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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

Winter temperatures are just something people should be aware of if they're thinking about electric cars. If you live in a place that often has extreme cold during the winter, an electric vehicle may not be your best choice.

Any vehicle can have difficulty in extreme cold, though with an ICE engine, if it starts, it's generally okay after a short warm-up, and gasoline doesn't lose range by getting cold.

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It's not really just about being able to "start". Winter temps can affect fuel/energy efficiency of ALL cars regardless if they are EVs or not. ICE cars can lose somewhere between 22-34% in range.

Source: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/coldweather.shtml

i think its worth noting that at least the summary presented on this page could be sliced into two sections

1: different usage of accessories to make the occupants comfortable, e.g. warming up interior for longer, running heated seats... 2: physical changes that affect the overall car: denser air resistance, higher rolling resistance..

the one point that is specific to an ICE engine is friction from running colder oils, the rest seem to apply to both ICE, hybrid and electric vehicles, the latter two more so.

overall the takeaway seems to be that most losses in an ICE vehicles are not about the powertrain, whereas a hybrid/electric vehicle has almost all the losses of an ICE vehicle but with significantly more battery degradation.

People have different ideas of extreme cold. To me, -20 C is not "extreme cold" and I expect my car to start right up so long as I have not gone many days without using it. I would consider -30 or -40 C to be extreme cold. I get the feeling that maybe other people consider 0 C to be extreme cold. Where I live, it's not -20 C all winter, but it does get that cold a few times a year.

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