for work, boss. Car wouldn't start, and I had to get a jump."
Because it's new, saying, "Sorry I'm late for work, boss. It's cold, so my car had less range and I had to stop at the Slurp-n-Burp to recharge" isn't going to be met with the same level of sympathy.
Indianapolis is a decently large city, and it's not that far north nor in an obviously cold mountainous region. Most people wouldn't recognize it as exceptionally cold for the US. It's also south of several large Midwestern cities. So, it was a good way to show that a large fraction of the US (and of course Canada) gets colder than Oslo.
For reference: Indianapolis is about 40 degrees north of the equator, Oslo about 60, so it’s over 2,000 km more closer to the equator. Indianapolis is at about the latitude of Madrid.
Not only the Gulf Stream, but also the polar jet stream, which frequently dips down into the American midwest in winter, making the temperature in Indianapolis about as cold as it is much further north in Canada. Sometimes even colder.
I've been wondering how the EV adoption will play out in Canada. For example, the city I live in with a population of 162k had a record all time low of -48.3 C, and average lows in January of −17.9C, and 4 of months of the year have average lows below -10C.
I found the brake fluid freezing comment interesting. Quite a bit conflicting info on it when I do a search.
Some places say the fluid doesn't actually freeze but becomes too viscous to function properly. Others say it's condensation in the vacuum booster line, effectively making them non-power brakes. And still others say the fluid itself won't freeze, but the water it absorbed will.
All may be true - DOT 5 brake fluid is silicon based and will not absorb water at all, the others will. Which is why DOT 5 is often found in military trucks.
Anecdata: I live in Minnesota. It is cold here ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Minnesota_weather_reco... ) -- and here in my fourth decade of life, never had an issue with brake fluid. I've seen issues in the cold with: electronics, radiator fluid, washer fluid, ignitions, batteries, tire pressure, bushings, plastics, even fuel back when EFI was less common, but never issues with brake fluid.
Road salt is our big problem here, but that's true for everyone who has winter.
In the context of minnesota, road salt is used on most flat or heavily trafficked roads. Steep inclines and intersections all use grit or small gravel instead or or in addition to salt.
True, but the second half of the sentence was that it was true for everywhere with winter weather. I was just pointing out that it isn't necessarily the case.
Edit: and also, some areas are not using salt for environmental reasons, like Portland.
Yeah, outer portions of Minnesota avoid using salt near wetlands as well- most states do, I think. You have to get pretty far into northern latitudes before salt stops working well enough to abandon it, though. Mixing sand or grit helps warm it up in direct sunlight enough that it can still be beneficial below zero F.
Once you get below -20 C (-4 F) salt loses a lot of effectiveness. Here in Edmonton we had a few weeks of ~-30 C and the roads were polished to an icy shine, there was no getting away from it and no amount of sand or salt helped for any amount of time.
>I think the real variable when it comes to road salt issue is vehicle quality.
It depends on how much the OEM wants to spend on fancy paint and coatings, how much the vehicle's use degrades that coating, how much salt the vehicle is exposed to, what kind of salt (liquid stuff gets everywhere much more effectively) and what if any steps the owner takes to mitigate the salt.
You can make generalizations like "Volvo loves to galvanize stuff and Toyota DGAF" but without controlling for the life the vehicle will have that doesn't really let you make predictions about a specific vehicle.
To add to the confusion, there are two main kinds of brake fluid:
The classic, pro: works well even under high temperatures resulting from prolonged braking. Con: absorbs water over time and must be replaced fairly often even if not stressed.
New kind, pro: does not absorb water and does not degrade as much on its own. Con: braking action gets "spongy" when the fluid heats up from prolonged braking.
The amount of brake fluid that actually moves when you press the brake is trivial and with the forces involved it could be as thick as grease and still work mostly fine.
Unless you actively mix it with water (like you do antifreeze) you are going to have a hell of a time getting glycol based brake fluid to absorb enough water to freeze at any earthly temperature. Maybe if you ran a system without the cap on the reservoir for decades in a very humid climate you could do it but even then I think the odds are long at best.
My understanding is that the water contaminated fluid tends to concentrate at the bottom of the systems. With 20% of cars having systems with 5% water, that seems like the concentration could be higher in parts of the system. So I agree that it's probably unlikely (and only even possible in artic condidtions).
> The cold hard reality (to paraphrase the alarmist title) is that it isn't that big of a deal.
For people who use their EV solely for commuting, it’s not a big deal, since a commute distance is still well below the reduced range in cold temperatures.
It is a huge deal for people who take winter road trips. The range reductions cited in the article could easily spell the difference between getting to the destination in one shot, versus having to take a >30 minute stop to recharge midway. 30 minutes is an absolute minimum figure that assumes there’s an available fast charger conveniently close to the route. If not, detours+slow charging could easily add an hour or more to travel time.
It takes 5 minutes to refuel a gas car, and gas stations are ubiquitous. Most EVs take about 30 minutes to gain an appreciable amount of range at a level 3 charger, which are far from common, thus necessitating a long detour. They also often have long lines—you can easily spend at least as much time waiting for a charger to become available as you will actually charging the car.
If only there were a way to take a trip without driving. It would be so nice if there were some kind of large vehicle that multiple people could get in, that had a dedicate right-of-way for long-haul trips, so individuals didn't have to worry about fuel. These hypothetical vehicles could go to multiple high-traffic destinations, so a person could get close to where they wanted to be, and then drive a personal vehicle the rest of the distance, but sleep for most of the trip, or just relax.
Unfortunately, no such method of travel ever has or ever will be invented, so I guess we'll just have to rely on internal combustion engines for the rest of eternity.
Such vehicles certainly don't exist for 90% of the long haul trips I take (busses and trains). Planes could get me there, but they also would actually take longer than just driving because where I need to go isn't serviced by national lines, only regional planes.
While I agree in principle, pragmatically (in the US at least) it would be orders of magnitude easier to build out our EV charging network and increase the all-season range of EVs than to build out a massive rail network on par with both our interstate road network and local highway networks.
