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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

#371

Post by treeman79 »

cwalv wrote: post #116
jws wrote: 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…

> 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. 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.

Will power even be a thing?

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#372

Post by kalleboo »

isityouyesitsme wrote: post #293
EdwardDiego wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does Person B live? In a hut in Siberia?

C'mon, you have to purposefully be this obtuse. There's no other way it can happen. 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.

> 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

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#373

Post by aliswe »

adrianN wrote: post #364
isityouyesitsme wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a communist state

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#374

Post by kalleboo »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #121
Enginerrrd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the biggest thing EV proponents seem to miss is that you don't need to force it to be 100% for everyone. Confine any mandates to urban centers where it makes sense, you can get buy in from everyone and solve 95% of the problem. At that point there will be lower hanging fruits than the last 5% or w/e.

I fully agree that not everyone needs to get an EV, there will be edge cases where it won’t be feasible. Luckily for those people they will have millions of older ICE cars to choose from.

Also all the "no more ICE by 2030" mandates I've seen allow plug-in hybrids which solves the biggest complaint people have (range)

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#375

Post by fomine3 »

nicoburns wrote: post #231
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chargers are a problem for apartments in urban centers though.

People in apartments must be parking their cars somewhere. You just need to put chargers wherever people are already parking their cars.

It can't "just" put for mechanical parking system.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#376

Post by [deleted] »

neon_electro wrote: post #63
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…

Do you just assume all EVs lose massive amounts of battery state of charge while unplugged? There's a reason Tesla vehicles lose battery while parked and unplugged; they have cameras and other computer systems continuing to run, sapping power. 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 l…

[deleted]

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#377

Post by msrenee »

jws wrote: post #73
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…

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…

And then you're replacing the fuel filters when it's below 0 F out because they got destroyed by the gelled diesel. And then you learn your lesson and keep a bottle of Power Service on hand if it's going to get cold and it's never a problem again.

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?

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#378

Post by caf »

kzrdude wrote: post #179
cwalv wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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.

I'm curious, is 220V (or 230V) more than twice as fast/twice as good as 110V? The discussion here makes it sound like it. All I know is that you'll need higher amperage with lower voltage, but it can compensate proportionally. I guess heat losses and other problems are significant, if it's a problem at 110V?

The battery heater is a fixed overhead, so even at the same amperage (and twice the power), if the weather conditions are such that the heater was taking 80% of the available power on a 15A/110V circuit, it'll only be taking 40% of the available power on a 15A/220V circuit, meaning the charging power is 6 times greater.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#379

Post by KMag »

Phlarp wrote: post #99
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…

If it's cold enough a Tesla plugged into 120v/20a charging circuit will actually lose voltage over time. It's consuming over 2000 watts just to keep the battery at an acceptable temp for the chemistry to function. 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 rip…

> 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.

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.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#380

Post by pensatoio »

Yesterday, I drove my M3 from Nashville to Chicago in the sub-zero wind. Yes, range was slightly down, but not nearly enough to frustrate me.

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.

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