The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter
axios.com
axios.com
I unhooked it and planned to drive 20 miles to the nearest charger, but after 1 mile of travel, it had dropped to 40 miles left. I turned around and drove back, now with ~20 miles left.
I parked the car in an unheated garage and plugged it back in, praying that the car would heat the garage to the point it could start charging. Maybe 2-3 hours later it started to take a charge, and 3 days later it was up to 150 miles, and I drove it to a super charger.
I realized after that, if I ever moved back to Maine and wanted a tesla I
- would need a heated garage
- I could never expect to leave my car overnight at a friends / trip during the winter.
Not plugging in when arriving and letting the battery freeze (cold soak) overnight, unplugging after 30 minutes of 1.5kW level 1 charging and basing his entire decisions on what the car's guess-o-meter says for remaining milage is pretty crazy IMO.
Seems like OP chose to do the worst thing possible at each juncture to ensure a bad charging experience.
It is normal for cars to use 2 or 3 kilowatts (an hour or two of charging) heating the battery up to temperature in freezing conditions, but once the pack is up to temperature it charges close to normal speed.
Yeah, I (and everyone else) totally do that…
Honestly, it’s kind of a joke how badly people want to defend the tech despite its current shortcomings.
Compared to plugging in an EV at night and forgetting about it and this being sufficient for 99 percent of my driving needs, getting gas sounds like it has vastly more shortcomings and that's before you look at any of the other crappy things about it.
When she got home late the last thing she wanted to do was to spend an extra 10-15 minutes or so filling up. Which frequently led to a panic the following day when she'd forgotten. She even ran out of gas a couple of times when she was really stressed the following day.
She much prefers the EV since it's always full. When she gets home it takes literally less than 10 seconds to plug it in. Next day it takes literally less than 10 seconds to unplug, and she never has to think about filling up for the rest of the day.
If all the factors you described are understood by humans, why aren't they factored into the display algorithm? If the car is going to drain battery for an hour getting warm before it can start to charge, then say that on the display.
All of these factors combine to make the range estimator a guesstimate on both gas and electric cars.
Teslas have great big dashboard screens. There was no need to leave OP thinking that the car was unchargable unless it was brought into a warm place.
What are you supposed to base it on? Does your EV come with a working crrystal ball? Should I read the car's horoscope?
I mean, really, I've read stupid statements, but blaming the user for trusting the displayed battery capacity on a device really takes the cake.
Also - if you arrive at your friend's place in the winter and park overnight, you won't lose a ton overnight if the car's just parked there.
The 30 different requirements for EVs to work in cold weather are too complex and prohibitively expensive. That 2035 deadline is never not going to be pushed back unless the EV industry pulls a rabbit out of a hat.
It's also not something you can expect to find anywhere other than at another EV owner's place. Admittedly over time that will become less of an issue but for now it's going to be pretty rare.
Maybe not if you're lucky and the existing dryer connection is already in your garage but it's not going to be that simple for most people. Again dryer connections get installed at build time and have for the last couple decades so most people already have them.
And if you're talking about extremes - then there's a reason why block heaters with external power connections are very common in certain places - even the best ICE struggles to start in -40C or less.
Conversely. Sailboats get more efficient in cold temperatures because more energy is imparted on the sail.
Huh? I've been cycling for 15 years, many of those years doing 15k km a year, all year round. Mountain biking on mountains at -15C, down to urban cycling in 38-40C scorching summer heat. I've never noticed speed, effort, stamina changing with temperature as you suggest.
And I've done lots of road cycling at constant 35-40km/h, descents of up to 70+km/h.
Scorching heat with high humidity has an opposite effect. H2O drops the density of air and you can go measurably faster than in drier air.
With N=15 years of gps data and 40-70 of those days per year below zero very few below -10°C. I can say that I ride slower on cold days on avarage.
I am not fit and do not track that at all. I can barely keep my avarage above 25km/h in city traffic for 15km, very few conflict points maybe twenty but not comparable to road cycling. So a km/h decrease of avarage speed during winter is common but not a given. I do not count bad road conditions, but Stockholm has really good maintanance during winter, ice free asphalt all year.
That seems to be born out by using better (read more expensive) winter riding gear. I naturally run a bit cold so spending on low temperature tights, base layer and jersey/jacket has made a massive difference for me.
Obviously there could be many reasons for this: less aerodynamic clothing, more cautious cornering etc etc, but the effect is very noticeable to me.
Winter fuel efficiency is worse because of a winter fuel mix, not because of air density.
ICE mpg tends to drop in cold weather, but this isn’t why. It’s usually because it takes longer to reach optimal operating temp or due to changes in fuel composition. Cold air can produce more drag but that problem exists irrespective of ICE or EV.
The pumping efficiency is unaffected as any losses on the exhaust side will be offset by increased pressure on the intake side.
This is why performance cars sport cold air intakes. This is also why your car won’t hit its quoted 0-60 time in a warmer environment — those tests are normally performed or normalized to cold air conditions + 0% humidity. Just what counts as cold depends on manufacturer / reviewer.
Anecdotally, I track efficiency and drive consistent routes, and don’t notice a diff.
Not likely, as an increase in air is going to be accompanied by a corresponding increase in fuel. Unless your fuel mapping is all messed up, it will give you more power, but not likely better fuel economy.
Increased rolling resistance from displacing snow is a far bigger cause of winter driving inefficiency.
That makes absolutely no difference at all.
That would be very surprising if it were true, given the very large effect density altitude has on airplane performance (engine and wing).
Note that it's 3% per 10°C delta so, for a 40°C swing (say 30°C/86°F summer to -10°C/14°F winter), that's a 12% difference in aero drag force.
Opening your window makes far more of a difference.
It's just about observable with very light and very aerodynamic aircraft at ground level if you can get them cold enough.
At -10°C/14°F, with no other adjustments, in the hands of a test pilot, that aircraft will have a ground roll of around 1000' and clear a 50' obstacle and come to a stop in around 1500'.
At 30°C/86°F, with no other adjustments, in the hands of a test pilot, that aircraft will have a ground roll of around 1150' and clear a 50' obstacle and come to a stop in around 1750'.
Flying in and out of 2000'-2500' strips with trees, it's impossible to not notice the performance difference with temperature. Perhaps the pilots who can't notice those differences don't fly into anything other than very long runways, but I don't think very many pilots miss the differences.
Dropping from 18 mpg to 10 mpg would increase your cost of fuel by 80%. It'd be hard to be oblivious to it.
Idling combustion vehicles is bad, but sometimes it's a necessary evil to ensure visibility so the driver can avoid harming other road users.
Not really, you're spending a fraction of the fuel you'd use per minute if you were driving.
So, in terms of pollution it's no worse than taking a short detour to wherever you were going.
> Not really
Yes it is, it’s bad on the engine.
Defrosting and toasting the cabin to 92F in freezing conditions usually burns about 1.2kWh to 3kWh while plugged in, but that is just a few tens of cents (or free depending on the charger) to get nearly instantly toasty and ready to drive.
$10 to $30 a month in power use to keep your battery toasty in the dead of winter isn't too bad a price IMO
Also, electricity supply isn't prone to supply shocks when Russia invades Ukraine, or the Saudis want to flex their muscles.
Even back when I owned a mid 80s Nissan around 2000 I was getting 25mpg (us gallon).
Why is US mileage so awful?
Having all wheel drive or 4 wheel drive, high ground clearance, a poor aerodynamic design (driving 70mph or 80mph sounds bad in many of these cars) also hurts efficiency.
No idea why: speed limits are often higher in EU and often with more hills.
I actually just looked at my economy graph, and I can't tell how much winter affects it. The variance is less than the variance of my driving habits. So less than 20%.
Your car must be faulty.
That sounds like nonsense. What were you driving that had such a reduced mileage?
Doesn't matter whether it's Level 1 charging at 1.5kW (120v) or Level 2 at 6.8kW, or if it's -11F out, just plug it in and give it time to charge.
Leaving your car unplugged in a frigid environment will cold soak the pack and cause your pack to spend an hour or two worth of energy heating up to temp on Level 1 charging, or 10 to 15 minutes on Level 2 charging. This is normal and you just need to leave the car plugged in.
With an ICE car your heating generally takes minutes to heat up, versus I can have my car ready in a minute or two with just turning on the heat to melt off the quarter inch of ice build up on my windshield and windows.
I’ve seen new developments advertising electric car chargers already.
Are those common? I know they exist, but I thought they were unusual. I've certainly never seen an actual one.