Because it is totally reasonable to expect there to be a bus or train from some arbitrary location (even a city) to a random mountain trailhead or ski area.
If you want to get from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe area ski resorts it's almost impossible to do that via mass transit. Best case scenario would be an all-day ordeal with at least 5 transfers, and no easy way to carry bulky, heavy ski equipment. No one is going to put up with that when they can just drive their personal vehicle in half the time with greater comfort.
There used to be a private ski bus charter service on weekends but that shut down due to the pandemic.
For people who use their EV solely for commuting, it’s not a big deal
It depends on how long your "commute" is.
A dozen miles across San Francisco? Not a big deal.
There are plenty of people who commute long distances every day. There are thousands of people who commute to New York City every day from Pennsylvania.
Anyone who owns a hybrid in the northland probably notices a dip in gas mileage in the winter. My Kia Niro loses about 30% of its gas mileage in the winter months in North Dakota. Its enough of a difference that this will be my last hybrid, and I am going to be very careful when I buy an electric. Since, I live in an apartment currently, I don't really have an option for an electric.
Most trips are too short to get the engine up to optimal operating temperature in winter. Cold engines have terrible efficiency, so you lose quite a bit of range in day-to-day driving during winter.
> It's not like they stop working under conditions where ICE vehicles definitely face challenges with both range and reliability. Unless your ICE vehicle is plugged in to keep the engine warm when it is parked, it might not even start at all.
ICE are way less affected by cold than battery vehicles. It's been 2 decades since I even had a block heater for any of my cars or pickups - modern electronic fuel injected engines are very good at properly metering and vaporizing fuel to start at low temps. And yes, they do get reduced mpg, but it's not that much, and given the ubiquity of gas stations, hardly can be talked about as a range limitation.
And for the record, they keep the cabin much more comfortable than a lot of electrics can afford to do. Turning those precious kWHs in your battery into heat is brutal on the battery.
I think electric vehicles are the future, and I like ours. But no way the article here is wrong: most are not really yet as ready for cold climates as modern ICE are. You get trade-offs).
(For the record: I drive (drove, actually, don't drive much at since I retired) mostly in Minnesota. Subzero driving has been part of my life for 50 years.)
ICE veichles will start even if it is cold, I live in the far north of Sweden and we often have -30C and the cars start with no problems even if you dont have a heater in it.
This EV test however is barely in cold weather, it gets a lot worse when it's cold.
Engine heaters are generally used for long term reliability and comfort. Years of daily cold starts can do problems, but most cars on road can start from cold.
> Unless your ICE vehicle is plugged in to keep the engine warm when it is parked, it might not even start at all.
Literally no one is doing this, unless you have a diesel engine, you're parked outside, the temperatures are exceptionally cold (<= -10F?), and you weren't planning on driving for more than a day. It's something you'd see on, like, farms or semi truck lots; not houses.
The risk of not starting isn't really in the engine itself; it's in the fuel "gelifying". Diesel is gross.
But sure; the issue is overblown, especially when the majority of EVs on the list still retain >10% of their maximum battery capacity in freezing weather, and the highest range EVs on the list (where you'd expect to see the highest drop) are only losing a few percentage points. This is not a situation where EVs have a fundamental problem; it's a situation where a few manufacturers (cough Detroit cough) are royally screwing something up.
I do, as do multiple members of my immediate family who park our vehicles outside. We have block heaters so we can start them on those -10F mornings. None of us have diesel either - Toyota 4runner, Ford Explorer, GMC Sierra. Every winter we get at least a couple weeks where it's that cold in Wisconsin.
OP Should have said "most don't need to do it." I live in Minnesota and its rare to see people use block heaters now days, folks that do are most likely doing it because their parents did. I know from first hand experience that modern ICE cars with proper maintenance will perform just fine in the extremest of Minnesotan winters.
That doesn't sound right. I live in MN and my 17 year-old Nissan 350Z will happily start in -20F as long as the battery is in good shape. Any of those vehicles you mention (unless the 4Runner is old enough to still have a carbureted 22R) should start up just fine at -10F.
2018 4runner in my case. Still on its original battery so that's probably getting a little weak. -10F starts fine, its when we get those -15 or -20ish nights where you can really hear it struggling and you hope it starts. Sure I could upgrade the battery but a block heater is a lot cheaper when my battery is just fine in > -10 degree weather. Plus you get a warmer engine with the better lubrication that provides for the motor until it heats up.
> Literally no one is doing this, unless you have a diesel engine, you're parked outside, the temperatures are exceptionally cold (<= -10F?), and you weren't planning on driving for more than a day.
Factually incorrect. Block chargers are ubiquitous in Alaska where I grew up and you should probably use one well before -10F to reduce wear on your engine.
> Literally no one is doing this, unless you have a diesel engine, you're parked outside, the temperatures are exceptionally cold (<= -10F?), and you weren't planning on driving for more than a day. It's something you'd see on, like, farms or semi truck lots; not houses.
Living in a cold-weather climate, it is the local norm to plug a car (gas or diesel) during winter even if you're only parked for a couple hours. Most cars purchased locally come with engine block heaters installed and most private parking spaces (houses, apartments, office buildings, surface lots, parking garages, etc.) provide an outlet.
If a heat pump won't work than this might make sense. Better than resistive electrical heat, particularly if the electricity comes from something like coal.
I'm in Watertown (served by the 71 and 73) and upset about this, but it's probably the right move given the high failure rates during rainstorms and the inability to pass other busses on the road, causing useless congestion.
definitely not the right move! trolleybuses can easily pass other buses. modern trolleybuses have significant off-wire capability, so if MBTA's maintenance is really so bad they're getting dewired in the rain, operators can be keep driving until they get a chance to rewire the poles, or MBTA can put up pole catchers and they can be rewired automatically.
MBTA should be putting up more wires, not taking down what they currently have. Battery buses aren't much cheaper than trolleybuses, if it all (they have significant infrastructure costs too), and in every other aspect trolleybuses are far superior
Thanks, I'm not knowledgeable enough about this but if you're also in Belmont/Watertown you might want to bring it up with Sen. Brownsberger, he has a deep knowledge of the MBTA and was the one who advocated for their dedicated lanes.
