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Comment by incomingpain | Hacker News Reader

>Good. There's nothing else stopping EVs from mass adoption besides these artificial barriers.

EVs arent able to function in -40c That happens in Canada every year.

Anything under 0c has risk of freezing the lithium battery's electrolyte and will have very very significant capacity loss; not to mention damaging cells. That's a huge problem for Canada.

I look forward to solid state batteries having far better low temp performance.

Our northern most cities like Edmonton get to -40c and -50c regularly: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-extreme-cold...

Fair, yes, my city only ever really gets down to -20c. Yes I own an EV that's outside 365.

To expect much EV adoption in Canada is foolish though.

>hey should feel upset, because their government hasn't addressed the global shift to EVs sooner.

Our government has heavily invested in EVs for like 15 years. This is a bizarre take.

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Canadians love to exaggerate how cold it gets.

None of the 4 biggest Canadian cities have EVER had -40C temperatures. No, wind chill does not count.

In fact, most years they’re not even getting to -30C, and if it does happen it’s only for 1 to 2 days. The rest of the time you’re dealing with average -10C, which China also regularly deals with. But guess what, even if you can’t use your EV one day out of 364 days that’s not that big a deal. Most people should just stay home that day.

The source is I’m Canadian and lived in Ottawa for a decade.

Not just the 4 biggest. None of them... unless you're counting the far north. Maybe Fort Mac in an extreme cold spell, but even there it would be only overnight and extremely rare.

And also an EV would work just fine, just with lower efficiency.

That’s not true, Alberta and Manitoba do get that cold, and even colder during extreme events. The territories also deal with these temperatures as well. But if necessary those places can stick to ICE and the rest of Canada where the vast majority lives can use EVs

I grew up in north/central Alberta, 70s and 80s. It was colder then than now. -40 was only ever with wind chill.

Looking it up online, it looks like Edmonton experienced -40C as recently as 2022. That’s probably the minimum and the average was a lot higher though.

Any place that regularly gets below -40C (in other words, places colder than Edmonton) has block heater plugs in parking spots. You can hook your EV up to the block heater plug and it'll keep your battery warm. In the summer that plug will also charge your car. In the winter, it just keeps the battery warm. Which incidentally helps range because a warm battery lasts a lot longer than a cold one.

If you're not plugged in, your EV should be using its stored energy to keep the battery alive, which it can do for several days.

Are you seriously suggesting that Chinese automobile companies exporting to Europe and possibly North America are oblivious to the existence of winter? Their own country has cities like Harbin where temperatures can reach -35.

This is just outright FUD from this person. Or just ignorance combined with a need to be heard, I don't know.

I lived in Edmonton and surrounding rural Alberta for the first 25 years of my life, the most northern and cold major city in the country and it does not get to -40 unless you're counting wind chill, and cars don't feel wind chill, people do.

An EV has no real problems operating in typical Canadian weather, less problems than a gas car in fact. Yes, they lose efficiency but so do gas and diesel vehicles.

And sodium ion batteries are now entering mass production, which have no efficiency loss in extremely cold weather, and in fact will outperform ICE in this regard (though their power density is lower than lithium ion)

Maybe not -40C, but honestly that's not required to capture a huge chunk of the Canadian market (BC around Vancouver, and SWO Ontario).

China has significant climatic variation, and Harbin (for example) at around 45 degree latitude is right in line with Montreal.

https://english.news.cn/20230712/a56c80cac8e749f0bcf02579463...

I love how you went back and edited post-facto to try to shore up your claim. Come on.

Edmonton, where I'm actually from, has had record lows of -40, but these are extreme outliers. When people speak of -40 in Edmonton they mean wind chill, not real temps. Look at a scatter plot of actual temperatures in Edmonton and it's really not the drama you're implying.

Cold climate is not the barrier to EV adoption. Pricing (and politics) is. Anywhere in the world where EVs have been price competitive to ICE vehicles, consumers have preferred them.

There are political / economic interests in Canada (and North America generally) that absolutely do not want EV adoption. One would expect that from an oil&gas producing nation. Doesn't mean that reasonable people who understand that climate change is an actual thing should support this position.

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