Luckily for those people they will have millions of older ICE cars to choose from.
This will be hopefully mitigated when all PHEVs only run the gas engine as a generator and get rid of the transmission, but I don't think we're there yet.
If it's cheaper then they'll do it.
More generally, you can remove a chunk of the transmission in a hybrid and use a simpler engine even if it's not a generator. The complexity isn't a big deal. And the moderate cost gets offset by significant fuel savings.
On the other hand, I have driven a 2018 Bolt EV for 4 years, 48k miles, and never once had an issue with the car being unplugged and returning to a car with less range than I left it.
Sometimes we forget that we have 100 years of infrastructure behind our internal combustion engines and about 10 behind the electric vehicles.
In the first 10 years of internal combustion engines, you bought benzene at the local apothecary and used that to fuel your car.
Three years of EV in a more or less unheated garage and I'm still just charging off my 15A 120V outlet. It's fine. I plug in every other day or so. But you know what I don't do? Freeze my ass off standing in a gas station in subzero temperatures and howling winds! Not missing that at all.
You’re right but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not the right time for people in certain areas or with certain lifestyles to have an EV.
"Trucks don't belong in cities for personal transportation."
"I need a truck for my farm."
"Vehicle transportation is a huge chunk of global warming contributing fuel consumption, so we need to reduce car usage in cities towards more and better public transport, and EVs when possible."
"I don't live in a city and the bus only comes twice every day and I have to drive 30 miles to work."
These are not mutually exclusive statements!
EVs aren't great for long distance transportation. Particularly ill suited for long haul trucking in winter. But that's not what most people do. Most vehicles drive short distances in fair weather. Many American families have more than one car. That second car doesn't need to be able to drive cross country in the winter. I don't complain that my sneakers are not snow shoes so they are useless to me and anyone else. No one is talking about making ICE vehicles illegal. At most there might be restrictions on usage in cities, no different to how some european cities keep private cars outside of historical city centers.
Certainly in Europe. Not directly but via a back door:
Must not enter the city center in a diesel car
No new ICE cars after 2035
Diesel cars are an issue due to dust emissions. Most modern, read Euro 6 temp, and above, engines should be more or less fine. How the latter will be controlled and enforced so, excluding older cars from certain places, is trickey.
I have to point out so, this will be a social issue. Well off people will most switch to EVs, one of the reasons I guess why VW and others are diverting marketing budgets from EVs (read Diesel) to EVs. Those that cannot afford EVs will face issues, since it either used petrol cars, with higher consumption, or used diesels, with issues going to some places due to emissions.
Apparently some truck models over there have a built-in metal tray for this purpose.
If you perused the manual, you found out why - it suggested you light a small fire under it to serve as an outback engine heater.
The Niva was, uh, an interesting car to own, but was amazing whenever conditions turned to shite. Nothing short of an anti tank mine would stop it.
It didn't like starting in the cold, and it didn't have battery enough to crank it for long. And failure-to-start was, um, not good.
The solution was a built-in electric heater and charger. Basically it was permanently plugged in so the battery was 100%,and the engine block was "not freezing cold" (I wouldn't go as far as "warm").
Had a push button start that fired up instantly, at the cost of an extra 3 seconds unplugging it it an emergency.
My point I guess is that you don't really have to heat the garage, you just need to warm the battery up a little.
Right! And I suspect by 2035, not having a 220v outlet in the garage will be like not having a microwave in your kitchen in the mid 90's.
Regardless, my cheap LEAF turned 8 just a bit ago and I’ve driven it in New England year-round for 8 years without issue, even with only level 1 charging at home. It’s fine for an around-town daily driver (which is what the LEAF is well-matched to).
I only have 220V in an indoor laundry room, not the garage. Adding it would only be a small one-time expense.
The breaker panel is in the garage so it'd be easy to add, but my only 220V devices, the dryer and stove (along with their outlets), are inside the house.
I've never heard of a dryer in the garage before. It isn't heated, and in winter months, it's cold enough that snow doesn't melt. Would that have an effect on drying my clothes?
Funny enough my internal dryer can cause my clothes to be damp, as the exhaust runs to the attic instead of directly outside, and the moisture can come back into the dryer. (can be overcome by installing an active exhaust fan)
my brother does a lot of stuff with power tools, and whenever he moves he has to have extra lines brought in by the power company. While houses frequently have 220 coming in, they don't have 3-phase.
Common contracts - at least here (Italy) - are for 3 or 4.5kW, a few are 6 kW, 10 kW or more are rare, and you probably need to get to 15kW to be able to have those 10kW available for charging.
This discussion is assuming that the amperage is the same. The common "default" AC socket in the USA is AFAIK the NEMA 5-15, which is a 15A socket; the common "default" AC socket in other countries is AFAIK usually either 16A, 15A, or 10A, so at most you'd have one extra ampere.
Of course, if you're adding a dedicated socket where you'd expect to plug a car (or other high-power devices like a large air conditioner), you'd put a higher-power socket like a 20A one. But this discussion is, as far as I understand, about what you could find on a random garage; I believe it would be unexpected to not have at least one common "default" AC socket on am enclosed garage, but finding a higher-power AC socket would be less likely.
Here in Australia it's possible, though not very common. ~400v is useful for some larger sized machinery.
As an example, a charger in some EVs is 87% efficient when charging from 120v and the same charger is 94% efficient when charging from 240v.
Compared to a normal 220V 10A outlet where your max is 2kW.
Higher voltage also means you get more power for less current, less heat loss in the cables.
If you have an electric car, the example above should explain why you want to get a proper charger with proper wiring installed. Don’t use the ones which plug straight into a shuko.
What about the millions of people who live in apartments and rowhouses?
If they have cars, they have a place to park them, and this place can host a charger. Outdoor parking without access controls may have security issues, but that's true without a charging point, too.
You've got to break that circle at some point.
But this is not it.
Wealthy neighborhoods in the US are going to get these on the streets eventually. Places where poor folks live don't have the ROI needed to justify it. Wealthier folks tend to be older and have more time on their hands to do things like go complain at city council meetings.
You're going to get these chargers in the richest neighborhoods first (of course), and eventually to the decent middle class neighborhoods. The poorer areas where blue collar workers live (apartment complexes) will get it approximately never - the city won't invest in those areas because fuck them, and the apartment complexes won't invest in them, because fuck them.
There are a significant proportion of residential developments where it wouldn’t even be possible to install such infrastructure due to the legal framework around how the properties are owned and maintained.
Legislative changes are needed here to make this happen, but alas our government has had its mind on “other things” for quite a few years now and doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.
By 2035 those streets must be refitted with chargers, one per parking slot and somehow replace the energy distributed as gasoline and diesel with electrical energy. If that doesn't happen people will have to leave their car at a charging station for far more time than what it takes to fill a tank with gas. And that doesn't solve the problem of the energy.
Or having a car will get so expensive that only a few people will afford it and that will solve all those problems, but create others.
I personally think urban development should be more expensive to cover its externalities (i.e. forcing people to buy cars because of landowner-enriching sprawl).
Get your politicians to call my politicians.
When the majority of Americans dislike and/or are unhappy with 100° Thanksgiving, beepocalypse, aging out of being able to drive, or whatever else “cars” wreck, then they will start voting to push the externalities off to heavier users.
Eventually, the resulting ghost sprawl of empty suburban neighborhoods will provide enough recyclable building materials to rehome us all nicely in subterranean hive cities. Our eyes will evolve larger to gather the dim light. Our ears will shrink to muffle the incessant hum. Our useless teeth will disappear after a few centuries of microbial food paste consumption. Clothing will become an affectation.
Alternatives are important here since while most Americans drive that doesn’t mean that they love everything about it and won’t consider alternatives. There are a ton of people who would love not to pay thousands of dollars to sit in traffic and make their health worse, but they don’t see a good alternative. The activists getting bike infrastructure, improved buses, and density are giving them that option and climate change is causing a lot of younger people to realize that the timing has to be stepped a lot since even EVs produce more CO2 than any other form of ground transportation.
There’s big generational component here, too. Most drivers aren’t old enough to think of roads without traffic as normal, and economic trends mean that a lot of younger people are faced with even longer commutes in cars, not to mention that transit is more appealing when you have smartphones.
1. In addition ti the obvious one of pollution, housing & retail prices are high due to requirements to provide subsidized parking to drivers. Removing that allows owners to make different decisions.
It's fair to say that people hogging chargers even when they're done charging is a problem, there's a public charger on my street that is near 100% utilization. However this seems pretty solvable- companies can just charge per minute as long as the spot is occupied and let the free market sort it out.