Very timely for me, as I unexpectedly had to ditch my 14-year-old gas Mini yesterday (frame rot because I live in New England). I was aware of this issue, and had already started doing winter-range calculations as I shop for an all-electric replacement. Mostly this will be an around-town second car so range basically doesn't matter, but the one long trip I might want to do is 160 miles in winter. I was figuring I'd need 200+ nominal to feel comfortable, but the models I'm looking at are above 90% (not bad IMO) so it could be a bit less. Turns out it's a moot point, though, because there's basically nothing except some Porsches and Audis that are above 170 but below 215. FWIW, here's a handy table for anyone else in a similar shopping situation.
I've been doing that, but it still happened. Same with my wife's last car, though less excusable in that case because it was only half as old. Just one of the things we have to put up with, I guess.
If you select your stop for charging on the Tesla screen it will preheat the battery so the charging go way faster, especially during winter (compared to not heating the battery)
It's interesting that some of the cars with large differences between cold & warm have there EPA ranges closer to the the cold temperature range, whilst others are closer to the warm range. It's as if some manufacturers have chosen the lower range for their EPAs, so will be less disappointing and appear better in warm weather than promised. I would expect consistency but this is one the flaws of comparing cars specifications: there isn't a truly accurate and constant way to measure ranges that consumers can trust (the same is true for MPG estimates for ICEs).
This is another example of how far ahead tesla is with their battery and electrical systems. Which is kind of frustrating for me, because I want an EV and Tesla sucks at pretty much everything else. Their cars are super expensive to repair, and its impossible to get parts yourself. The build quality is poor. The cars (except for the model s, maybe) are ugly. But they absolutely destroy the competition on a technical level.
For many years now you can buy all parts except some that are “restricted” to shops, and even those you can usually find on eBay or junk yards.
Teslas are not super expensive to repair if you compare them to BMW instead of Honda Civic. And they are much more reliable than BMWs and require almost no maintenance. Source: I repaired about 10 teslas.
It is in general the reaction speed which results in a lower voltage. But I believe the exact reason is poorly understood. Seems to affect all batteries and lithium-ion batteries are no exception.
Most people I know report that their formerly 350km vehicles only drive 250km if it is really cold outside. Of course you also have heating withing the cabin that is not an insignificant factor. So cars perform worse, but they don't completely break down.
Although I had it happen with a company car once when it was very cold outside. Display told me to stop as soon as I can. I did so and the car went completely dead. Left it there, the next day was considerably warmer and the car worked normally again.
I recently bought a second hand Nissan Leaf (2015 model, so the battery is already 7 years old), and I have to say my experience with it has been fantastic, even through the winter.
The range is about 70-80 miles of general town driving 30-40mph in the UK winter, so cold, but not freezing most of the time. The range doesn't seem to be noticeable different between warm and cold days. Average temp is probably around 5c.
The range does drop noticeable on motorways. I haven't done a proper test, but I suspect it's probably only good for 40ish miles at 70mph.
As a second car it's brilliant. It's saved us a load on petrol doing the local trips, school runs, short commute, etc. Even with the current high power prices in the UK. It very much depends on what you plan to use it for, but if your usage profile fits what the car does well, it's a really nice car.
I plan to do a proper blog post at some point analyzing some data on it. Maybe after the summer and I'll see if the range improves.
£9800. 28,000 miles on the clock. Battery still reporting 12 out of 12 for health.
I did look at a few other used models, one a couple of years newer, but a lot of miles on the clock and quite a bit more expensive. This one I got just had the best balance of price, age, condition, etc of the cars I saw.
I briefly looked at new ones, but prices started at around £27k, and I didn't really want to spend that much. I tend not to buy new cars.
I have a Renault Zoé, and live in the French Alps (1000m altitude) with harsh winters, and so far this little car has been marvelous. I wouldn't go back to an ICE car for my regular commute.
I looked at a Zoe too, it's an equally nice car that fits the exact same niche for short range or town driving. It mostly just came down to the fact the particular leaf I found was the best balance on price vs age for what was on the market at the time. I'd have likely been just as happy with a Zoe had I found a good one.
Came here to say the same thing. I recently bought a 2013 Nissan Leaf, which has a bit of a reputation as the first really good electric commuter vehicle model/year, and it's the best car I've owned by a wide margin. I will never tire of leaving every other car on the line from every stop haha.
It charges to 80 miles in the summer and 60 (effective) in winter. Keep in mind that I lose about 10 miles of range if I run the heater the whole time. So that's really comparing 80 to 70, and that's with 2 bars lost off the battery after 9 years. The only time I ever got range anxiety was last minute shopping once around the holidays when I got home with 7 miles left. So I'm happy to live with 10-15% less range in freezing whether.
A few details:
* It uses a lithium manganese battery, which I believe performs better in the cold, that is kept warm by an internal heater that I've never observed to reduce range. Personally I prefer lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), as it's the easiest/cheapest battery to make, arguably the safest, but also tends to be about 10% heavier. I really wish there was an open source approach to building them for hobbyists, since the only complicated part is maybe the carbon fiber, but I digress
* I almost bought a (2015?) Fiat 500e, as it had a little better performance. But the one I test drove had a conservative white pearlescent paint job that made me consider my retirement, so maybe I dodged a bullet. But holy (mackerel) was that thing fast. Also the smaller roof size wouldn't have left much room for the planned solar panel(s)
* I always charge overnight on ordinary 120 V for about 8-11 hours (I think, from memory?) and never notice an issue. They say that trickle charging is bad, but the physics just doesn't support that. My feeling is that the rush towards 240/400 V fast chargers was to appease a fossil fuel industry that wanted to preserve the muscle memory of filling up with gas, but I certainly don't miss the gas station. Our electric bill is $20/month more to drive 300-400 miles on electric to commute to a neighboring city, which is like 1/7 the cost of driving my 15 mpg truck (electrics get around 100 mpg equivalent)
* The battery is 24 kWh, but they also have 30, 40 and 62 kWh upgrades. At some point I may opt for the 40 with a small LiFePO4 reserve battery in the trunk to buffer the solar energy and roughly double my range, but haven't decided yet, maybe I'll max it out: https://leosons.com/nissan-leaf-battery-upgrade-frequently-a...
