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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe in the UK, but not where I am. It was -26 this morning. Batteries don't handle such temperatures well. And the nearest civilian airport is 400km away. I haven't seen a single all-electric car in my town since I moved here over a year ago.

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What percentage of the world's car owning population lives in a place with a restriction like that? Few enough that it would be fine to let you keep your ICE/hybrid vehicles with almost no impact on climate is my guess.

If I had to guess, you live in Canada which is a country of extremes like what you mention.

The solution for Canada probably isn't to prohibit ICE vehicles, but to disincentivize them heavily where they make less sense. So in the areas where extreme cold and long range is the use case, provide an exemption. Out here on Vancouver Island where the longest possible route is less than 500km and a cold day is one where there's frost on my car, there's really not a great reason for me to be buying a brand new ICE car 10 years from now. Same thing for when I lived in Vancouver and drove 5,000 km per year.

My point is that a huge majority of people live in circumstances where electric cars will be fine. We shouldn't let the corner cases (living in a place with extreme cold where driving 400km to the airport is routine) dictate what the rest of the world needs to do.

EVs are pretty impractical to virtually impossible for use in the vast majority of the American Midwest. With temperatures that frequently get below 0F in the winter and the huge distance between cities, I will be very surprised if EVs have anywhere close to a majority within the next 10-20 years here. Some people own them as their 'commuter' vehicle and own ICE vehicles for longer distances, but most people can't afford or don't have space to store 2 vehicles.

As of fairly recently, the average US household had 1.9 vehicles. [1]

[1] https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/highlights_of_the_2...

> What percentage of the world's car owning population lives in a place with a restriction like that?

Interior USA?

Yep where its so cold, block heaters are popular. You see little plugs sticking out from under the bonnet. Diesels are also less popular in frigid climates because the fuel becomes a gel at those temperatures.

With most BEVs nowadays, you can set the battery to warm up and also warm up the interior on mains power before you set off. Far more convenient and comfortable than scraping the frost off, getting into a freezing cold car, and hoping the engine gets warm enough to put out some warm air before you succumb to frostbite.

I've noticed that HN and Reddit tends to gravitate to ridiculous examples to show how "Solution A" can't possibly work.

This is a Tuesday in Finland.

The EV will just start. You press a button and it turns on. In under 5 minutes it will be so hot inside that you need to take off your jacket.

Yes, range will suffer if you don't pre-heat the battery (by plugging in the car over night), but I still get 200km range off my car even when it's up to -30 outside.

Isn't this a problem for gasoline cars too? Hence battery heaters?

Weirdly, the most popular car in Ulan Bator (capital of Mongolia) is the Prius because in their super cold winters it, of all cars, starts and runs best in the cold.

The Prius Secret is that the engine is so loosely tuned it doesn't have much friction when starting, the oil also has the viscosity of colored water :)

Best of all it uses the EV motor and battery to crank the ICE engine, there's no separate weak-ass starter motor.

Had mine in -30C weather for a weekend, cranked it on monday night and it just - started. Like it had been vacationing in the French Riviera.

Compare that to my old Diesel VW, which - when cranked at the same situation - made a sound like someone was strangling a moose. I had two attempts to get it to start, then the battery would run out because of the friction caused by the thick-ass oil.

Thanks for providing the details on why the Prius is so reliable in these harsh conditions. :)

Well yes and solar isn’t a great solution for arctic areas in the winter. There’s rarely a single blanket solution that works everywhere.

Solar panels actually do rather well in the north, even in winter. They are more efficient at cold temperatures. When the sun is up, colder air tends to have fewer clouds and having the sun lower on the horizon means static panels can be pointed more efficiently. Shorter trees mean housed generally have a better view of the horizon/sky/sun. And snow on the ground acts as a reflector, increasing the light hitting the panels. So long as you are below the actual arctic circle, there is a place for panels even in winter.

Current ICEs seem to be doing a good job of working everywhere. I won't downplay their disadvantages, but the slope down from the current local maximum is pretty steep, and it's not obvious that area electric cars currently (or can in the next 10 years) occupy constitutes an improvement.

Whitehorse in the Yukon has more sunny days than anywhere else in Canada.

Sure, the sun is only above the horizon for four hours a day, but during that time you get a good amount of power from your chilly panels.

When I lived up there I knew a ton of people living off-grid with solar and a battery setup. It's really common.

Honest question: what percentage of the worlds population live in areas with such conditions?

Relative to the population buying new cars regularly..? I'd guess a lot.

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