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I'm curious if a heater coil gives better battery life or worse battery life in cold environments. Also, better batteries has been an issue forever. Electric cars were invented alongside the combustion car, but they didn't have good batteries, and died because of it.

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Heater coil gives way worse battery life, but can still be useful to preserve other electronics in the cold.

Assuming you start the flight from mains power it depends on volume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantothermy

For a poorly insulated toy quadcopter it is a bad idea. Something, the size of a 747 might need active cooling. Between them there is a point where a little heating is probably a good idea.

If the batter is working hard delivering power, it will generate some heat on it's own.

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