Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 549 posts

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#41

Post by gambiting »

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…

But......EVs do work in cold weather? You lose a bit of range, but so what? My ICE car also gets worse mileage in winter.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#42

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#43

Post by rtkwe »

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.

Check their post again their car lost loads of charge over a very short range because of the cold so in effect it was losing range overnight. It lost 15 miles over 1 mile of driving and another ~15-20 on the next mile driving back.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#44

Post by simfree »

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…

Charging EVs is easy and simple if you just plug in when arriving at a location.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#45

Post by swayvil »

Flywheels. What's the state of the tech for that?

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?

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#46

Post by simfree »

gambiting wrote: post #41
GalenErso wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But......EVs do work in cold weather? You lose a bit of range, but so what? My ICE car also gets worse mileage in winter. 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.

18Mpg becomes 10Mpg or worse in the winter in my experience. EV driving can be more efficient if you don't let your battery cold soak for hours, or equally inefficient if you do leave your car unplugged overnight.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#47

Post by vanous »

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…

I am all for EV, but if besides needing to take care that I plug my phone and my watch every night I must also not forget to plug in the car and if I forget, I must apologize at work for not coming in, or my kids cannot go to school... just because it easily can get to -15°C here... then it feels like a technology issue and not like me doing the worse thing possible...

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#48

Post by jchw »

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…

All things have defined limits; Your gasoline will stop working at like -40 F. And while ICE vehicles have reliable mileage in the winter, they are absolutely prone to issues related to extreme weather. Also, I'm curious where you get the 30 requirements from, since for the most part it's basically just having an outlet installed. Not everyone can do that, sure. Not everyone can ride a bike to work, either. What's the point of this flippant crap?

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#49

Post by simfree »

jtc331 wrote: post #40
nradov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People have extremely high expectations of range estimates. These displays are known as Guess-O-Meters for good reason, they only account for past weather, driving conditions and style.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#50

Post by labcomputer »

It’s interesting that nobody in this thread has yet mentioned the numerous range tests showing that Teslas achieve less than EPA range in many “real world” (warm weather) tests.

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…

Post reply on HN