Adding public chargers is also a great way for places like malls, grocery stores, offices, etc to stay relevant, since my weekly shopping trips would probably be enough to keep a car topped off
Makes sense to charge a penalty every minute a charger is connected but not drawing power (full battery).
I don’t have an EV or a car at all, but if I did my charging regimen would be “plug it in at the fast charger at the grocery store and charge it while I shop”. It’s just not a big deal.
We certainly don’t need to make our residential streets more ugly than having a bunch of cars parked on it already does by stringing up charging infrastructure all over it.
We all charge our EVs on those same outlets, and I never heard of anybody not having a full charge the next morning.
The main reason why we have so many EVs here -> they are more reliable in the cold. People stopped freezing to death in their Diesels that got stranded on the roadside.
Rolling power outages in many states last couple of days. Many forms of energy are being retired faster then wind solar are being brought online.
People wildly overestimate advances. Look at how much has changed in the last 20 years. Not much.
Now compare that to the seemingly endless number of evangelists who think that 10 years from now is a good time to impose a mandate to kill all new ICE vehicle manufacturing, in spite of EV tech being only 80 years (or 30 years of "modern tech hard push") behind ICE infra.
This is how every conversation about EV goes.
Person A: "look how awesome EV is!"
Person B: "yeah, but it won't work for me based on where I live and the needs I have from a car. It seems foolish to push a mandate for a technology that can't be proven to work how the vast majority of people need it to work."
Person A: "you are being unfair in your comparison!" or "no, you are only imagining those problems!"
Literally any location in the northern US, especially the more rural and more dense urban, and doubly true if you make under 30k per household person and don't already have a circuit in your garage for an electric oven or electric clothes dryer. I suspect the same is true for other locations in the world.
Well, FWiW the Australian (and New Zealand) standard across the entire country is 240v with (most) internal circuits rated for 10 A .. but a call to an electrician gets you a { 15 | 20 | 25 | 32 } amp circuit pulled from the household breaker box (if high amp circuits weren't added at build time) [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/NZS_3112
In other EV news an Australian state (South Australia) had a net 104.1 per cent wind and solar over seven days (ie produced more renewable energy than total energy used and exported the excess) [2], and in my state "Renewables reach 84 pct share of world’s biggest isolated grid" [3]
[2] https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australias-incredible-week...
[3] https://reneweconomy.com.au/epic-stuff-renewables-reach-84-p...
So, uhh, we have the infrastructure to charge EV's in isolated rural parts of the country and have had for decades .. increased generation is an issue but we have plans to significantly increase global green hydrogen production and export excess over local demand.
My comment specifically mentioned a 2030 or 2035 mandate, which is a US mandate. Why would you argue against a US mandate by talking about Australia? You're not doing the EV group any favors by ignoring the problems people describe that prevent them from buying one, and there is currently no US legislation to enable a mandate in the timeframe it would be required.
No. How did arrive at that conclusion? Did you misread the user names and assume I made that comment?
> Why would you argue against a US mandate by talking about Australia?
You made a statement about other places in the world which was false, I gave an example of why it was false. You are now better informed, you're welcome.
But no, what I said was not false. I said that I suspect there are other locations in the world where this is true (meaning northern US isn't the only one), and the reply was that there are locations where it isn't true (Australia).
A few points of note;
* like or not Australia as a country is an interesting case study wrt "how do other countries fare?" .. we have charging capabilities .. but hellish distances between towns outside of cities. On the plus side the vast bulk of the population is urban | near urban .. so it's only the actual outback | rural | FiFo types that may be left with ICE down the timeline.
* Future mandates are aspiration and exert a pressure to change; come crunch day it may have come to pass that sufficient recharge capability has been pushed out to Backwater Dale in Banjo County .. or not. When the reality comes to pass there is the option to modify policy in the face of some areas being better suited for mandated EVs than others.
In the US, I also do not care much about whether cars are EV or not (my only actual hangup about EV as a technology is the raw material sourcing. It is perhaps as immoral as how we obtain oil, and we do not have a story on what to do with the waste). I may even buy one in a couple years (I run all my cars to the point where they need constant repair, and only buy used cars, so the average age of my cars when they are retired is about 12 years). But that is different than the fantasy that EV as a primary form of personal transportation will work for the vast majority of the northern US.
I think the opposite of the intended effect will actually happen. We are forcing a mandate without a means for it to work.
This is actually a larger problem in Canada than the US, and most of the political and policy discussion is in favour of this change.
I am discussing the mentality of the opposition in the US and the reasons they cite where the EV solution does not work for them. If your government is committed to making it work by 2035, that's a different matter. The US government has made no such commitment, they only discuss mandates. All of the pain, none of the gain.
Only North/Central America and Japan uses ~100V systems. The rest of the planet uses ~200V systems where more wattage in your outlets is standard.
Brazil (which is in South America) has many cities using 110V/115V/120V/127V (you can see at https://antigo.aneel.gov.br/tensoes-nominais which voltages are used for a given city). Note that a single city can have both ~110V and ~220V, and sometimes both can be found in the same building, or even in the same room.
This is where I'd hope a government looking to encourage EVs would step in and help, if they're trying to make things happen before 2035.
E.g., in my area, the regional council has a scheme where home owners can get a very low interest (or even no interest) loan to install good insulation, and you can also get another one to install a heat-pump.
They're run through banks, but backed by the regional (and maybe central?) government.
But, doing something like this will, initially, only subsidise the people who can already afford to buy an electric vehicle.
TL;DR - it used to be that you couldn't refuel your car unless the servants brought more on horses, as the only service stations focused on oats. But we invested in infrastructure.
https://www.fox29.com/news/pennsylvania-warned-of-rolling-bl...
This is not an artic circle problem. This is a problem that affects way more of the world than you seem to realize. Sorry that we don't all live in mild climates.
I'm unsure why wind-chill is relevant to a car being charged in a garage?
> This is a problem that affects way more of the world than you seem to realize.
The original commenter was stating that EVs were entirely unsuitable for a hypothetical person.
The only way that it I can envisage it being entirely unsuitable is if they had no access to grid electricity.
My comment about a hut in Siberia is based on that.
Yes, some Americans might need to upgrade certain circuits, but that's not an blocker, it's just an implementation detail.
I'm very well aware of how cold it can get in the USA, but that doesn't prevent EV use, it just requires investment in infrastructure, and that's an investment I'd hope a smart government would subsidise if it's serious about reducing emissions.
Public transport will also have to be EV based. Trains won‘t cut it in most areas outside cities.
And besides - what you‘re saying is insanely risky. You want to keep going with ICEs for 15 years? This would just push back the necessary transition another decade. We would loose the time we desperately need to make the necessary changes.
Sounds like it's time for you to vote for the prohibition of self-service gas stations!
If you have "summer diesel" in your tractor during a cold spell, it will gel. And a block heater won't help, since the fuel gels in the fuel lines and tank too. And trying to start the engine pulls in that gel into the fuel filter and sort of strains the chunks out, causing your fuel filter to need to be replaced even once it's warmed up.
I'm not sure at exactly what temperature it happens, but a Kansas winter will typically gel summer diesel at least a couple of times.
I don't know where you live, but here in Germany my diesel car had no big problems with -19°C around 10 years ago. Biggest problem was heating the interior that the windows remain ice free during driving. I want to see your new electric car driving in this circumstances the 100km I had to drive.
And please note, 2035 means 13 years in the future. I don't doubt that the infrastructure for electric cars can work in 100 years...but what's with 13?
I believe you that it's no problem for a diesel. But it's no problem for electric either.
But I also was in a good sized metro area with a couple Tesla superchargers not far off my route, so my backup plan was to stop at one for 15 minutes if it ever looked like I might not make it.
It depends on the formulation of your diesel. If you had a tank of "summer diesel" it would be gel at that temperature. Generally the supply chain starts changing the formulation as the weather gets colder and everything is good until you get to arctic temperatures. But if you fill up at a station that doesn't sell a lot of diesel and they still have summer diesel and its an early cold spell, or you are driving a vehicle you don't fill often, you can be in trouble. There are also additives you can add on your own if you know you have summer diesel.
It's literally as easy as having the right fuel additives on hand before it gets too cold. It's not even an infrastructure problem.
I will say that you left out the most fun part of a good winter driving a diesel, which is when you can't fill up even at a station with diesel on account of the fuel gelled in the pump hose. Luckily the gas station on the way home from work is a truck stop and the pumps for the tractor-trailers were still working.
