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Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

nytimes.com

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Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#121

Post by iAMkenough »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #14
mminer237 wrote: post #11

It seems like electric cars necessitate garages. Basically all these problems seem to be caused by people leaving them outside unplugged overnight, which I don't know how they deal with during the summer even. I can't imagine driving a car I have to stop for an hour to publicly charge every week. I guess it would be fine if you could charge it on the street or whatever, but you would still be using a lot of power jus…

this is basically what some cities try to enforce at the moment: everyone convert to electric, without enough garage places

Cities aren't writing tickets or fines if you don't decide to purchase an electric vehicle.

They may choose policies that incentivize EV use to meet climate/environmental goals, but any sort of enforcement policy that mandates private citizens must purchase and drive EVs would quickly get shot down in court.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#122

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

smileysteve wrote: post #117
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quick, someone tell that small rural community of 600 people they need public transportation! When people express opinions like this you immediately know they live in the city and think everyone else does too.

Unless you look back 70 years and realize that many small towns only existed because they had rail (passenger and goods). (and/or private bus service). Turns out, getting your goods to market before every person had a car was a requirement.

is this a serious response?

before they had cars people used horses.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#123

Post by tw04 »

mdorazio wrote: post #84
tw04 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly accurate. Pick a car - say a Mustang Mach-e: a standard 15A outlet is going to charge at 4miles/hr. Say you get home a 6pm, never go anywhere, and leave it plugged in overnight - that's 48 miles of range. If you're talking dead of winter in Chicago in negative temps, assume half that. Long story short: a 15A outlet really isn't going to get the job done for charging a car. Also you cannot just char…

Not really, though. The average American drives 37 miles a day [1]. Your 48 miles overnight is more than enough 9 months out of the year even in a place like Chicago. A once a week trip to a faster charger or just a top-off when you're at a store / workplace that has chargers would cover the other 3 months. For places with less extreme winters than Chicago (the vast majority of US population centers), it's a non-issu…

48 miles assumes 12 hours of charging every day, in 50 degree or warmer weather. You haven't covered how you're planning on securing the charger or getting power to it for someone that lives in an apartment.

I have multiple EVs in my household, I'm completely onboard. People acting like they're for everyone today are delusional with the current state of charging infrastructure in the US.

We've had the unfortunate need to use public charging a handful of times and almost every single time it has been an absolute nightmare. From non-working chargers to long lines (because of all the aforementioned people who only have access to public chargers). The only time it has been relatively painless was road trips when it's the middle of nowhere middle america because most folks that live there don't have EVs.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#124

Post by lamontcg »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #96
_ea1k wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of cold towns in the US that didn't have the same issues as Chicago. There's more to it than just "Cold weather". TBH, perhaps the more general problem is that EVs aren't fully ready for dense cities yet. Or maybe dense cities aren't ready for EVs.

To be clear, when this problem was happening in Chicago, the temperature was a lot colder than Oslo. Like -30°C with a wind chill approaching -50°C. That's not "cold weather", that's "insanely cold weather". According to Wikipedia, it has never been anywhere close to that cold in Oslo. And yet, due to the climate change effect on the arctic jet stream, Chicago sees this kind of temperature for a few days in 2-3 out o…

My first vehicle in high school was a diesel pickup in Alaska that wouldn't start at -20F.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#125

Post by emj »

Symbiote wrote: post #116
Kon-Peki wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, when this problem was happening in Chicago, the temperature was a lot colder than Oslo. Like -30°C with a wind chill approaching -50°C. That's not "cold weather", that's "insanely cold weather". According to Wikipedia, it has never been anywhere close to that cold in Oslo. And yet, due to the climate change effect on the arctic jet stream, Chicago sees this kind of temperature for a few days in 2-3 out o…

Is the wind chill more than marginally relevant to a car? People lose heat through evaporation, which is worse if there's wind. Objects don't, and normal wind speeds are usually well below driving speeds anyway.

The magic of water in clay makes objects cold, like the Olla pots for water or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator

I have no clay cars sadly, not sure how ordinary cars handle wind chill.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#126

Post by Pasorrijer »

boh wrote: post #7
wyldfire wrote: post #4

I'm not sure that this warrants such a generalization from the title. The article itself goes on to quote: > “This is not a categorical problem for electric vehicles,” he added, “because it has largely been sorted out in other places.” > ... Cold weather is likely to be less of an issue as companies update electric vehicles models. Even in the last few years, companies have developed capabilities that allow newer mod…

The only place where they provide specific examples of how things are "largely sorted" is Norway and they themselves admit: > the majority of people in Norway live in houses, not apartments, and nearly 90 percent of electric vehicle owners have their own charging stations at home, he said.

I was in Oslo 5 years ago and even then, the parking meters outside apartments had been retrofitted with charger, and this was on parallel parking spots.

A lot of cold countries have plugs at every parking spot for block heaters. It's not too big a leap to retrofit those for some level of charging.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#127

Post by _ea1k »

engineer_22 wrote: post #118
_ea1k wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of cold towns in the US that didn't have the same issues as Chicago. There's more to it than just "Cold weather". TBH, perhaps the more general problem is that EVs aren't fully ready for dense cities yet. Or maybe dense cities aren't ready for EVs.

I think it is just people needing to get ready for EVs. Care and maintenance is different from ICE's, and folks are still learning what to do and when.

I'm not sure how an Uber driver can solve the Chicago problem for himself. More infrastructure is really needed. Although the amount of additional infrastructure needed isn't necessarily vast. It sounds like they had enough chargers for normal days.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#128

Post by bryanlarsen »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #120
bryanlarsen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience in Canada, small rural communities typically do have public transportation. Small rural communities generally have a lot of elderly people, so most small towns provide a wheelchair accessible taxi-like service.

while retirement communities exist, that certainly isn't what I was describing.

I'm not talking about retirement communities. I'm talking about normal small towns where >50% of the kids move to the cities where the jobs are.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#129

Post by engineer_22 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #110
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quick, someone tell that small rural community of 600 people they need public transportation! When people express opinions like this you immediately know they live in the city and think everyone else does too.

In my experience in Canada, small rural communities typically do have public transportation. Small rural communities generally have a lot of elderly people, so most small towns provide a wheelchair accessible taxi-like service.

Rural New Yorker here, we also have low intensity public transportation (contract taxis, bus lines). As a busy professional, it would be too inconvenient for me to use, but as a busy professional I can afford to drive.

Walkable cities sounds nice, but I like having space. At this point of my life, living in a suburban community is desirable.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#130

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #128
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while retirement communities exist, that certainly isn't what I was describing.

I'm not talking about retirement communities. I'm talking about normal small towns where >50% of the kids move to the cities where the jobs are.

ooooh, you're not talking about retirement communities.

One wonders how the hay gets baled if most of the population is elderly people.

you don't actually understand what a rural community is.

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