Edit: how could I leave without mentioning the heated seats, steering wheel and instant-on electric heater/defrost. Most comfortable winter driving I've ever experienced. Also I'm not affiliated with Nissan, they just won me over for finally doing going engineering: good/fast/cheap pick any THREE!
I'm pretty sure it's fast charging that is more detrimental to the battery life. The included charge cable that charges from a regular home socket charges at 3.3kw, which is the max you can do with the type1 socket on the car even if you use a dedicated home charge point (unless your particular car has the optional 6.6kw onboard unit upgrade). My charge point can deliver 7kw, but the car limits it to 3.3kw.
The ChaDeMo socket can charge much faster (50kw I think?), But you aren't easily going to do that at home.
Wow that's cool, I didn't know chargers could deliver that kind of power. 7 kW is about 10 hp, 5 space heaters, 2 ovens or dryers, anyway it's a lot. 50 kW would charge my car in a half an hour if the batteries could handle it!
My Leaf doesn't have the optional 480 V charging port, to anyone reading this who might be interested in the Level 3 fast charging. I hadn't researched it yet, but that's a CHAdeMO port, thanks for mentioning that, this article claims a 40 minute charge to 80% on a 40 kWh Leaf:
55 kW @ 480 V DC would be 115 A and can go up to 400 A or 192 kW (258 hp)!
I also realized that I left out the detail that my car has about 60,000 miles. I test drove almost the same model from the same year with 90,000 miles and from what I could tell, it performed the same. Batteries today are so much better than when they were first used in laptops in the late 2000s and only got 300 cycles. Li-ion batteries today are getting more in the 4,000-40,000 (in the lab) cycle range.
Oh! Another details is that my Leaf was $7900 + ~$1000 taxes and fees or $8900 total. They were about $6900 right before the pandemic. The dealers don't really understand how well batteries hold up, and demand is low in flyover states like mine. But word is getting out, and I think that when people are powering their home off their electric Ford F-150, demand is going to rise substantially even for older used electrics.
What would be interesting to see is the balance of energy cost for battery heaters. Is it better to use some electricity to warm up the battery just slightly to get more power out of it for longer? There's probably a sweet spot there. I imagine similar with cooling, except there the "end of range" scenario is more.. dramatic.
I have to question the accuracy of the numbers presented in this article.
I own a Chevy Bolt in Maine and the figure listed in this article is far off from what I have experienced over several winters here. At a temp of 20 F my bolt loses ~20% of its range from the EPA estimate, going from 236 to about 190miles of range. Conversely, my friend owns a Tesla Model 3 up here and his range degrades severely during winter on the order of 30%.
The temperature today in my area varied between 9 F at 9AM and 25 F at 3PM. My girlfriend happened to need to drive to several different towns/cities for her work so her total trip was 135 miles. Our Bolt says it has 50 miles left.
I only charge to 90% and just received a new 259 mile range battery as part of the Bolt recall. So the EPA range of my Bolt at 90% charge is 233 miles. If we take the Bolt's 50 mile left range claim at face value (which I have found to be overly pessimistic), then it got 185 miles of range today out of the expected 233, or a ~20% drop in EPA stated range.
So I just don't believe the numbers provided in the linked article. They are completely out of whack with my every day experience owning a Bolt through three winters in Maine.
308 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 278 ms ] threadI hope this hits the mainstream press, these days, seems all vehicles are only designed for use in Southern Calif.
>AAA found the loss in driving range could be as high as 41% with the heater on full blast.
My main concern was with the heater, in gas engines, heat is "free", I always thought the heater would be a big drain. Finally someone did some studies.
I've never owned a self driving car, but I suspect they'll just throw up their hands and tell you to deal with it in the event of any inclement weather. Which would be about half the time around here!
I recall reading an EPA study from the mid 2000s that compared the total fossil fuel emissions from gasoline, hybrid, and hypothetical electric vehicles. They included power usage for battery heaters and even the emissions from fossil fuel heaters in all electric heaters. I can't find the study now.
You realize FUD about EVs is almost constant in the press, right?
I ride a motorcycle and carry my phone in a pocket that's outside the thermal lining. I absolutely see the difference in how much it discharges when it's ~5ºC vs above 15ºC. And I'm thinking of the trip to my parents' house, so same duration, speed, and phone station locations.
Vehicle batteries are designed for the same sorts of temperatures that humans like, say 10 to 30 °C.
In cold weather, energy has to be taken from the batteries to heat them up so that they work better. More energy is taken to heat the cabin of the vehicle for the occupants' comfort. This reduces the energy left in the battery for moving the vehicle.
> ...Cold temperatures slow down the chemical reactions in battery cells, which saps range and increases charging times.
this is definitely false; While almost everything (electronics/mechanics/hydraulics/pressure vessels) hates the heat, the operation temperature for Li-Ion cells is not too low, either. In very layman terms: the chemistry is not effective at lower temperatures.
As an experiment: have a two year phone and leave it at -20C, it might shut down on its own even at higher charge (voltage) as the battery cannot provide the needed current.
EVs also have to heat the cabin without much "waste" energy (ie-- ICE).
They should have normalized everything as reduction relative to their actual warm-weather range, not relative to 100% of the EPA stated range.
Alternatively, they could have discounted the warm weather range to the 100% EPA number.
As is, it's a mess. The point of the article is that cold weather reduces range, and an explanatory graph should support that directly.
Further, the data shown in the graph most likely reflects differences in how each car was measured, estimated, or marketed.
I would love to see a better article somewhere else, where the same range testing is applied to 10 different EVs in the same weather conditions. How far does each of these cars actually go when it is cold and miserable? How far does each go when the weather is perfect? Then put that on the graph.
AKA, I doubt we’ll see them in cars designed in Cali anytime soon.