On a related note, it's not unusual for us to lose power here for a couple hours to a couple days at a time either in the worst of winter, or during summer storm season. What do you do with an electric car when the electricity is out in the neighborhood?
Filling up the car is the least painful part of driving in the winter. You park up next to a fuel pump with the heated seats slow-roasting your ass (and the car is probably warm by the time you reach a station), you get out of the car for about 4 minutes, and then you go back in the car to continue the slow roast.
You have a garage. Those who don’t have a garage freeze their asses off in howling winds every second day while plugging the car into an outdoor charger.
Remember that a lot of people have to spend 10-15 minutes warming up their cars before they drive them in cold weather.
I do not want to go into details, better car mechanics than me should, but there is all kind of chaos that can happen if your engine freezes and you try to drive it immediately. And it is much more complex and can be much more expensive. Once you start getting cracks in various things and liquids flowing where they should not be you will wish for the simplicity of just plugging in your EV.
So lets not pretend that driving in the cold is some kind of new problem that EVs introduced.
People choose to do this. This isn’t required and it’s recommended against in modern vehicles.
> I do not want to go into details, better car mechanics than me should, but there is all kind of chaos that can happen if your engine freezes and you try to drive it immediately.
Engines do not freeze in the conditions common in most of the US, even with winter like we’re currently having. The engine coolant is a mixture of anti-freeze and water.
I’m curious about that recommendation, do you know why that is?
It's actually more importantly to have enough viscosity in ATF, but again, the sooner you would go the sooner it would warm.
I was always told (since the 90s, anyway) that it's better to drive off slowly with a cold engine and let all the components come up to operating temperature together than to drive off with a hot engine, and cold gearbox, driveshafts, tyres, etc.
I generally let a cold engine (i.e. overnight) idle for maybe 30s before driving off slowly, and it reaches operating temperature in about 5m or less.
In a 2022 car I have now even the cabin doesn’t get proper heating from the aircon until it’s driven.
Your electric car can fail randomly for an obscure reason too, and good luck getting anyone at all that can fix it.
> Remember that a lot of people have to spend 10-15 minutes warming up their cars before they drive them in cold weather.
Only because they're idiots. No-one needs to leave a vehicle for 10 minutes to "warm up", even in the coldest of weather. Drive gently until the temperature gauge is a bit off the end stop, and then drive a bit less gently until it's at its proper operating temperature.
Alternatively, start the engine from stone cold and immediately drive off at full throttle taking it up to 70mph before there's even a sniff of warm air from the heater. This is *still* better for it than letting it sit for a long time to "warm up".
Even if we ignore the "heard bad advice" versus "idiot" issue, that's still untrue because there are other reasons besides what's best for the machine.
Maybe they aren't in the car, and they're warming it up to be comfortable.
Maybe there is ice on the car they need to melt.
Or I'm an idiot if I would rather idle than pour alcohol on my windshield?
> If the weather is as cold as it gets here in Scotland in winter, the car will never warm up sitting idling.
Okay, then that person is an idiot, but it doesn't extend to the people actually warming up their car.
I live in an area that does get below freezing, and my car preheats the battery before I unplug it to go somewhere while the cabin warms.
If they're good enough for only most people, why are they mandating it for everyone?
It's call h2, and multiple cars on the road (kia, toyota, hyundia) work just fine.
One federal funding/grant program, and refuel stations will abound.
And h2 is every bit as green as electric, for both can be supplied via green methods.
Canadian BMWs will all have the “cold weather package”, which for me means heated seats and an H8 battery instead of a smaller H6.
For my mom’s old Corolla, it means a 1.6kw starter instead of the 1.4 in the US models (which became a sorta problem when I bought a refurb at a Canadian parts store…)
I'm guessing only FWD/4WD version of vehicles are also sold in Canada.
But you don't have a gas station at home, don't you? So you have to worry about gas stations and how far they are. And your car makes you and other people sick(i.e cancer and various diseases due polution)! That's so 2020!
On a more serious note you are comparing the shortcommings of an emerging technology with a mature technology. Saying that the old tech is better makes no sense to me.
ICE cars still need electricity to start
My first car? I had to constantly give it gas for a while even once it started. People gave me funny looks when I was essentially revving my engine like I was showing off in my ‘88 Grand Marquis at stop signs in the year 2005.
A gasoline powered car will struggle in the cold because:
- the battery used to spin the engine is going to have less capacity in the cold - the engine oil is thicker and requiring more energy to spin the engine - gasoline won't atomize as well when it's being sprayed into a cold environment (this is why your engine runs richer right after a cold start)
A diesel powered car will struggle because:
- the temperature of the engine may be too low to allow ignition - the battery used to spin the engine is going to have less capacity in the cold - the engine oil is thicker and requiring more energy to spin the engine - the devices used to heat the engine (glow plugs or intake heaters) require plenty of electricity - the fuel itself may turn into gel (although I think most places in the US only ever sell #2 diesel year-round) - the engine itself may not stay warm enough to run especially if you're also trying to pull heat out into the cabin
None of that's changed dramatically in the past 40 years although engine management has gotten better.
Although, if you're filling when it's hot, you're getting slightly less gas than when it's cold.
Disclaimer: I never owned a Tesla and only ever drove ICE.
I really hope that alternative energy storage like hydrogen make the race.
Present battery technology for cod winter Europe is not practical.
Cause it seems perfect to me. Run electric day-to-day when the weather affords. Run gas for long trips or bad conditions.
No need for a giant 300 mile battery made with minerals from a developing country. Nor a huge ICE, since you can shrink it to a very narrow power band and rely on the batteries for peak power like take-off.
I drove my mom's BMW 530e plug-in hybrid to the store and back (5 km in each direction). At the end, I think we had 5 km of range left. Granted, it did handle a grocery run just on battery and the heating system worked well, but that was about all that it had. The NEDC rating for the car is 50 km of electric range.
I'm really curious to see what Mazda will do with the MX-30 next year. It's an dismal failure as a pure EV, but apparently they're planning to add a rotary engine as a pure generator to it (i.e., not driving the wheels). If the car keeps the current version's 100 mile electric range that could be a very interesting combo.
As for EV's I am going to wait and see how the UPS trucks manage here. That should be some time in early 2023, hopefully before spring time.
That’s only a warm climate thing. Plumbing (of the associated washing machine) that’s prone to freezing is unlikely to be in the garage in cooler climates.
Uhhhh convenience? People prefer them right next to each other so that clothes washing isn’t a long journey. At least that’s why the plumbing and electrical/gas connections are usually built close to each other.
The rotary clothesline [0] was standard in Australia and New Zealand for decades, although with the move to smaller sections, people tend to install compact linear lines instead.
[0]: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/hills-hoist-iconic-ro...
"No person shall place or allow to remain exposed to the elements laundry, clothing, rags, or other cloth items hung or stored on a front porch or front or other street yard of a dwelling."
So, a given power can be obtained using any voltage, with the proper current. In practice, high currents are unsafe so we tend to avoid that in unprotected sockets. Different norms correspond to different tradeoffs.
This is also the same problem with electric kettles in the U.S. they boil much faster in the u.k. because almost double the power for a common outlet.
On a side note, I find it amusing when Brits try to brag about their superior electricity due to the progressive 240V. People living in the houses wired in a ring [1], which set themselves ablaze when they try to turn on AC, in my imagination would be more reserved ;)
I have an uncovered space and it’s fine. Yeah, the battery sucks in the cold, and it takes longer to charge, but realistically it’s not like you need to use your car 24/7. Leaving it for a few hours overnight charges it to full, and you can schedule defrosting or do it from the app so the car is warm when you get in.
It’s far from “a huge pain”.
In Sweden there were lot of reports of people being unable to charge with 230V 10A.
Sure, you'd make sure to install a more powerful charger if necessary. But that requires you and everywhere else to be adapted for EVs. Which is a pain.
(Funny thing, this is kind oversized for domestic applications and the driver behind it is that the law says you pay fee based on maximum amperage of your connection, so electricity companies refuse to install anything smaller than 25A and give everyone they can three-phase so they make more money.)
Also, how adapting to EVs is a huge pain but LITERALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE is not, I don't get it.
That's a very "you-centric" view of the world. Convenience is convenience, regardless of whether it destroys the world or not, and more money is expected to bring more convenience. So very few people say "I'll suffer this winter so the world is destroyed just a little bit less". That's why they have EVs but can still have a "factory sized" carbon footprint due to their huge houses, multiple cars, etc.
Case in point, you probably get how adapting to public transport is a huge pain but LITERALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE because you want a personal car is not.
