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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

#531

Post by pandaman »

devwastaken wrote: post #530
pandaman wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you call "specific installations", in my house I have two 240V 30A outlets for the dryer hookup and for an electric oven and one 240V 40A for the air conditioner.

We are talking of an outlet for a car in winter. It is much more common to have a common outlet outside than to have a 240v outlet. Even if there were a 240, it would be in the nema format that electric vehicles don't accept directly. This is also the same problem with electric kettles in the U.S. they boil much faster in the u.k. because almost double the power for a common outlet.

If having 240V in an outlet was sufficient to charge a car, we could have installed a transformer and inverter in a car and charge it from a 1.5V AAA battery by pulling up the voltage to 240V. Plugging a car to a 240V outlet with a 13A breaker will only give you 2650 Watt charging power (provided there is the same code that requires 85% of maximum draw in continuous application), which is just 1 kW more than plugging into a 120V 15A outlet. Not a huge difference that would make charging bearable when the car uses more than 1.5 kW just to keep the battery warm.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#532

Post by FatActor »

chii wrote: post #274
FatActor wrote: post #258

Mass-produced consumer EVs are a relatively new tech and they will have problems for another few decades and get better because technology gets better over time (see: the past 1000 years). And I'm not a fanboy by ANY stretch of the imagination (I utterly loathe the CEO of Tesla.) You can't judge today what an EV will be like in 50 years the same way you couldn't judge what would happen from the first Model T (1908) t…

> technology gets better over time (see: the past 1000 years) > can't judge today what an EV will be like in 50 years i can't wait for 50 yrs to have EV be better than ICE cars. If they aren't better _today_, i cannot switch. I would assume the majority of consumers have this attitude. Therefore, in order to transition to EVs for environmental reasons, you either force consumers to have a lesser product by legislatio…

Musk's big win was making EVs luxury cars and having rich people subsidize his research (along with billions from the gov't). That gave him a lot of space to collect real-time research data for years.

It is interesting that you managed to use three logical fallacies in one post: a strawman, a false dichotomy, and a no true scotsman.

A strawman because you invented "legislation to have a lesser product." This is a deadly product we are talking about. It is a public safety issue. You should probably clarify what you mean by this because I only assume you referring to banning misleading labeling of dangerous products, like calling something ADAS5 that really isn't.

A false dichotomy because there are more than two choices. You can have competing products that excel at different areas in and some cases are better, depending on the context. In this space you can have "inferior" EVs (I'm imagining cases where they are inferioir, like mileage and ease of use) to ICEs and still be a choice for short commuters. You don't offer that choice, and that's just one alt, hence the fallacy.

No true scotsman because you made up the term "natural choice" to imply the answer is obvious without giving and justification: basically set it up so that whatever you decide as "natural" is the correct answer, and anything else is not a correct answer, and that can move based on your argument. This undermines the choice you give.

I can go further: consumers will absolutely "suck up" (putting aside the issues with your framing). For example I'm fine with legislation that delegates the size, speed, and efficiency of cars, and so are hundreds of millions of Americans that vote for things like this. In fact I wish there were more laws to shrink the size of vanity trucks that are simply monstrous for no reason. There are decades of evidence showing the damage that fast, huge, inefficient cars inflict on society.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#533

Post by devwastaken »

pandaman wrote: post #531
devwastaken wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking of an outlet for a car in winter. It is much more common to have a common outlet outside than to have a 240v outlet. Even if there were a 240, it would be in the nema format that electric vehicles don't accept directly. This is also the same problem with electric kettles in the U.S. they boil much faster in the u.k. because almost double the power for a common outlet.

If having 240V in an outlet was sufficient to charge a car, we could have installed a transformer and inverter in a car and charge it from a 1.5V AAA battery by pulling up the voltage to 240V. Plugging a car to a 240V outlet with a 13A breaker will only give you 2650 Watt charging power (provided there is the same code that requires 85% of maximum draw in continuous application), which is just 1 kW more than plugging…

An extra 1KW would actually charge the car given time. Not just keep the battery warm. 1kwh is supposedly about 4 miles. Charge for 12 hours overnight, you have enough to get to the supercharger.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#534

Post by pandaman »

devwastaken wrote: post #533
pandaman wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If having 240V in an outlet was sufficient to charge a car, we could have installed a transformer and inverter in a car and charge it from a 1.5V AAA battery by pulling up the voltage to 240V. Plugging a car to a 240V outlet with a 13A breaker will only give you 2650 Watt charging power (provided there is the same code that requires 85% of maximum draw in continuous application), which is just 1 kW more than plugging…

An extra 1KW would actually charge the car given time. Not just keep the battery warm. 1kwh is supposedly about 4 miles. Charge for 12 hours overnight, you have enough to get to the supercharger.