On the way home later that evening, temps were 28F. Left again almost fully topped off with estimated range of 310mi after visiting a supercharger. Arrived home with estimated 70mi of range left.
It would make EVs much more attractive for me, until charging infrastructure is more widely deploid, and allowing for a more gradual move away from oil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
Also, if your car can turn on its engine automatically, Stirlings and regular ICE have the same problem - Something is autonomously generating carbon monoxide and consuming your fuel without a human watching it. Spooky.
Additionally it would at best be a benefit in hot climates where the battery needs cooling. In the cold you want to retain the heat not turn it inefficiently into energy.
Toyota's hybrids (Prius, etc.) have used Atkinson cycle ICE, instead of Otto (one maximizes fuel economy, the other power delivered, I heard).
Tesla uses battery heaters if I'm not mistaken.
But IC engines do have problems with the cold. Especially if using Diesel or E85. Most of those issues are now invisible because manufacturers do add fallbacks for those.
It varies model to model depending on the presence of heat pump, how the battery cooling/heating system works, etc. I think longterm we will need more detailed mpgE/range numbers for EVs than the old school city/highway EPA numbers.
Something like a grid of 30F/70F/90F x 25mph/60mph/75mph x HVAC on/HVAC off.
As with many things EV, Tesla is still ahead of the competition on this as you can see on the graph. So Tesla generally has more range to spare (300mi++) relative to competition (mostly 250mi-ish), and then performs better in winter against the stated range.
On the plus side if you have a garage you can plug-in at night, schedule charging, pre-warm the cabin, jack up the seat heaters, and pre-condition the battery all on shore power, so cold won't have as much of an impact on the outbound trip. However on the return if the battery is cold soaked you will definitely see an impact.
The other major EV difference is the range vs speed curve is different than for gas cars.
Gas cars the ICE engine has a certain minimum output which is generally wasted at lower city driving speeds (plus no regen braking unless hybrid). This is why ICE have higher mpg/range on highways.
EVs however its mostly a function of wind resistance so the faster you go, the lower the range. This can be quite noticeable at highway speed going 55-60mph vs say 75mph. Porsche Taycan has made some attempts to remediate this with having a 2 speed transmission, but I think we'll see more experimenting in this space.
Tesla understood that heat management is key to an EV, so they invested in designing a compact and elegant system (Google “octovalve”) to move heat wherever it was helpful to send it.
They also use intelligence to allow the car to optimize itself for charging. For example, you can use the Tesla smartphone app to have your car wake itself up and warm or cool both the battery and cabin while still plugged in. And if you use navigation to plan your charging stops, it will automatically precondition the battery pack as you are getting close for optimal charging speed.
Most of the cars that performed poorly on that graph were because of shoddy engineering by people who don’t understand the problem space.
That’s not a problem with EVs, it’s a problem with bad engineers and management who care about the wrong things.
The Bolt has CarPlay. The screen is much nicer in the Tesla, but CarPlay brings a lot of additional functionality and flexibility.
The Bolt is lighter, more nimble, smaller. For city driving, it's really handy.
The Bolt has normal door handles that don't require any special movement to open them. Normal locks, mechanical glove box latch, full windshield wiper controls, a normal shift handle to select regen (good because my wife hates regen, I love it).
The Bolt has slightly stronger regen, especially with the paddles. And it has a saner regen-to-stop mode, which only functions in drive. Unlike Tesla, which makes you use the accelerator pedal to get the car to reverse down the driveway (which just feels weird).
The seats are crappy on both. I prefer cloth to vinyl, though. And I especially don't like the slippery vinyl on Tesla's steering wheel.
The Bolt is vastly cheaper. Like, half as much.
The Tesla charges much faster with DC fast charging. If you only charge at home they are identical in this regard.
Overall, I feel like the Bolt is a much, much better deal if you factor in the cost. The Tesla is much faster, has more range, heated rear seats, and it makes fart noises. Of course, it also has AP, which some people like.
The Bolt feels like a car that happens to be electric. The Tesla feels like a computer that happens to have wheels.
My wife would be happy with another Bolt when the lease on this one expires next year. I won't buy another Tesla without CarPlay and proper wiper controls, but my next EV will need to be faster than the Bolt. So I'm thinking Taycan.
The Bolt makes me wish that VW would make an electric Golf R. Same size, better interior, more power. Aside from getting screwed over by LG's flubbed manufacturing of the batteries, the Bolt really over-delivers compared to what I expected from it.
I like this, simple and effective.
You can't have it in the US, though.
It's basically head and shoulders above the competitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1kHsd3Ocxc
ICE vehicles have endured every known failure you can think of and car manufacturers have fixed all of these...over time.
It will take some time before all the snafu's with EV's are ironed out. Tesla is at the forefront since its more of a tech-company than a car manufacturer.
BTW: Volkswagen and Mercedes already have heat-pumps in their EV's.
Gasoline vehicles eventually outcompeted them by reaching 60mph and having more range (sound familiar?) but the parent isn’t wrong about Rockefeller, cheap and abundant fuel came 2 years later:
> …growing electrification of lighting produced a drop in kerosene demand, creating a supply problem. It appeared that the burgeoning oil industry would be trapped into over-producing kerosene and under-producing gasoline since simple distillation could not alter the ratio of the two products from any given crude. The solution appeared in 1911 when the development of the Burton process allowed thermal cracking of crude oils, which increased the percent yield of gasoline from the heavier hydrocarbons.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline
Jay Leno has an entertaining segment driving around LA in his restored Baker, he can tell you all about it, fascinating vehicle: (starts at 3:20)
https://youtu.be/OhnjMdzGusc
For example, GM can add a heat pump to improve their winter performance (Bolt) but if it is a new part that needs to be integrated into their assembly, there’s a cost to it that cannot be recouped. Batteries are already expensive. Tesla is less sensitive to costs as it had no profit pressures.
Startups and large companies necessarily need to have different thinking and that’s ok. When the giants turn around, they can quickly copy the upstart. Car engineering is not as complicated as rocket science.