Oh for sure. That is why people saying "what about people living in apartments? checkmate, EVs!" annoy me so much - if you live in an apartment you probably don't need a car.
But people are used to their comforts, so saying that doesn't win any favors or votes. Nor does saying "it's good that EVs are more expensive, since fewer people will be able to afford cars".
There are a ton of valid reasons for someone living in an apartment to still need a car. And rentals are not a solution. Rental companies are a nightmare and rental cars suck.
This is not true for anywhere outside a few city centers in the US.
10A circuits was the norm in houses years ago, but now the normal is changed to 16A and one 25A for the stove. We do not have any fee based on the maximum amperage of the circuit, the changes are only demand driven. If you want to put the kettle on and vacuum at the same time you need 16A
If you want to actually help environment, you need to live in cold through the winter by using heating at minimum, you need to use public transport, do adequate sustainable shopping of everything and so on and on. Which hits the general consumerism and comfort western society is so used to like a concrete wall of WWII bunker.
I get why prople want to feel they are not passive when global catastrophe is coming, but just buying EV and saying you have done your part is a fucking bad joke, sorry cant put it in milder terms. Kids in african cobalt, lithium etc mines would object, at least if they could.
> It’s far from “a huge pain”.
You name "a huge pain" and someone will disagree. Not having a car at all is far from a huge pain but you still have one, even at a significant price.
My car is always plugged in and therefore always at 80%. It takes a few hours after returning from a trip to charge it back up, regardless of the weather or other conditions, and the car is warmed up by the time I get into it using remote defrosting. In fact, during this snowstorm, my car always was consistently completely defrosted every time.
None of this sounds anywhere even remotely in the same ballpark as “a huge pain”.
But you need it anytime you need it - some rank reliability very highly, at "requirement" level.
> from the app
And this already is a loud warning bell.
Did you miss scheduled defrosting, where the car does it automatically so it’s ready in the morning? Does your car even have the ability to do that without you in the car? I didn’t think so.
Be realistic about what is a pain and what isn’t. None of your rebuttals are much of anything except “woe is me I have to take out an app to do something I couldn’t even dream of doing on my car and that’s scary”.
Yes, we need it reliable: always available in case of need.
> take out an app
I do not see any chance of ever using a car that requires a smartphone.
I am reading the words of former NATO supreme allied commander James Stavridis,
> Every year, the number of devices connected to the internet grows rapidly. By some estimates, the count is up to more than 50 billion devices, from around 7 million a decade ago. The benefits are real and obvious. (Hooray, I can close my garage door from a thousand miles away on my household Nest!) But so is the fact that each of those devices is a unique point of attack for hackers. We have created a vast, undefendable threat surface
You simply do not put unrequired attack surfaces on critical devices - it is cretinous -, and you do not encourage the practice - it is criminal.
(But, of course, that would require even better cooling for a battery on a summer +95F day. OTOH ICEs have a similar problem.)
You can also leave it overnight just fine. I think plugging a 110v during the cold is kind of an edge case, the car tries to charge but it makes thing worse. Maybe a software update would cure that.
I doubt if it could make things worse, despite what the range indicator says.
The weight of the battery pack is great for traction in warm / dry conditions, but when driving on ice that weight is just momentum sending you sliding into snow banks.
After a bumper or body panel gets ripped off during the inevitable extraction from above mentioned snow bank, expect to wait 6-9 months for the most basic of body work.
The self driving is an absolute clown show in anything but perfect conditions (mounting evidence it sucks in perfect conditions too~)
Nothing in the world excites me more than expensive nerd toys with electric power trains, but as a Minnesota native I'll take a $900 rolling trash can beater car over a top of the line Tesla six months out of the year. There is a very valuable lesson in observing the legacy auto industry existing in Michigan where the winters get very cold and cars need to perform with snow or ice on the roads. Meanwhile Tesla mostly engineers their cars to be good at driving from LA to SF and back.
Yes it is. I don't have a large dataset of exact temp conditions and charging curves (Elon certainly does though, someone go ask him!) I can tell you if the outdoor temps are below 15F a standard outlet has negative net energy input.
A heat pump solution would certainly be more efficient, knowing Tesla I can only assume it's peltier junctions.
All the hype about the efficiency of an EV goes out the window when it's blowing 16kwh+ a day just keeping the battery above freezing.
A heat pump should be able to do a lot better.
Also you're probably only going to get 16 amps of actual draw on a 20 amp circuit.
Not necessarily. In Minnesota, people often put sandbags in trunks/truck beds to get better traction in Winter. Also, one has to be careful when following semi tractor-trailers, as in some Winter conditions, they actually have a shorter stopping distance than your car.
Putting a pair of sandbags in the back-end of an unloaded rear wheel
drive pickup is not the same thing as driving a 9000 lb sedan.
My BMW came with a 6/10 amp (software selectable) emergency use charger.
I bought a 16 amp 110V charger from Amazon, and it is more than enough to keep up with my daily commute. (It is equivalent to an 8 amp 220V charge cable.)
Also it’s just cheaper: electricity is much cheaper over night and if i have to charge 24x7 I’m paying much more.
TBH, I think mankind just needs better energy storage. Lithium ion, and lithium iron phosphate are great, but I do not believe these are going to work for us in the long term. I do believe, however, that within 30 years electric vehicles will be more practical than ICE if some kind of better battery is made at a low enough price point.
- if you install a 220v charger with a 60a circuit breaker, you can charge up to 48 amps
- keep the car plugged in all the time - not only to charge, but to keep the battery warm and even preheat the car for a toasty drive.
What strikes me is that people in some markets have unrealistic assumptions about the current battery technology. Spending more money does not change physics.
EV technology is rather good. But there are bad products in the EV market.
This review of the F-150 Lightning is interesting for the surprise of the reviewer that the vehicle isn't fit for purpose. https://www.guideautoweb.com/articles/68882/ford-f-150-light...
(Google Translate is your friend.)
Yes exactly why things like govts banning ICE vehicles in 2035 is unfair on poor people without homes.
Another thing to keep in mind is: Charging speeds of cold temps. While the Tesla seems to do great at range, charging at cold temps is not great. When it's below freezing, home charging can be tough to impossible. A few days ago (when it was merely "cold", before the huge cold snap hit us), I drove the car and then parked it to charge for the night. It charged at a rate of 1 mile per hour. Usually it'll hit 30-40. I have it set to start charging at midnight, which meant that the battery cooled down after driving for ~6 hours, before it started charging. I could have started charging as soon as I got home, but then I'm in the 3x higher electricity pricing... I could bump that up to 9 or 10pm to help.
This also impacts road trips. If you are traveling in freezing temps, definitely charge before checking into a hotel (unless the hotel has a charger, which is fairly rare), rather than in the morning. Instead of 30m charge time, it can take 60-120 minutes to charge at a Supercharge.
As long as you have 30+ amps of 240v, you are fine charging in winter. It will spend 5-15 minutes warning the pack (and show only a little charge rate) and then kick into your full charge rate.
The only time you are screwed is in like 15-20 amp 120V, it takes nearly all the power to keep the battery warm so almost nothing left to charge. If it weren’t for winter I likely would have kept only a 120 in my garage as that is plenty for summer charging at home.
Of course, within certain latitudes, more robust infrastructure is less necessary (the closer you get to the equator). Texas, Florida, and California have most of the US population and will rarely see these conditions (US centric).
I have a suspicioun those cars that seem to have no impact on range due to temperature just increase the deepth of discharge in colder weather.
I.e. Tesla and Jaguar.
Ya EVs aren't fun in cold areas if you don't have a garage or on a road trip
That being said I’ve not noticed charging issues with my Model 3, this is my 3rd winter, last week we regularly had -7 C in the night. Does seem to be a lot of variability
Don't mix up "home charging" with "level 1 charging". A lot of EV owners will get a NEMA 14-50 receptacle to level 2 charge, and then there's no problem at all charging while below freezing.
Americans, can we stop this failed experiment and let’s (re)build our cities with public transportation and alternative forms of transportation (ie, biking, walking, micro-mobility). Return the spaces occupied by parking lots, parking garages and use that space to house people. End these implied subsidies on “car housing”.
Death to the suburban experiment.
I'm traveling in Taiwan right now and it's just night and day. Outside of NY and small areas of Boston/Chicago/Phili/SF proper it's just a disaster in the US.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/2/5/suburban-infras...
