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Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

nytimes.com

211–220 of 230 posts

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

#211
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> any sort of enforcement policy that mandates private citizens must purchase and drive EVs would quickly get shot down in court. Citation? Have any been shot down in court? There are plenty of locations that have passed laws that all new cars be EVs after year 20XX (for example 2035 in California). I suspect most of those will be reverted as overly optimistic, but for now, they are in place.

Give me a municipality that currently requires its citizens to sell their ICE vehicle and purchase an EV and I will eat my words.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home town has public transport, called the Handi-Van. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redvers,_Saskatchewan Population 1,000.

https://sk.211.ca/services/town-office-43/handi-van-transit/ > Eligibility > Elderly individuals and those with special needs. which is what I expected when I went looking, calling that public transportation is against the spirit of what we're discussing here. My further guess is that the majority of the people in this town are elderly (retirement community).

So the town can afford dedicated transport for people who don't produce anything and your assumption is that it isn't feasible for those who do produce economic value? And it is somehow more feasible for each of those individuals to privately pay the costs?

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's clearly not an option for the cars that are abandoned and dead because they couldn't charge. Plugging in to a charger provides all the power to heat (and slowly charge) the battery, you just won't get full speed while the battery is below-freezing.

In this case, the chargers weren't operating either. There's a whole parking lot (at least one, I heard more but one for sure) full of cars that couldn't go anywhere because there was no power to be had.

If gas stations stopped working there would also be cars stuck. Yes they are more ubiquitous currently but this isn't an inherent flaw of electric vehicles.

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

#214
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…

Tesla manual says you need to precondition the battery for upwards of an hour before fast charging in cold weather. That's clearly not an option for the cars that are abandoned and dead because they couldn't charge. It's also not just the one station that was an issue. One guy left his Tesla at the airport parking lot, came back after his trip, and had to pay to get it towed to a charger.

"before fast charging" not "before charging".

Tow/push the cars to a place where Level 1 or Level 2 charging is available and they'll be fine to get going if someone has allowed the battery to be totally depleted in the cold.

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

#215
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would filled up twice on a trip between Ottawa and Quebec City in a gasoline car in the winter. Never let your tank get below 50% in case of emergency, and there's no such thing as a "destination charger" for ICE's.

> I would filled up twice on a trip between Ottawa and Quebec City in a gasoline car in the winter. Why? A 275 mile drive should be easily done in any gas car without stopping. Even my smallest tank car can do ~325 miles, my other cars can do ~425 and ~500 miles on one tank.

Mine can't even do 200.

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

#216
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people need 48 miles (or 24 miles if the charging is slow because of the temperature) of range every day? Genuine question, I don't know what driving in that area is like, i.e. nearest grocery story could be 10 miles?

It's not about "every day." It's about being able to hop in the car and just go at a moment's notice. Regardless of the distance. In an ICE car, that's a given. In an EV, it's murkier. Much murkier.

Has never been an issue in 4 years of ownership. We can leave at a moments notice any time and get across the country or adjoining countries if we want or need to.

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

#218
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any sort of enforcement policy that mandates private citizens must purchase and drive EVs would quickly get shot down in court. Citation? Have any been shot down in court? There are plenty of locations that have passed laws that all new cars be EVs after year 20XX (for example 2035 in California). I suspect most of those will be reverted as overly optimistic, but for now, they are in place.

Give me a municipality that currently requires its citizens to sell their ICE vehicle and purchase an EV and I will eat my words.

Nobody has mentioned having to sell ICE cars, so that's a strawman that doesn't apply.

In terms of buying, yes, if all new cars must be EVs then an EV is the only thing you will be able to buy new.

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

#219
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would filled up twice on a trip between Ottawa and Quebec City in a gasoline car in the winter. Why? A 275 mile drive should be easily done in any gas car without stopping. Even my smallest tank car can do ~325 miles, my other cars can do ~425 and ~500 miles on one tank.

Mine can't even do 200.

I'm curious what car is it?

I started thinking maybe a sporty car (thus gas tank is not huge) with a huge engine (bad MPG) but couldn't find anything, even a Viper seems to get over 300 miles on the highway. Maybe some Ferrari with particularly bad MPG? Seems the worst is a 812GT, but that has a range of just under 300 miles. So I give up, what is it?

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

#220
post #21

yet another reason why “EVs won’t save the world but rather save the dying auto industry” Country needs to invest in supporting alternative transportation options across the nation. Cities need to be redesigned. The attitudes need to change. Car centric transportation doesn’t work at scale.

Hard to say. I see cars deployed at great scale today in the US though certainly you run into trouble at high densities. High-density cities in the US are unaffordable to the extent that it's not so clear that the millionaires who can afford to live in them will want to if school teachers, barristas, police officers, sanitation engineers and such can't afford to live there. High-density cities have received a huge am…

It's not hard to say. The car experiment is not going well. We're funneling absurd amounts of money to maintain the infrastructure and still the roads are often crumbling. Traffic continues to get worse everywhere that depends on them. People are dying when they don't need to.
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