I have never seen this issue addressed on the main stream news. Do the new electric cars lose efficiency and range in temperatures below 32 deg. F. and when it gets colder around 0 deg.? This is typical for the weather here in NE Ohio. I belive that was an issue with the Chevy Volt.
Yes, and the amount of loss depends on the type of heater used. Both the batteries and the meat inside the car need to be heated. Cars with heat pumps suffer less loss of range than cars with resistive heaters. A fellow in Denver I talked to last weekend who had Teslas with both types of heater says the range loss was around 30% for the resistive and 10% for the heat pump.
It's not a hard line at 32 and 0 F, it's more a matter of "energy must be expended to counteract the cold environment".
If the car is on the charger, the best thing to do is to have it pre-condition itself when plugged in. I know on ours we can set a scheduled departure time so the car (batteries and interior) is pre-warmed before it is unplugged.
Nearly half of the EVs in Canada are in Quebec, and there are no warm areas of Quebec in wintertime :) It would be a useful place to go looking for real-world experiences.
Yes just as ICE does. Fuel mileage drops the colder it is. About 2-4 mpg. But none of my neighbors with EV's complain. Instead of getting 125 MPGe they may be down to 110 MPGe and range for their average 30 mile trip may drop to 280 miles
Mustang50 said:I have never seen this issue addressed on the main stream news. Do the new electric cars lose efficiency and range in temperatures below 32 deg. F. and when it gets colder around 0 deg.? This is typical for the weather here in NE Ohio. I belive that was an issue with the Chevy Volt.
Yes, cold temps reduce range. Increased HVAC usage will as well. 30-40% drops aren't unheard of. Many plug in vehicles come with seat heaters so that range sucking HVAC use can be reduced.
Cold temps reduce fuel economy of ICEs too FWIW.
Cold weather is where the efficiency of EVs comes back to haunt them. Gas engines waste a huge percentage of the fuel's energy in the form of heat. Getting rid of that heat is a problem in the summer, but it's quite handy in the winter :)
We've been on one serious winter trip in ours - over the Colorado passes in February in a snowstorm. The drop in range wasn't a major concern, we were far more concerned about the weather and road conditions and I simply didn't notice the range change. We did do a "safety stop" to throw a few more electrons in the battery before heading into one of the last passes, but I would have stopped to refuel an ICE vehicle at the same time because going into a storm is when you want as much reserve as possible.
I suspect the loss of range would be greater around town than on a road trip, as you're more likely to have big swings in cabin/battery temp when the car is being driven/parked/driven/parked etc. On a road trip, you get a bit of heat out of the motors and you're just trying to keep up with the heat loss (with people inside, who are heaters themselves).
My 2015 Volt is parked in the driveway year-round in MN. I get 40 miles of electric range in the summer and 23 miles in the coldest part of winter.
The other winter bit to keep in mind that commuting tends to get done in the dark.
Even efficient LED lighting results in a part of that winter ranger hit, though it's second order compared to heating.
It's not just the heater that causes the range reduction, it's also that batteries work less well when they're cold. The same way that a 12v starting battery won't give as much juice when it's below zero, the lithium batteries in an EV don't make as much when they're cold either.
I have been told that this can lead to non-intuitive behaviour in some cars where the range can actually go up if you drive "spiritedly" for the first few miles on a really cold day. Pulling that power out heats the batteries up faster, which makes them work better, so even though you're "wasting" energy at the start, that improvement in performance gives a net win.
obsolete said:My 2015 Volt is parked in the driveway year-round in MN. I get 40 miles of electric range in the summer and 23 miles in the coldest part of winter.
This got me thinking. I don't think we can fully express the range hit as a percentage, as there are two parts to it: bring the car up to temp, and maintain that temp. Also, as codrus says, the drop in energy output from cooler batteries.
The warmup hit is going to be the same regardless of the battery size, especially the interior volume. If that takes the equivalent of 8 miles of range, that's a 20% hit to a Volt - but less than 3% to a car with a 300 mile range. The battery warming may scale with the size of the battery pack, I don't know.
Then, once you start driving, the losses are likely to be more consistent - say, a 20% loss in efficiency (number chose for illustrative purposes). If you're dealing with a Volt that's already taken a 20% range hit, that's going to pull you down to a 40% loss of range. But that 300 mile car will only lose about 23%. So looking at the range penalty for cold weather as a percentage and trying to average it across all EVs is misleading.
Does that logic make sense?
Keith Tanner said:Then, once you start driving, the losses are likely to be more consistent - say, a 20% loss in efficiency (number chose for illustrative purposes). If you're dealing with a Volt that's already taken a 20% range hit, that's going to pull you down to a 40% loss of range. But that 300 mile car will only lose about 23%. So looking at the range penalty for cold weather as a percentage and trying to average it across all EVs is misleading.
It's also going to vary depending on the trip length. If you warm the car up for a 5 mile trip four times a day that's going to be a lot more range reduction than warming it up once for a single 20 mile trip.
Apparently it's possible to "pre-warm" some cars while it's still connected to a charger. It still takes energy, but you get that from the grid rather than taking it out of the battery so there's no range reduction from it. It does require planning, though. :)
Yup, I mentioned the pre-warming in an earlier post. Also the length of trip :) I think it's that initial warmup that's the big hit.
Obsolete, can/do you pre-warm the car when it's still on the umbilical?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Yeah, I get what you're saying. The hybrid nature of the Volt futher complicates things because below 15F (or 32F if you use the more aggressive setting, which is for wimps) the engine will automatically start, because it's a more efficient heater, and the car will use that heat to warm both the cabin and the battery. On one occasion, after the car sat in the parking lot at work when it was very cold (below 0F all day) and I didn't precondition it enough, the battery was not available and the car was driving on 100% gas engine power. Halfway though my drive home, it decided the battery was warm enough and the car became a hybrid again.
