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The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

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Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#31

Post by bitwize »

orangepurple wrote: post #18
rcarr wrote: post #16

There's a long distance motorcycle travel series with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman called "Long Way Up" where they go from the bottom of South America to LA on electric motorcycles. They had a lot issues with both range and charging the motorbikes in the first few episodes when they were dealing with the cold winter climate in Tierra del Fuego. Once they got far enough north into warmer climates the bikes were c…

WarpedPerception solved this problem by installing a 400cc generator in his Tesla that ran continuously on his 1800 mile road trip

Tesla hybrid mod. Neat!

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#32

Post by GalenErso »

brianglick wrote: post #28
d_watt wrote: post #19

Anecdotally last winter, had a Model Y up in maine for a trip home. I arrived at a backwoods house with ~60 miles left. It was around 10 farenheit the next day when I hooked up a 110 volt line to the car. Over the next 30 minutes the mileage dropped to 55 as it took more energy to heat the battery than the line could deliver. I unhooked it and planned to drive 20 miles to the nearest charger, but after 1 mile of trav…

You wouldn't really need a heated garage (at home, anyway) if you had a 220 volt charger. That should be able to overcome any charging challenges in extreme cold, anyway. Relatively easy to get that into your garage. 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.

Meanwhile, with an ICE car, you don't need to worry about having a garage, nevermind a heated one; the right charger, warming a pack, losing fuel overnight, or taking three hours to fully charge. I can pull up to any gas station and fill my tank in 2 minutes. And my gas isn't magically evaporating if it's a little chilly.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#33

Post by simfree »

justahuman74 wrote: post #27
d_watt wrote: post #19

Anecdotally last winter, had a Model Y up in maine for a trip home. I arrived at a backwoods house with ~60 miles left. It was around 10 farenheit the next day when I hooked up a 110 volt line to the car. Over the next 30 minutes the mileage dropped to 55 as it took more energy to heat the battery than the line could deliver. I unhooked it and planned to drive 20 miles to the nearest charger, but after 1 mile of trav…

The 115v lines just arent enough, it may have been quite ok using a 240v though (from say a dryer plug)

OP should have gone by percentage of battery left, and just left the car plugged in.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#34

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Animats wrote: post #7

Looks more like a brand problem. Especially Chevy. Different battery technology?

GM (Chevy) actually excellently engineered packs for cold weather. But what you might be seeing here is in fact the result of their attention to battery longevity. The packs in the Volt & Bolt have a lot of systems set up to maintain temperatures optimal for battery lifespan (in both cold and hot weather); one of the things that distinguishes them from the lackadaisical engineering in e.g. a Nissan Leaf.

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)

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#35

Post by camgunz »

GalenErso wrote: post #32
brianglick wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't really need a heated garage (at home, anyway) if you had a 220 volt charger. That should be able to overcome any charging challenges in extreme cold, anyway. Relatively easy to get that into your garage. 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.

Meanwhile, with an ICE car, you don't need to worry about having a garage, nevermind a heated one; the right charger, warming a pack, losing fuel overnight, or taking three hours to fully charge. I can pull up to any gas station and fill my tank in 2 minutes. And my gas isn't magically evaporating if it's a little chilly. The 30 different requirements for EVs to work in cold weather are too complex and prohibitively…

It sounds like just 1 requirement

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#37

Post by nradov »

simfree wrote: post #33
justahuman74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 115v lines just arent enough, it may have been quite ok using a 240v though (from say a dryer plug)

OP should have gone by percentage of battery left, and just left the car plugged in. 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 ch…

It's hardly crazy to expect that the car should display an accurate range estimate based on the current temperature.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#38

Post by rcarr »

gambiting wrote: post #24
rcarr wrote: post #16

There's a long distance motorcycle travel series with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman called "Long Way Up" where they go from the bottom of South America to LA on electric motorcycles. They had a lot issues with both range and charging the motorbikes in the first few episodes when they were dealing with the cold winter climate in Tierra del Fuego. Once they got far enough north into warmer climates the bikes were c…

The entire series of Long Way Up felt like it was filmed maybe ~5 years too early. So many of the issues were caused by the bikes just being prototypes. 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)

> The entire series of Long Way Up felt like it was filmed maybe ~5 years too early. So many of the issues were caused by the bikes just being prototypes.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#39

Post by Karrot_Kream »

GalenErso wrote: post #32
brianglick wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't really need a heated garage (at home, anyway) if you had a 220 volt charger. That should be able to overcome any charging challenges in extreme cold, anyway. Relatively easy to get that into your garage. 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.

Meanwhile, with an ICE car, you don't need to worry about having a garage, nevermind a heated one; the right charger, warming a pack, losing fuel overnight, or taking three hours to fully charge. I can pull up to any gas station and fill my tank in 2 minutes. And my gas isn't magically evaporating if it's a little chilly. The 30 different requirements for EVs to work in cold weather are too complex and prohibitively…

I mean by that metric, it's hard to figure out how to install a dryer in your house too. It's the same circuitry.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#40

Post by jtc331 »

nradov wrote: post #37
simfree wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP should have gone by percentage of battery left, and just left the car plugged in. 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 ch…

It's hardly crazy to expect that the car should display an accurate range estimate based on the current temperature.

Gas car range predictions are also regularly nonsensical. I thought this was well understood.
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