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The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

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461–470 of 549 posts

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science evolves as does technology, and inevitably both factors will change over the coming decades. To base your life around the worst case predictions of models (where the disaster moment keeps pushing back as time progresses) is not logical. Operating on the basis of the most extremist "worst case" scenarios that are very unlikely (like your "peak oil" example) probably doesn't make too much sense, but it's prob…

I am in favor of a risk-based approach as you're describing. Some certain sacrifice today is worth some unclear reduction in an uncertain future event. The question is - how much? If you wanted to be extreme in CO2 reduction, I guess your best bet is to kill every living human and animal on the planet (to be clear, not advocating this!) Clearly that's "too high" a price to pay. On the other hand, you can be very prac…

> Increasing vehicle mileage is an example of this - mileage has doubled and emissions per vehicles halved since 1975

That kind of progress has questionable impact on net emissions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#462
post #301
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars should be more expensive to cover their externalities but considering that cars spend 95% of the day parked and most people are not driving hundreds of miles per day, it seems likely that the combination of charging points at parking garages and similar structures, homes, streetlights, etc. is going to reach a level where most people can charge more than they need to. In fact, since solar has such massive daylig…

If someone actually believes in democracy, they should try to get politicians to agree with the statement "cars should be more expensive to cover their externalities" on the record. In the US, almost every single one would dodge the question or outright disagree. Even the ones not running for re-election don't want to ruin their and their party's reputation.

There’s an entire urbanism movement trying to shift things here, but the focus tends to be on removing the hidden subsidies[1] so costs are more visible and making alternatives better. The entire state of California just made density easier to build, which is really important.

Alternatives are important here since while most Americans drive that doesn’t mean that they love everything about it and won’t consider alternatives. There are a ton of people who would love not to pay thousands of dollars to sit in traffic and make their health worse, but they don’t see a good alternative. The activists getting bike infrastructure, improved buses, and density are giving them that option and climate change is causing a lot of younger people to realize that the timing has to be stepped a lot since even EVs produce more CO2 than any other form of ground transportation.

There’s big generational component here, too. Most drivers aren’t old enough to think of roads without traffic as normal, and economic trends mean that a lot of younger people are faced with even longer commutes in cars, not to mention that transit is more appealing when you have smartphones.

1. In addition ti the obvious one of pollution, housing & retail prices are high due to requirements to provide subsidized parking to drivers. Removing that allows owners to make different decisions.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the good of the engine maybe. For the good of the driver... when you're finished scraping off it's better inside. Plus the windows kinda warmed up so it's easier to scrape.

Not sure what is the assumption. I have the opportunity to scrape the ice off of the car many times a year.

Depends on the weather. There were a multiple times when the running engine heating up the windshield was the necessary prerequisite to scrape the ice off.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the good of the engine maybe. For the good of the driver... when you're finished scraping off it's better inside. Plus the windows kinda warmed up so it's easier to scrape.

Not sure what is the assumption. I have the opportunity to scrape the ice off of the car many times a year.

Its just that I care more about my comfort than wear on the engine

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> mechanical parking system

Are those common? I know they exist, but I thought they were unusual. I've certainly never seen an actual one.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#466
post #185

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 rang…

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss See the chart here. (source from article)

Yup, of the cars with “verified” (as opposed to estimated) winter range loss, Teslas do best. Further reinforces my point.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because your state and country is ahead in this area, everyone else is "a hut in Siberia?" No. How did arrive at that conclusion? Did you misread the user names and assume I made that comment? > Why would you argue against a US mandate by talking about Australia? You made a statement about other places in the world which was false, I gave an example of why it was false. You are now better informed, you're welcome.

yes, I misread (or more accurately didn't read) user names. Apologies for that. But no, what I said was not false. I said that I suspect there are other locations in the world where this is true (meaning northern US isn't the only one), and the reply was that there are locations where it isn't true (Australia).

As often happens what we say doesn't always clearly convey what we mean to others, we've perhaps both fallen foul from this.

A few points of note;

* like or not Australia as a country is an interesting case study wrt "how do other countries fare?" .. we have charging capabilities .. but hellish distances between towns outside of cities. On the plus side the vast bulk of the population is urban | near urban .. so it's only the actual outback | rural | FiFo types that may be left with ICE down the timeline.

* Future mandates are aspiration and exert a pressure to change; come crunch day it may have come to pass that sufficient recharge capability has been pushed out to Backwater Dale in Banjo County .. or not. When the reality comes to pass there is the option to modify policy in the face of some areas being better suited for mandated EVs than others.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#468
post #65

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 rang…

I saw a similar discussion about Gas Mileage. The point was to allow us to compare the differences between different models under similar conditions, not to get real world results. Maybe EVs need more complex testing ?

Perhaps, but I think they just need more relevant tests. The EPA tests were meant to be challenging for ICE cars, but happen to be easy for hybrids and EVs.

I would like to see a 75 mph constant-speed test at 0F, 50F and 100F

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