In the OP story, the car was losing charge while plugged into 110V outlet, that means that 1.5 kW was not enough to keep the battery warm. An extra 1kWh might or might not get it into actually charging and even if it's been charging at 1kW it would not get 4 miles per hour, the car driving in these conditions would still use energy to keep the battery pack at the working temperature.

On a side note, I find it amusing when Brits try to brag about their superior electricity due to the progressive 240V. People living in the houses wired in a ring [1], which set themselves ablaze when they try to turn on AC, in my imagination would be more reserved ;)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#535

Post by mixmastamyk »

javajosh wrote: post #507
mixmastamyk wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downtown and K-town are two of the very few places that are actually walkable in LA.

Yeah. But would you raise a family in DT? (Ktown already has a lot of families - and wealthy ones, too, these days).

It would be great in theory but refusal to address the homeless/mental-illness issues makes it impractical in a lot of places.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#536

Post by [deleted] »

labcomputer wrote: post #50

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…

[deleted]

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#537

Post by EdwardDiego »

msrenee wrote: post #514
EdwardDiego wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In a little under half the US. We get at least a couple days a year where the wind-chill brings the temp below -40F with a thermometer temp of -5 or less as a high for the day. My gas car hasn't been happy about starting the last week. Two years ago, I was working 2nd shift and only had the diesel truck. Got to work fine, got off at 2 PM and even with winter blend and a bottle of Heat in the tank, the fuel gelled and…

> where the wind-chill brings the temp below -40F

I'm unsure why wind-chill is relevant to a car being charged in a garage?

> This is a problem that affects way more of the world than you seem to realize.

The original commenter was stating that EVs were entirely unsuitable for a hypothetical person.

The only way that it I can envisage it being entirely unsuitable is if they had no access to grid electricity.

My comment about a hut in Siberia is based on that.

Yes, some Americans might need to upgrade certain circuits, but that's not an blocker, it's just an implementation detail.

I'm very well aware of how cold it can get in the USA, but that doesn't prevent EV use, it just requires investment in infrastructure, and that's an investment I'd hope a smart government would subsidise if it's serious about reducing emissions.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#538

Post by Tostino »

ajross wrote: post #21
Tostino wrote: post #2

That is interesting to see the difference the manufacturers bake into their battery designs as far as software control goes. Tesla seems to quite tightly control pack charge and discharge through their bms, and limit things in software rather than hitting chemical limits of the batteries like some other manufacturers seem to be allowing.

It's not a chemical thing, it's just temperatures. Cold batteries have lower cell voltage, so the current available drops into the non-linear ("off") range at a lower state of discharge than a hot battery. The energy is still there[1], you just can't get it out without warming it up. Teslas[2] (and a handful of other models) have heat pumps to warm the batteries. It's as simple as that. The same system is integrated…

You are absolutely correct that temperature has those effects...but that doesn't change the fact that the underlying reaction inside the batteries is a chemical in nature. That chemical reaction inside the batteries is what gets slowed down as the temperature drops.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#539

Post by joshuanapoli »

linsomniac wrote: post #314
joshuanapoli wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s strange that people’s experiences are so varied with EVs in cold weather. Here it’s 14F right now and my Model Y is charging at 30 mph (versus 32 mph in warm weather). Driving 120 miles this morning at 11F used maybe 10% more energy than normal. The doors, though, we’re quite sticky and frustrating to open.

How long did the battery sit in 14F after driving 120 miles? If I charge right after a 120 mile trip, that'd be fine. Also, are you saying the car is in 14F, or it is 14F outside and your car is in the garage? My car is outside (I use my garage as a shop).

I park outside. My garage is also a shop. I guess that I didn’t let the car soak in the cold snap, last week; I usually plug it in when I get home, since this is more convenient for me.

Re: The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

#540

Post by trog »

magicalhippo wrote: post #197
trog wrote: post #149

How does Norway deal with their EV population given its cold weather?

We've had an EV for almost 5 years now. We first had a BMW i3 94Ah model. It had decent battery thermal management, so it performed fine for us. Yes effective range was down quite a bit, IIRC ~150km in -15C vs ~230km in summer, but it was quite manageable. It got totaled thanks to someone hitting us, and we ended up with a 24kWh Leaf. It doesn't have much in terms of thermal management, so with that we really notice…

Thanks, I figured this was the case - was kind of a tongue-in-cheek question as it's pretty obvious that if a place like Norway can have such huge EV penetration, then they can't be all that of a struggle in the cold!
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