Overall, I'm very happy with my plug-in hybrid as my commute to work is about 10 miles each way. If I drive anywhere outside the electric range, the car simply switches to burning gas. I find this car extremely pragmatic. Obviously YMMV.
Every thread about EVs is just like the ~discourse~ about LED traffic lights. [1]
"We must stop making pure ICE cars"
"But pure EVs aren't ready"
"But we must stop making pure ICE cars!"
"But pure EVs aren't ready!"
Back and forth for _literally 20 years_ in which this little-known Japanese company, Toyota, has been producing an insanely popular line of hybrid sedans called "Prius". [2] I live in a small town and I can't really drive anywhere without seeing at least one Prius. They are everywhere. The used ones are not super-expensive, either, especially compared to a pure EV that needs a bigger battery.
Hybrids have been viable for _twenty years_ and people are still debating ICE vs. EV.
Plug-in hybrids are now becoming more common, and even big pickup trucks are talking about mild hybridization. And a Prius can go 500 or 600 miles on a tank and then just refuel. A pure EV means no spontaneous road trips. Not a problem with any hybrid.
Pure ICE should be out of the picture for 50% of drivers, but we are still using pure EVs as a weak man [3] to pretend that ICE cars are still viable in the post-Prius-plugin era.
It makes me a little mad.
[1] Technology Connections made a video on this ~discourse~ and how dumb it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prius
[3] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap... Like the Nissan Leaf. Short range, cheap, bad in winter. No excuse to not talk about Priuses.
Seems really harsh, my own hybrid (not Sanra Fe) does that at around -13C.
The surprising part of this graph for me is that I thought all EVs had a similar magnitude of loss in the winter... guess not! Kudos to Tesla on this particular metric.
Anything liquid might end up freezing. In an EV that's electrolytes, cooling liquid, brake fluids, etc. Of course, batteries can be heated in an EV and that helps. Simply using them heats them up. That's why many EVs have battery cooling. Also many owners might want to turn up the heat remotely so they enter a nicely warmed car instead of an ice box. That costs energy and range of course.
So, it's not all that black and white. But overall, it seems EVs can do well under arctic conditions. All the big vendors test under those conditions. The cold hard reality (to paraphrase the alarmist title) is that it isn't that big of a deal.
> In Norway — where half of all new cars are plug-ins — tests show that EVs lose about 20% of their driving range and take longer to charge in cold temperatures, according to the Norwegian Automobile Federation.
Naturally people who don't like EVs are going to cherry-pick these problems, but the mixed results suggest to me that it's down to a deficiency in the design and testing process at some companies. I had a 2009 Prius where the rubber pad on the metal hatchback handle melted, fell off, and left a thick streak of rubber adhered to my license plate. It was a known issue in that model of Prius and affected a lot of people in the southwestern US. Was it a great engineering challenge to create a handle that could handle such heat? Did they consciously decide to sell something that would fail in an ugly and embarrassing way right below their brand logo? I doubt it; I suspect it was a new design that they failed to test rigorously enough.
eg Oslo this January was above freezing every day, and only below freezing a few nights. https://www.accuweather.com/en/no/oslo/254946/january-weathe.... Compare that to Chicago https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/chicago/60608/january-weat...
Oslo is colder than like 90% of the inhabited parts of the planet...it's probably fine to use it as an example when talking about cold weather performance of EVs
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hottest-c...
The record low for Feb in Oslo (1991 - 2020 data) is -5.3°F. That's an average winter night for me. https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-...
Another way of looking at this... heating degree days.
https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weatherall-print.php3?s=... vs https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weatherall-print.php3?s=...
Oslo has 6286.8 heating degree days. Toronto, Ontario has 7342.8.
Toronto is substantially colder than Oslo (edit...) when it comes to the extremes of weather.
(edit: correction) - Oslo's is https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weatherall.php3?s=88410&...
which has the heating degree days as 7787.8 which is now comparable to Toronto.
It is very difficult to get it colder than the water. Note also that Oslo is on a warm current - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Corrient... - the Norwegian current is a continuation of the Gulf Stream (compare the California current which is a cold one)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo
> Oslo has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfb)[48] or, if the original Köppen winter threshold −3 °C (27 °F) is used, an oceanic climate (Cfb) in the 1991–2020 base period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_climate
> Examples of oceanic climates are found in Glasgow, London, Bergen, Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Bilbao, Oviedo, Biarritz, A Coruña, Bayonne, Zürich, Copenhagen, Prague, Skagen, and Paris. With decreasing distance to the Mediterranean Sea, the oceanic climate of northwest Europe gradually changes to the subtropical dry-summer or Mediterranean climate of southern Europe
> The oceanic climate exists in an arc spreading across the north-western coast of North America from the Alaskan panhandle to northern California, in general the coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest. It includes the western parts of Washington and Oregon, the Alaskan panhandle, western portions of British Columbia, and north-western California.
Compare this to the continental climates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder,_Colorado#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago#Climate (has the population of 1/2 of all of Norway)
With no large bodies of open water, the air temperature is not moderated by the release of heat from the water and can go further to extremes on both ends.
Oslo, Norway:
Average low, coldest month: -5.3 C
Record low, all time: -26 C
versus
Indianapolis, Indiana, United States:
Average low, coldest month: -6.2 C
Record low, all time: -33 C
Why not Minneapolis, or Cheyenne, or some other North American city that is also away from the coasts? Why not Regina?
I think part of the problem is that because EVs are still new, people are going to expect or demand reliability. It's only better if it's better in every way.
When I worked in a cold city, you would occasionally hear people say, "Sorry I'm late for work, boss. Car wouldn't start, and I had to get a jump."
Because it's new, saying, "Sorry I'm late for work, boss. It's cold, so my car had less range and I had to stop at the Slurp-n-Burp to recharge" isn't going to be met with the same level of sympathy.
The Gulf Stream really works.
e.g. https://cms.accuweather.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/stati...
Crazy thing is this January there looks to be only one night where it went below zero.
Some places say the fluid doesn't actually freeze but becomes too viscous to function properly. Others say it's condensation in the vacuum booster line, effectively making them non-power brakes. And still others say the fluid itself won't freeze, but the water it absorbed will.