Re: costs to cities, mostly focused on the extensive roadworks to serve solo car commuters - those are expensive and converted a lot of neighborhoods into something which consumes but does not generate tax income, and things like parking don’t generate much income, and all of that comes at a hefty cost to health & quality of life.
As for this:
> I don't see how suburbs are incompatible with GP's proposal
Look at the last line of that post:
> Death to the suburban experiment.
> Land doesn't have any rights, so suburbs can't infringe upon them.
Slaves didn't have rights back then either, as I understand it. Can't infringe upon those!
More seriously, I haven't done the math myself but given concepts like "earth day" it doesn't seem like we're doing too well in providing for everyone, and that's with a large majority of people not living in the usa suburb style. It only seems fair if everyone (eight billion people) were given the opportunity to achieve an equal standard of living if they are willing to work for it; the kind of thing one would ideally codify in a binding human rights statement (e.g., ECHR). Under the ideal of giving everyone equal opportunities, freely taking however much land you fancy would almost certainly infringe on others' basic rights.
But anyway that's just about land use. I don't know that the amount of land taken is the restrictive factor here, it's probably more about how you get to and from your daily needs (transportation and heating being big factors in personal energy use). The fundamental limitation usually boils down to energy in the end (could live in the Sahara if you build a lot of AC and desalination and pipes to get it there -- spaceship earth style). Currently, we don't have a lot of energy available in a way that maximizes total happiness, considering global warming. We might have to take it easy with personal consumption rates until we do have the energy.
I feel like every post that shits on the suburbs should include how many kids do you have, for transparency. No family or kids, of course the city is better for you.
The only other option is some kind of technological silver bullet for carbon capture that manages to arrive in time.
Personally I'm fairly pessimistic about this problem. I don't see a political path to widespread mass transit in the US, and I don't know how you remove the incentive that developing economies have to pollute. It feels like a prisoners' dilemma.
Science evolves as does technology, and inevitably both factors will change over the coming decades. To base your life around the worst case predictions of models (where the disaster moment keeps pushing back as time progresses) is not logical.
And then specifically. I work from home as does my wife. Most of my driving (in a hybrid btw) is 2 miles to drop our kid at school or go to the grocery store. Really hard to connect this lifestyle to dooming the plannet honestly.
Operating on the basis of the most extremist "worst case" scenarios that are very unlikely (like your "peak oil" example) probably doesn't make too much sense, but it's probably not a bad thing to be rather pessimistic about these sort of things when making policy.
We can take no thought for the morrow and trust that future technology will sort it all out. Maybe it will, but what if it doesn't? There are no guarantees and hard constraints on our physical universe and planet. It certainly wouldn't be the first time in history human-made ecological changes caused large problems.
Or we can be more pessimistic today. Maybe it will later turn out that won't have been necessary, but it still would have been the smart thing to do as a matter of risk management, since we couldn't have known in the past how things would work out in the future.
As with all things, you can of course exaggerate, but it's a mistake to throw our the baby with the bathwater because some extremist said something extreme.
If you wanted to be extreme in CO2 reduction, I guess your best bet is to kill every living human and animal on the planet (to be clear, not advocating this!) Clearly that's "too high" a price to pay.
On the other hand, you can be very practical and look for CO2 reduction in ways that don't harm people's current lives. Increasing vehicle mileage is an example of this - mileage has doubled and emissions per vehicles halved since 1975.[1] In fact, I suspect this is going to get even better very quickly. My Highlander Hybrid, which is a large vehicle, gets roughly 50% more MPG than in this chart.
So we can say we're already doing a lot (and that's just one thing.) The idea that somehow the line between acceptable and unacceptable just happens to be right between suburban and city living feels a little too convenient for me.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...
A fantastic point!
Unfortuneately undercut by absolute truth (rather than per vehicle comparisons) that
* the number of vehicles (both in the US and globally) has substantially increased in number since the 1970s,
* many of the older vehicles with the poor performance are still active on roads somewhere,
* the nature of vehicle use in western countries has changed - while the efficiences for both cars and SUVs may have improved, the proprtion of SUV usage (with lesser efficiencies) has significantly increased.
I wouldn't advocate killing all humans and animals, but there's much to be said for halving the number of high consumption humans ...
I'm comfortable getting by for months on end sans most things - global field geophysics was an extended jolly.
That kind of progress has questionable impact on net emissions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
1) There are trillions of dollars in petroleum reserves in the ground. This is money in the pockets of people, e.g. Putin. They aren't going to let go of that easily.
2) China and India have no realistic pathway to zero carbon and will buy the oil that isn't bought by the G7 sustainable nations. Most of the world's population will follow them.
The only valid response is mitigation. Amsterdam is below sea level. It is far easier to detect and solve real problems than try to predict massive problems in the distant future.
In a bike-friendly country, you'd do that by bike, not by car.
Of course, if your whole world is built around owning and using a car, then doing this by bike becomes dangerous and doing this by car becomes less insane. Then you find our you're dedicating a very large portion of the ground to those machines you use twice a day for 10 minutes - making them unfit for other purposes the remaining 23 hours and 40 minutes.
I really like driving - but I really like the outside to be fit for other things than driving as well. American suburbia falls way too far short of that.
But yeah, would I try this in downtown LA? No, never. (Although you could argue that LA is weird because it's neighborhoods are like suburbs. Would I try this in k-town? No. You need a car, for everything.) Of course I have to admit that there is some circularity with the LA situation - no-one wants to live in the city center, so only the destitute live there, which makes it less desirable. In many places in the world, this situation doesn't apply. Would I try it in Manhattan? Maybe.
Stories like yours are great but unsaid are things like: do your kids have a back yard to play in? How fresh is the air? Do they get to watch dad take care of a house and yard so they learn skills like that? Are they dodging shit on the street as they walk to school ( always was the case in NYC but extra bad now). Are their neighbors families with minimum two kids, or are they a much less family friendly demographic? Etc.
I used to not think about these things until I experienced the better version of these things in the burbs. The self-selection of neighbors who made the move to a family friendly location alone is a game changer
Maybe I’m missing something but that was never my understanding for the need for EVs to replace ICE, a need based in lowering reliance on fossil fuel and decreasing air pollution.
These are still required, whatever urban policy we end up with.
I see the urgent need for improved public transports to be paramount in these goals too, so both EV to replace the billions of ICE cars and better urban transportation alternatives are needed.
Whereas it can also be seen as kicking the can down the road.
Between buildings, build an elevated walkway above the roads. With ventilation these walkways could cover a large part if not all of the area above roads. Promote social spaces, commerce areas, and open areas between buildings without sacrificing cars. Just build above them.
This is just an idea to reclaim walking space in our cities without making the enormous leap to banning cars/roads in cities, which we’ll still need to cart the enormous amount of products and raw materials a city needs.
In the kind of cold weather that cuts EV range, per the OP? I've been there, and thanks but no thanks -- I'm too old for that shit. I'll stick to my car even if its range is reduced.
> Return the spaces occupied by parking lots, parking garages and use that space to house people.
This I heartily agree with, but it can be compatible with cars if we can get self-driving finally sorted out. Just have your car drop you off, then go out of the city to wait for you (and perhaps charge itself at the same time).
> Death to the suburban experiment.
Suburbs have different problems than cities do, but I'm not convinced they're particularly worse or more plentiful, and there are certainly other (dare I say better?) ways to solve them than abolishing suburbs outright.
It's been pretty successful for a "failed experiment".
Fix the crime, and the pollution, and the noise.
Give people a way to live without constantly hearing their neighbors through the walls. Give people transit options where they don't need to fear for their physical safety. Give people a place to raise children without worrying about them picking up used needles on the street.
Give people space to be something other than interchangeable sardines in boxes in high-rise apartment buildings -- what about people who want to do woodworking, or welding, or work on cars, or hunt?
City live is only one of the valid lifestyles available to humans, and arguably it is the most unnatural, the most harmful, and the least tolerable. Change that before you call for the death of the lifestyles that other people enjoy. Otherwise, don't be surprised if "death to cities" is the response you get.
Either someone is going to have to come up with an ingenious solution or electric vehicles are going to be of limited use in cold weather locations where space is not abundant enough for garages (quite a lot of European cities). Infrared heating seems quite efficient, maybe the solution lies there.
Based on the article, that Tesla is looking pretty impressive though!
We seem to stumble on new chemistries that get to production every few decades so cross your fingers
We have a 220 mile Nissan Leaf that drops to 180-200 in the winter. We also live in Cincinnati which is a metro area about 75 miles in diameter at the widest span. Most drives are 10-30 miles. The range drop doesn’t matter unless you are doing a road trip.
