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The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

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361–370 of 549 posts

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do those people park their cars now? Wherever that is, put a charger on a post next to the spot.

And where does the electricity come for those chargers? Huge swaths of the USA are experiencing rolling blackouts right now because there isn't enough electrical capacity.

Try building some generators? Renewable energy is cheap and a perfect match for charging cars, just adjust the charging current to match current generation.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bold proposal for solving the streets in city crisis: 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.

Now, who would pay for this? Car drivers? City dwellers?

In wealthy parts of the city, the building owners could be made responsible for the upkeep of the walking areas adjacent to their building. The infrastructure to support it would have to be maintained or inspected by an honest third party. In not as wealthy parts of the city, I don’t think this idea makes sense.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#364
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken by someone who's never had their diesel fuel begin gelling in the fuel line at night on a frigid, remote highway and trying to figure out if you can make it to somewhere with heat before you stop completely. Then finding out they only have gasoline, so you try to figure out how much gas you can add to the diesel tank to keep it from gelling but still run adequately to move you along. Sometimes we forget that w…

OK, 10 years behind EV. It makes sense that it is where it is. Please point out anywhere where anyone says the accomplishments are not remarkable on their own, if you are not comparing them to the thing with 100 years infra behind it. 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 o…

We should kill all EV manufacturing five years ago. Spend the effort instead on building charging infrastructure, bike lanes, and public transport. Used cars are good for another fifteen years or so to cover edge cases where EV adoption is slower, giving us ample time to figure out solutions that don't drive mass extinction.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#365
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where does the electricity come for those chargers? Huge swaths of the USA are experiencing rolling blackouts right now because there isn't enough electrical capacity.

And the car batteries can supply peak demand instead of having a blackout.

I hope that doesn't mean I plug in my car at 80%, hoping to top it off for a long trip, but since everyone else is averaging 60% and there's peak demand, it decides to drain the battery and generously put a dollar in my account.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#366
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving through snow?

No, just driving on the motorway, at a solid 140km/h. Did the exact same drive in winter and in the summer just this year and that was the difference in consumption(I want to add that I can see the difference in daily use too, but I just happened to do the exact same 700km drive where the only different factor was the season of the year, so it gave me a very good reference point for specific numbers).

It's even worse for city drivers doing short trips. The engine doesn't have time to heat up properly before you reached your goal. Fuel efficiency is abysmal and the exhaust treatment systems barely work.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#367
post #33

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…

> and basing his entire decisions on what the car's guess-o-meter says for remaining milage is pretty crazy IMO.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When it's below freezing, home charging can be tough to impossible. 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.

To clarify, I'm talking NEMA 14-50, 240V@50A breaker, 40A charger) and will regularly get low charging rates if it's very cold.

I have that exact setup and haven't had that experience.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#369
post #365
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the car batteries can supply peak demand instead of having a blackout.

I hope that doesn't mean I plug in my car at 80%, hoping to top it off for a long trip, but since everyone else is averaging 60% and there's peak demand, it decides to drain the battery and generously put a dollar in my account.

It would most likely be opt-in, as a form of this is already a thing in some place - you can choose to have the power company reduce the power of your cooling/heating during peaks in demand in return for a discount on your power bill.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#370
post #207

Yet another reason why EVs won’t save us from the inefficiencies of car centric transportation. 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”.…

> Americans, can we stop this failed experiment

It's been pretty successful for a "failed experiment".

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