I know power steering fluid gets too viscous and can blow out the hoses on a Dodge Avenger because it can’t get through the cooler.
Road salt is our big problem here, but that's true for everyone who has winter.
FWIW my neighbor has a Tesla and loves it...
Edit: and also, some areas are not using salt for environmental reasons, like Portland.
Not if your municipality uses grit instead of salt.
Road salt problems always makes me wonder how much the vehicle plays into that.
I've driven 20+ year old cars without a spot of rust while there are vehicles that are 5 years old with rust problems.
I think the real variable when it comes to road salt issue is vehicle quality.
It depends on how much the OEM wants to spend on fancy paint and coatings, how much the vehicle's use degrades that coating, how much salt the vehicle is exposed to, what kind of salt (liquid stuff gets everywhere much more effectively) and what if any steps the owner takes to mitigate the salt.
You can make generalizations like "Volvo loves to galvanize stuff and Toyota DGAF" but without controlling for the life the vehicle will have that doesn't really let you make predictions about a specific vehicle.
The classic, pro: works well even under high temperatures resulting from prolonged braking. Con: absorbs water over time and must be replaced fairly often even if not stressed.
New kind, pro: does not absorb water and does not degrade as much on its own. Con: braking action gets "spongy" when the fluid heats up from prolonged braking.
Unless you actively mix it with water (like you do antifreeze) you are going to have a hell of a time getting glycol based brake fluid to absorb enough water to freeze at any earthly temperature. Maybe if you ran a system without the cap on the reservoir for decades in a very humid climate you could do it but even then I think the odds are long at best.
I vote condensation.
For people who use their EV solely for commuting, it’s not a big deal, since a commute distance is still well below the reduced range in cold temperatures.
It is a huge deal for people who take winter road trips. The range reductions cited in the article could easily spell the difference between getting to the destination in one shot, versus having to take a >30 minute stop to recharge midway. 30 minutes is an absolute minimum figure that assumes there’s an available fast charger conveniently close to the route. If not, detours+slow charging could easily add an hour or more to travel time.
Unfortunately, no such method of travel ever has or ever will be invented, so I guess we'll just have to rely on internal combustion engines for the rest of eternity.
There used to be a private ski bus charter service on weekends but that shut down due to the pandemic.
It depends on how long your "commute" is.
A dozen miles across San Francisco? Not a big deal.
There are plenty of people who commute long distances every day. There are thousands of people who commute to New York City every day from Pennsylvania.
There's none of that with ICE vehicles.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/coldweather.shtml
Also cars in general as they age gradually get worse mileage.
From the link you linked, city driving 15% and "as much as 24% for short (3- to 4-mile) trips". That is not really similarly bad or worse.
ICE are way less affected by cold than battery vehicles. It's been 2 decades since I even had a block heater for any of my cars or pickups - modern electronic fuel injected engines are very good at properly metering and vaporizing fuel to start at low temps. And yes, they do get reduced mpg, but it's not that much, and given the ubiquity of gas stations, hardly can be talked about as a range limitation.
And for the record, they keep the cabin much more comfortable than a lot of electrics can afford to do. Turning those precious kWHs in your battery into heat is brutal on the battery.
I think electric vehicles are the future, and I like ours. But no way the article here is wrong: most are not really yet as ready for cold climates as modern ICE are. You get trade-offs).
(For the record: I drive (drove, actually, don't drive much at since I retired) mostly in Minnesota. Subzero driving has been part of my life for 50 years.)
This EV test however is barely in cold weather, it gets a lot worse when it's cold.
Engine heaters are generally used for long term reliability and comfort. Years of daily cold starts can do problems, but most cars on road can start from cold.
Literally no one is doing this, unless you have a diesel engine, you're parked outside, the temperatures are exceptionally cold (<= -10F?), and you weren't planning on driving for more than a day. It's something you'd see on, like, farms or semi truck lots; not houses.
The risk of not starting isn't really in the engine itself; it's in the fuel "gelifying". Diesel is gross.
But sure; the issue is overblown, especially when the majority of EVs on the list still retain >10% of their maximum battery capacity in freezing weather, and the highest range EVs on the list (where you'd expect to see the highest drop) are only losing a few percentage points. This is not a situation where EVs have a fundamental problem; it's a situation where a few manufacturers (cough Detroit cough) are royally screwing something up.
The guy with the 25yo shitbox that doesn't have enough compression to start in the cold is.
But I don't think that's the kind of ownership experience you want to be comparing any newish car to.
I do, as do multiple members of my immediate family who park our vehicles outside. We have block heaters so we can start them on those -10F mornings. None of us have diesel either - Toyota 4runner, Ford Explorer, GMC Sierra. Every winter we get at least a couple weeks where it's that cold in Wisconsin.
Factually incorrect. Block chargers are ubiquitous in Alaska where I grew up and you should probably use one well before -10F to reduce wear on your engine.
Living in a cold-weather climate, it is the local norm to plug a car (gas or diesel) during winter even if you're only parked for a couple hours. Most cars purchased locally come with engine block heaters installed and most private parking spaces (houses, apartments, office buildings, surface lots, parking garages, etc.) provide an outlet.
> °F
MBTA should be putting up more wires, not taking down what they currently have. Battery buses aren't much cheaper than trolleybuses, if it all (they have significant infrastructure costs too), and in every other aspect trolleybuses are far superior
https://insideevs.com/news/566954/bev-epa-range-comparison-f...
If you mean salt, then you can get a mechanic/etc to spray an undercoating reach year to keep the rust away.
Teslas are not super expensive to repair if you compare them to BMW instead of Honda Civic. And they are much more reliable than BMWs and require almost no maintenance. Source: I repaired about 10 teslas.
Do (Li-ion) batteries store less charge (Coulombs) when charging cold?
Or is it when discharging cold, they convert some of the energy to waste heat?
Or do the same charges translate to less energy (e.g. less voltage difference at same current) when the battery is discharged cold?