Recharge time does matter more but any drop there due to slower chemistry is somewhat offset by less thermal down-ramping since everything is cold.
What we need most of all is more fast chargers between cities. There are enough in California and several other coastal states but nowhere near enough between cities in the US interior.
For some reason they put a bunch of DC chargers in the city and none between which is the inverse of what you really need. Is there a grid capacity problem in small midwestern towns or did they just get the priority wrong?
Likely ROI--Return on Investment. You can predict quite well the usage of chargers in cities from other charger installations. In between, not so much. On my latest trip between San Diego and Austin, the fast-charging stops were almost completely empty. This is in constrast to the summer, for example, where most of the fast charging was completely full and not a small amount were broken.
People have forgotten that gas stations at every convenience store is a relatively new thing in the US (starting about the mid 80s). Prior to that, part of the advantage of the Turnpikes and major interstates were regular gasoline station placements. And that happened because the governments subsidized them.
The ironic part is that "gas stations everywhere" has been absolutely terrible for groundwater--contamination is now ubiquitous. Paying gas stations to dig up old tanks and replace them with electric chargers would be a big environmental win.
Also the solution is easy - when the car is plugged in, just heat the battery so it charges at optimal rate and is ready for your journey. Some cars already do this(the new BMW i4 and I guess the iX too)
That was kind of the point though: they wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible. There's a good quote attributed to Leonard Bernstein:
> To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
I feel like the project pushed Harley Davidson and Rivian to achieve something a lot quicker than they would have done otherwise. I hope they do another one in a few years though to see how far the technology has come along, although they've covered quite a lot of the world now so I'm not sure what route they'd choose exactly. NZ -> Aus -> SE Asia -> India -> Stans -> Turkey -> Europe would be my guess.
-electrics with proper planning work well, but there is a nasty wives tale in the service industry that batteries are safer to work on in a cold garage and that you can skip the safety gear. a tesla battery still has easily enough juice to send you to jesus even at -50c.
-gas engines need block heaters or its like starting an engine in a tar pit, and the mileage takes a 20-30% haircut.
-diesel engines are finnicky beasts in the cold. most of your environmental reclamation stuff has to be heated along with the block, and anti gelling agents are hell on them. mileage and waxy soot particulate from stacks are equally bad. california has special requirements and bans on certain gel agents as well.
in colder places like nunavut or the northern territories, heavy truck drivers without reliable electrical power light a small fire under their engine to warm it. not for the faint hearted.
oh wow, that is a pretty dangerous bit of misinformation
Part of the EPA methodology is to penalize EV range using either a fixed constant or measurements of performance at reduced temperatures. Because Tesla cars perform better in the cold, they use the measurement method when calculating EPA range.
That results in the perceived under-performance of Teslas compared to the competition in the so-called “real world” tests. But when cars are tested at low ambient temperatures, we see the results…
Maybe EVs need more complex testing ?
I would like to see a 75 mph constant-speed test at 0F, 50F and 100F
See the chart here. (source from article)
I don't think this is very surprising. This is not the first winter for many EV manufacturers, or owners. And of course EVs are pretty popular far into the arctic circle. E.g. there are super chargers in Northern Norway, people use them throughout the year, and it seems fine there.
I think at this point there are very few surprises for manufacturers and they are pretty well aware how their vehicles perform under different conditions.
I'd be interested to know in how those shiny new F 150s are holding up providing power to people who are in areas with power outages. It seems that these are exactly the type of conditions that justify owning such a vehicle. Presumably, Ford did a lot of testing in cold conditions to make sure they work fine there.
ICE vehicles also run less efficiently when the engine is cold, so this part is roughly analogous even if there is more extra energy required to heat the battery pack.
The main difference is that once the engine is warm, ICE vehicles can then heat the cabin "for free" using waste heat because an ICE is so incredibly inefficient. This waste heat is useless when it is warm but a nice bonus when it is cold. EVs must expressly spend energy to create warmth for the cabin.
But this is also why most EV owners know to schedule your vehicle to warm up while it is still plugged in before you depart. One advantage is that you can do this in a closed garage with an EV and not worry about fumes.
Cold weather reduces range on all vehicles, it's just more noticeable on EVs due to having less excess range and the aforementioned heating concerns.
But I drove a 2014 Leaf for 8 years here in Michigan, without issue. That's a low range vehicle in a very cold climate. It's totally fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c
I Deep Froze My Tesla And Immediately Plugged It Into A Supercharger To See What Happens.
I believe Bjørn Nyland did some similar testing too a while ago.
One of the folk tricks with cold starting regular vehicles is to run the radio for a little bit, in order to warm the battery up just a little to help with cranking the engine. If you conserve the waste heat in the battery banks until the batteries hit 50ºC for instance, then they would spend less time at ambient temperatures once you start moving. Some of that could offset/be offset by the cabin heating system, if you did it right.
But I think the math comes down to the question of whether cooling a battery to freezing reduces the potential energy in the battery, or just the recoverable energy. I think it's the latter, and if so then how much recoverable energy can you increase by converting a given amount of that energy into BTUs to warm the battery?
With home air-to-air heat pumps I took COP of 2-3 as a base for heating, it seems that COP=1 is a big deal in a car.
Teslas[2] (and a handful of other models) have heat pumps to warm the batteries. It's as simple as that. The same system is integrated with navigation too, because even on warm days unused/empty cells will be colder, and you want those to be warm when you reach the supercharger.
[1] Which is to say this isn't strictly a change in "range", if you can drive somewhere warm you can keep going to the rated distance.
[2] Ones built over the last three years anyway -- older ones didn't have this. I think Y's and all but the oldest 3's have heat pumps, but older S/X models might not. Something to be aware of when buying on the used market.
Proper SOF control is loosely required for ECE R100 which most manufacturers would have, but OTOH I am convinced that it’s possible to fudge that certification.
Source: battery controls engineer.
Last winter we got up to freezing maybe 5 days.
I’ve driven in Canada for 40 years. Until modern low-viscosity oil capable engines — cars were required to be plugged in to block heaters for hours before attempting to start, at -20C and lower.
I didn’t expect EVs to perform better than gas vehicles; why would I, at this level of their maturity?
Diesel vehicles are even more brittle; oilfield workers simply don’t shut off their diesel trucks for days at a time, at low temperatures.
We have found that a 100 AMP service can effectively serve up to about 20 EVs, so long as the chargers can communicate among themselves to manage peaks. We use all EnelX Juicebox 40A networked chargers and they have that capability.
So how can you charge so many cars effectively with a small service? It is based on load factors.
The average commute length in the US is around 15 miles one way. So most nights for most cars they only need to replenish 30 miles worth of charge overnight. So there are plenty of hours and plenty of amps to cover that.
Of course, some folks come home from a long trip and need a full 300 mile charge, while some didn’t even drive that day and need no charge—basically it all comes out in the wash.
There are other considerations, but the takeaway is that you CAN support a lot of EVs charging for modest investments if you do it smart.
I wrote a white paper on this in case anyone is hoping to do this where you live: https://localforce.io/misc/Cost_Effective_EV_Charging_for_Mu...
Complex systems are convenient in ideal conditions but they suffer in extreme conditions.
Expect more extremes winters in the coming years (as mild winter trends reverse).
This Axios article is from March, 2022 and has incorrect data. In particular it's wrong about the Tesla results.
The Axios chart claims the Model Y achieves 97% of its EPA range in 70°F and 98% of its EPA range in 20-30°F. They're claiming the Model Y does better in cold weather.
Here is updated data from Recurrent as of December 2022:
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss
What's new in the updated data is that Recurrent has included verified real world winter range tests. Previously they were relying on dashboard data and Teslas don't give you good information. Recurrent says, "As evidenced below, it appears in the Model 3 dashboard data that there is almost no change in available range in cold or hot conditions."
But now, "New to 2022, we have added observed, real-world range fluctuations to our Tesla data. The dotted line below shows the range as observed from on-board devices and energy usage. This shows a more expected decrease in winter range, although Tesla's thermal management is still great at controlling cold weather range loss."
What Recurrent now says for the Tesla Model Y Long Range AWD is:
> Observed Range at 20-30F: 49% of Original EPA Range
> Observed Range at 70F: 64% of Original EPA Range
So even at 70°F the Model Y only attains 64% of its rated EPA range in their data.
Tesla inflates their EPA numbers. You always need to do real world testing.