Keith Tanner said:Yup, I mentioned the pre-warming in an earlier post. Also the length of trip :) I think it's that initial warmup that's the big hit.
Obsolete, can/do you pre-warm the car when it's still on the umbilical?
Yes, I do it every time when it's plugged in at home, but there are no chargers at work.
I know a fellow who commutes with a Volt and his commute is short enough to do it all electric. He puts Stabil in the gas tank year round.
-30, range is roughly halved, from what I've heard around this frozen wasteland where I live. I think there is quite a bit spent on warming the batteries, in addition to the meat sacks inside.
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
Start keeping track of the length you travel daily. One reputable site pegged it at 30 miles. I'm a little more at 52 miles.
So please get realistic. 15 minutes at a Tesla supercharger site gets you 150 miles. During that 15 minutes aside from using the bathroom, you can have a snack do a little shopping, call your mother, read a book or watch a U tube.
Range phobia is something you'll get over after you have one for a few months.
frenchyd said:In reply to Streetwiseguy :
Start keeping track of the length you travel daily. One reputable site pegged it at 30 miles. I'm a little more at 52 miles.
So please get realistic. 15 minutes at a Tesla supercharger site gets you 150 miles. During that 15 minutes aside from using the bathroom, you can have a snack do a little shopping, call your mother, read a book or watch a U tube.
Range phobia is something you'll get over after you have one for a few months.
What does this have to do with him saying that -30 halves the battery life? He never said he was afraid of it, nor does he own by "from what I've heard."
I'm tracking my range loss on a Tesla M3P as we get into the winter. In general I have been pre-warming it (5-10) while still on the charger before leaving. I did tinker with HVAC or simply seat heaters but didn't notice much difference on the last trip. It will be more telling once we get closer to zero as initial trips were more in the 30-49 deg f range.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:I know a fellow who commutes with a Volt and his commute is short enough to do it all electric. He puts Stabil in the gas tank year round.
That's my situation as well. My commute is 3.2 miles, on days I go in, which isn't every weekday anymore. Stabil isn't really necessary, though. We take the Volt on enough road trips that the gas stays fresh enough to avoid "fuel maintenance mode" where the computer decides your gas is too old and starts burning it just so you can put some fresh stuff in.
I know there were some pretty avid Tesla owners here in central New York who admitted they saw reductions of 100 miles in range in the winter and held onto a non-EV vehicle to use for the winter instead.
obsolete said:We take the Volt on enough road trips that the gas stays fresh enough to avoid "fuel maintenance mode" where the computer decides your gas is too old and starts burning it just so you can put some fresh stuff in.
That's an interesting feature. I like that.
There are far more experienced electric vehicle people here than me, but I will add one small data point. Yes I'm used to IC cars losing range in cold weather, but the Tesla we have at worked shocked me. 2017 Model S 75D. I picked it up in Chicago, made sure I got home late at night with 40 odd miles range. Went out the next morning in May or June so not at all cold, and it had dropped to the point I has 12 miles range for a 13 mile trip. No the HVAC wasn't set to pre warm/cool the car. Yes it went to zero range one mile from work and I made it in.
Same car last week told me it needed to be plugged in. Unfortunately it was on a hoist with no suspension on and our charge lead was about 3' short to reach the car. A couple of days later once the suspension was back on it was so flat nothing would wake up. Long story short Tesla told us the main battery went flat enough it shorted out the 12V battery. Now, the 12V batter is under the frunk, but on a 2017 model S there is no manual frunk release (there is on 2018 and later) so we had to get it to a Tesla service center. Luckily while Tesla can't sell cars here in Michigan thanks to the stupid greedy dealers getting laws passed to protect them from the free market, they can have service centers and there's one 13 miles north of the office. The company Tesla recommended to get the vehicle to them only wanted $625 to pick it up, drive it 13 miles and drop it off. Luckily we found another tow company who put the tires on plastic pads so it could be dragged onto the flat bed (we had been moving it on wheel dollies once off the lift) and it still cost stupid money for Tesla to fit a new battery.
Non of this is meant to be anti electric cars. I think Electric cars are quite possibly the future and that both Lucid and Rivian are outstanding products. I still maintain that Tesla makes at best adequate appliances but truly horrible cars. Having driven them all the S was the high point and they've managed to go down hill from there.
Woody (Forum Supportum) said:obsolete said:We take the Volt on enough road trips that the gas stays fresh enough to avoid "fuel maintenance mode" where the computer decides your gas is too old and starts burning it just so you can put some fresh stuff in.That's an interesting feature. I like that.
Same thing happens if the engine hasn't been started in too long. It will run "engine maintenance mode" for a bit just to keep things lubricated. It's a thoughtfully engineered car. Kind of nerdy. That's part of the fun for me.
The fact that the gas engine is so rarely used that it has an entire set of routines to give it exercise and burn off old gas amuses me. I can just imagine the engineering meetings coming up with the plan for that.
frenchyd said:In reply to Streetwiseguy :
Start keeping track of the length you travel daily. One reputable site pegged it at 30 miles. I'm a little more at 52 miles.
So please get realistic. 15 minutes at a Tesla supercharger site gets you 150 miles. During that 15 minutes aside from using the bathroom, you can have a snack do a little shopping, call your mother, read a book or watch a U tube.
Range phobia is something you'll get over after you have one for a few months.
Didn't comment on any of that. A gasoline powered vehicle also burns roughly twice as much fuel in commuting when its -30. Just fed some heresay information to the herd.
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