Maybe someone can give a good explanation, I found it hard to get a straigt answer :-)
Most people I know report that their formerly 350km vehicles only drive 250km if it is really cold outside. Of course you also have heating withing the cabin that is not an insignificant factor. So cars perform worse, but they don't completely break down.
Although I had it happen with a company car once when it was very cold outside. Display told me to stop as soon as I can. I did so and the car went completely dead. Left it there, the next day was considerably warmer and the car worked normally again.
The range is about 70-80 miles of general town driving 30-40mph in the UK winter, so cold, but not freezing most of the time. The range doesn't seem to be noticeable different between warm and cold days. Average temp is probably around 5c.
The range does drop noticeable on motorways. I haven't done a proper test, but I suspect it's probably only good for 40ish miles at 70mph.
As a second car it's brilliant. It's saved us a load on petrol doing the local trips, school runs, short commute, etc. Even with the current high power prices in the UK. It very much depends on what you plan to use it for, but if your usage profile fits what the car does well, it's a really nice car.
I plan to do a proper blog post at some point analyzing some data on it. Maybe after the summer and I'll see if the range improves.
I did look at a few other used models, one a couple of years newer, but a lot of miles on the clock and quite a bit more expensive. This one I got just had the best balance of price, age, condition, etc of the cars I saw.
I briefly looked at new ones, but prices started at around £27k, and I didn't really want to spend that much. I tend not to buy new cars.
It charges to 80 miles in the summer and 60 (effective) in winter. Keep in mind that I lose about 10 miles of range if I run the heater the whole time. So that's really comparing 80 to 70, and that's with 2 bars lost off the battery after 9 years. The only time I ever got range anxiety was last minute shopping once around the holidays when I got home with 7 miles left. So I'm happy to live with 10-15% less range in freezing whether.
A few details:
* It uses a lithium manganese battery, which I believe performs better in the cold, that is kept warm by an internal heater that I've never observed to reduce range. Personally I prefer lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), as it's the easiest/cheapest battery to make, arguably the safest, but also tends to be about 10% heavier. I really wish there was an open source approach to building them for hobbyists, since the only complicated part is maybe the carbon fiber, but I digress
* I almost bought a (2015?) Fiat 500e, as it had a little better performance. But the one I test drove had a conservative white pearlescent paint job that made me consider my retirement, so maybe I dodged a bullet. But holy (mackerel) was that thing fast. Also the smaller roof size wouldn't have left much room for the planned solar panel(s)
* I always charge overnight on ordinary 120 V for about 8-11 hours (I think, from memory?) and never notice an issue. They say that trickle charging is bad, but the physics just doesn't support that. My feeling is that the rush towards 240/400 V fast chargers was to appease a fossil fuel industry that wanted to preserve the muscle memory of filling up with gas, but I certainly don't miss the gas station. Our electric bill is $20/month more to drive 300-400 miles on electric to commute to a neighboring city, which is like 1/7 the cost of driving my 15 mpg truck (electrics get around 100 mpg equivalent)
* The battery is 24 kWh, but they also have 30, 40 and 62 kWh upgrades. At some point I may opt for the 40 with a small LiFePO4 reserve battery in the trunk to buffer the solar energy and roughly double my range, but haven't decided yet, maybe I'll max it out: https://leosons.com/nissan-leaf-battery-upgrade-frequently-a...
Edit: how could I leave without mentioning the heated seats, steering wheel and instant-on electric heater/defrost. Most comfortable winter driving I've ever experienced. Also I'm not affiliated with Nissan, they just won me over for finally doing going engineering: good/fast/cheap pick any THREE!
I'm pretty sure it's fast charging that is more detrimental to the battery life. The included charge cable that charges from a regular home socket charges at 3.3kw, which is the max you can do with the type1 socket on the car even if you use a dedicated home charge point (unless your particular car has the optional 6.6kw onboard unit upgrade). My charge point can deliver 7kw, but the car limits it to 3.3kw.
The ChaDeMo socket can charge much faster (50kw I think?), But you aren't easily going to do that at home.
My Leaf doesn't have the optional 480 V charging port, to anyone reading this who might be interested in the Level 3 fast charging. I hadn't researched it yet, but that's a CHAdeMO port, thanks for mentioning that, this article claims a 40 minute charge to 80% on a 40 kWh Leaf:
https://www.davidaltmejd.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-charge...
55 kW @ 480 V DC would be 115 A and can go up to 400 A or 192 kW (258 hp)!
I also realized that I left out the detail that my car has about 60,000 miles. I test drove almost the same model from the same year with 90,000 miles and from what I could tell, it performed the same. Batteries today are so much better than when they were first used in laptops in the late 2000s and only got 300 cycles. Li-ion batteries today are getting more in the 4,000-40,000 (in the lab) cycle range.
Oh! Another details is that my Leaf was $7900 + ~$1000 taxes and fees or $8900 total. They were about $6900 right before the pandemic. The dealers don't really understand how well batteries hold up, and demand is low in flyover states like mine. But word is getting out, and I think that when people are powering their home off their electric Ford F-150, demand is going to rise substantially even for older used electrics.
I own a Chevy Bolt in Maine and the figure listed in this article is far off from what I have experienced over several winters here. At a temp of 20 F my bolt loses ~20% of its range from the EPA estimate, going from 236 to about 190miles of range. Conversely, my friend owns a Tesla Model 3 up here and his range degrades severely during winter on the order of 30%.
edit: He owns a Model 3, not a Model Y.
The temperature today in my area varied between 9 F at 9AM and 25 F at 3PM. My girlfriend happened to need to drive to several different towns/cities for her work so her total trip was 135 miles. Our Bolt says it has 50 miles left.
I only charge to 90% and just received a new 259 mile range battery as part of the Bolt recall. So the EPA range of my Bolt at 90% charge is 233 miles. If we take the Bolt's 50 mile left range claim at face value (which I have found to be overly pessimistic), then it got 185 miles of range today out of the expected 233, or a ~20% drop in EPA stated range.
So I just don't believe the numbers provided in the linked article. They are completely out of whack with my every day experience owning a Bolt through three winters in Maine.