My Tesla model 3 actually does very well although of course there is a range reduction. This is one of the areas where Tesla shines compared to other auto manufacturers because they have always viewed themselves as a battery company first. There's not really much you can do to beat years and years of data on BMS and various battery conditions. Tesla's are collecting and transmitting data on current temperature state of the battery etc all the time.
Things like fit and finish of body panels are something that the other manufacturers have decades of experience with in Tesla doesn't. But on batteries we are now talking about 10 years of data Tesla has that they don't. And the culture in the Detroit Auto industry isn't exactly a good one when it comes to promoting competent engineering management.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/04/tesla-f...
You can't judge today what an EV will be like in 50 years the same way you couldn't judge what would happen from the first Model T (1908) to the best selling car of 1958, the VW bug. I mean, safety and mileage weren't even primary concerns in `58. It was still novelty. You have to jump almost 100 years for mileage to finally get significantly better in automobiles! As well as airbags, antilock breaks, shatterproof glass, seatbelts, crumple zones, etc. EVs are nowhere near internalizing all of the issues, let alone solving them.
I think this is an opportunity to work on the problems, and not say EVs are dead because they aren't perfect. Maybe they only fill a niche in the future, and don't take over, but that's still a big deal for emissions. Hopefully the issues with lithium mining & recycling, and infrastructure, and chargers, and battery tech improves. It doesn't mean don't try to make it better. I'm glad more companies are exploring the tech.
The one area I would think is a justified complaint would be if companies were getting unfair tax-funded subsidies to produce inferior products to make their shareholders rich rather than improving their technology for society.
> can't judge today what an EV will be like in 50 years
i can't wait for 50 yrs to have EV be better than ICE cars. If they aren't better _today_, i cannot switch. I would assume the majority of consumers have this attitude.
Therefore, in order to transition to EVs for environmental reasons, you either force consumers to have a lesser product by legislation, or improve EVs so that they are the natural choice to purchase.
I don't believe consumers would be willing to suck up a legislated rule that forces them to consume an inferior product, and so they would choose not to elect someone that stand for such.
Therefore, the only realistic way is to have EVs be _better_ than ICE. I think they are on the cusp today though, and soon will surpass ICE.
It is interesting that you managed to use three logical fallacies in one post: a strawman, a false dichotomy, and a no true scotsman.
A strawman because you invented "legislation to have a lesser product." This is a deadly product we are talking about. It is a public safety issue. You should probably clarify what you mean by this because I only assume you referring to banning misleading labeling of dangerous products, like calling something ADAS5 that really isn't.
A false dichotomy because there are more than two choices. You can have competing products that excel at different areas in and some cases are better, depending on the context. In this space you can have "inferior" EVs (I'm imagining cases where they are inferioir, like mileage and ease of use) to ICEs and still be a choice for short commuters. You don't offer that choice, and that's just one alt, hence the fallacy.
No true scotsman because you made up the term "natural choice" to imply the answer is obvious without giving and justification: basically set it up so that whatever you decide as "natural" is the correct answer, and anything else is not a correct answer, and that can move based on your argument. This undermines the choice you give.
I can go further: consumers will absolutely "suck up" (putting aside the issues with your framing). For example I'm fine with legislation that delegates the size, speed, and efficiency of cars, and so are hundreds of millions of Americans that vote for things like this. In fact I wish there were more laws to shrink the size of vanity trucks that are simply monstrous for no reason. There are decades of evidence showing the damage that fast, huge, inefficient cars inflict on society.
A bit annoying for longer trips. Typically "going to the cabin" type trips. Normally I wouldn't need to stop, or perhaps stop once. With a Peugeot e208 I had to stop twice, and the charging was a bit slow. Still, only turned a 4 hour trip to a <5 hour trip, and since it's not exactly something I do every week the consequence is basically zero.
When there was fewer chargers it was more of a problem. Had to time it so that from the last charger you could reach the cabin and back. But later years with longer ranges and chargers everywhere I don't really plan anything. Except when going to Sweden...
The Kia e-soul I've been using lately feels like it holds it charge much better than the e208, so probably even less of a problem.
And never had troubles getting an EV to start during winter. But may be a bit unfair comparison as the ICEs I've had troubles with are all older generations.
It got totaled thanks to someone hitting us, and we ended up with a 24kWh Leaf. It doesn't have much in terms of thermal management, so with that we really notice the winter. Like, to and from work is just fine, but any significant trip in sub-zero (Celsius) conditions ain't fun. We knew it wouldn't be great, and we're looking to replace it.
I'd say for our kind of weather, which have many days below -5C during winter, and living in a city or suburbs like we do, the Leaf is fine as a second car. The i3 was good enough since we didn't do lots of long trips during winter, just a few to the cabin and such. Both the i3 and the Leaf (and others) have climate timers, so you can get the car nice and warm in preparation for a trip, using power from the grid. This helps a fair bit both in comfort and in range.
More modern cars are even better though, obviously more range to start with but also with things like battery preheating which sacrifices some of the battery energy to heat it up in preparation for proper fast charging.
I admit I do get a bit of range anxiety during winter from time to time, mostly because the consequences of running out with -10C or so outside isn't fun. If I was living more on the countryside, there's few competitors to Tesla I think just due to the range and thermal management.
All in all, we're definitely not gonna get another ICE. There's just too many things we like about the EVs.
I know that technology can make surprisingly rapid inroads even into far and poorly developed corners, but this applies most of all to either easily or centrally scalable things. The requirements around EV cars are neither. I can't even imagine how quickly or easily much of this stuff will be in any way practical for hundreds of millions of people living in places where EV charging conveniences and personal garages or etc simply aren't the case at all or possible.
These péople won't give a shit about going EV "for the sake of the planet" until they can do it without being screwed in so many ways.
Some of you truly do live in pleasant little bubbles that simply don't consider the wider human world.
Winter & Cold Weather EV Range Loss in 7,000 Cars
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34038582
(182 points, 317 comments)
The later is something my Diesel never could manage, taking about 20 miles to get temperatures above the freezing point. While my EV is nice and cozy after about half a mile.
I imagine today's battery chemistry won't be viable for mass adoption further North, but other than that, I wouldn't let it stop you. Anecdotally, every other aspect of owning the car is wonderful.
Surly that's where we should be developing. Last I heard they're very efficient.
In theory it has no ceiling, storagewise. And it certainly isn't constrained by a chemical reaction.
The only downside is keeping it from blowing up. Right?
- They are VERY heavy. Typical energy density for flywheels is 10-40 kJ/kg (if you account for the whole flywheel), while Li-ion batteries and gasoline store 300-1000 kJ/kg and 46700 kJ/kg respectively (the latter does not account for ICE efficiency).
- They are relatively big, since you can store more energy with a bigger diameter (limited by material's strength-to-weight ratio).
- Flywheel is a big gyroscope. You do not want to rotate it around while it spins.
So back to my question.
For naturally-aspirated motors with aggressive timing, going from 80F to 32F can feel like someone bolted a small supercharger to the engine.
Other manufacturers that have just started may be playing significant catch-up to Tesla's lead.
Lessened range may have more to do with the system spending energy to keep the battery at optimal temperature.
Contrary to what others are saying here, Tesla had no "head start" or lead. The Volt came out the same year as the Model S (2011/2012) and the battery pack in there (LGChem + GM) is extremely well engineered.
(In general GM is far more cautious about many aspects of battery life than others. One of the reasons the Bolt has weaker/slower fast charging. They also have tended to focus on a lower segment of the market than others, too. Comparing a luxury vehicle Tesla against a Chevy Bolt is not exactly apples to apples)
Another couple of red flag in the AXIOS article was: "AAA found the loss in driving range could be as high as 41% with the heater on full blast." Hmmm, even with the recent Siberean cold air mass blast here in Colorado, I don't need the heater on full in my ICE cars with outside temps of -5F. Also, the recurrent.com study show some of the vehicles ratings based on verified range versus estimated range - why? Perhaps it's accurate, but mixed methodologies in the same study.
Is there a source for this claim? I am suspicious that _most_ Americans are shopping for an EV.
Thanks!
>Start the vehicle while it’s plugged in to allow the battery to warm up. “The key is warming that battery up,"
But yes I take a 15% range hit
You cannot beat the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels. Thermodynamic efficiency of an ICE actually increases in cold weather because you can reuse the engine heat for the passengers. In an EV you have to channel your motive fuel into electric heaters which are far less efficient than the drive motors themselves.
The current policy movements towards EV only are suicidal. We are nowhere near ready to support it. It's also discriminatory because EVs cost much more than ICEs and do not have the lifespan of ICEs. Economically disadvantaged peoples of color often depend on older used vehicles.