My fuel economy drops about 20% on my petrol car in cold weather city driving. I don't know what causes the difference, perhaps waiting for the car to warm up and windows to defrost.
In this case EVs with "250 miles" range are losing 30%~ of that range for three months of the year and a further 20% over the first three years of their life, making them reliably closer to a 140-mile vehicle. People who are planning round-trip travel or commuting need to know this information, and unfortunately a lot of EV fans like to mock people for wanting high initial EV range as if winter and or capacity loss aren't real (even with the facts being readily available).
The Bolt is currently the best budget EV by far, but people buying it should consider it a 150-mile range vehicle with "bonus" miles above that.
Many places in the US, it is more than 3 months :)
I imagine it is so on some air-cooled cars (VW "Beetle", old 911 etc), but on most cars the cabin is heated off the engine's cooling system and does not require additional fuel, so it technically will "use fuel" but no more than the normal operation of the car.
There were aftermarket gasoline heaters available, which is probably what you're thinking of.
I totally understand wanting to have long distance range in an EV. But even with the cold, for most commutes, anything with that 150-mile-in-winter is range for the majority of trips.
But totally understood it’s a case by case basis. I have family who drove over 100 miles round trip for their daily commute in North Dakota. Those use cases exist, but I think many people without such extreme daily distances are thinking about their daily distance needs in unrealistic ways. I hope this isn’t what you’d consider mocking :)
"Does this car only do 80% of what I need it to" is a valid question when so much money is on the line.
I can still park at Home Depot with an EV, they don't crush them on site. Practically every Home Depot trip I've made was doable in any average vehicle. I see plenty of sedans and crossovers in the Home Depot parking lot. If it's something that's going to be a ton of stuff, I can rent their vans and trucks for $20. If I'm buying so much stuff I need an F-250, $20 isn't a significant part of that budget. I don't know why having an ICE is critical to go to Home Depot.
Towing, really depends on what you're needing to tow. Pulling your boat from the nearby storage to the boat ramp? Probably fine with an EV. Pulling a fifth wheel around national parks? Towing horses around? Definitely not an EV job, for sure.
But people aren't towing a fifth wheel with their Camry or their Rogue or their Equinox. The 99th percentile needs of most vehicles on our city highways could be accomplished with an EV without significant challenges, assuming decent charging is available.
I drove a Chevy Bolt for 4 years, 48k miles, and I never noticed any range degradation, most likely thanks to the strong liquid cooling system for the battery and the inability to fast charge the Bolt faster than 1C (50-55kW fastest charging speed, 60-66kWh size battery means .75-88C) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#C-rate)
Some cars absolutely will degrade like you describe, but that is not a guaranteed outcome for every EV, given the differences in fast charging capabilities and battery cooling capabilities.
I did not get my 238 miles EPA range on the Bolt in the winter, but I could easily get 200+ if I needed to squeeze out more range. I generally got closer to 150 miles not because I was forced to, but because my driving style and heating usage did not generally result in the highest efficiency.
If someone isn’t driving highway distances all the time, ‘warm up’ is quite inefficient for ICE vehicles, and tends to run very rich.
Totally right that if those factors aren’t there, it should get better fuel economy.
The person in the root comment proposed that their practice of letting their ICE car warm up to defrost in the winter may lead to decreased gas mileage. This is correct; it will.
Winter tyres though and winter fuel mixes? Those definitely have an effect.