I’ve considered getting an inside-roof sunscreen that snaps in place, and adding insulation to it for long winter trips. I suspect that it might create a condensation issue. Plus, the last few years, no opportunities for trips, winter or other.
I think you exaggerate the damage draining the battery does. There was the article about the Tesla that hit 400,000 miles - but had the pack replaced at about 180.000 miles (a defective cell, under warranty). Fast charging is not so good for the batteries, especially if the pack is fairly hot - and these guys were using the vehicle as a taxi LA to Vegas, so fast charging multiple times a trip every day.
So basically - yes, if your modus operandi is to drain the battery regularly to almost 0, then… don’t. If it happens once or twice a year, probably not the best thing to do but won’t destroy the vehicle. Don’t let it sit like that too many days. Similarly, don’t fast-charge it too often, but on long trips, it’s perfectly OK. Apparently some people have no home charger and use regular fast charging. Also, I typically charge to 80%; like draining, charging to 100% is not the best action, but if you do it when necessary because it’s a long way between chargers in cold weather, that’s not horrible.
If you’re still getting, let’s say, 80% of battery life after 200,000 miles, how long would you have owned the car?
maybe equate it to oil changes - you should change your oil regularly, but if you don’t one time or a few, it’s not going to destroy the engine. Not right away, it just adds to the wear and tear.
Teslas, and probably others, will adjust how much battery is available based on temperature. For example, it might say 230 miles of range remaining, and then after it warms up it might change to 238 miles of range remaining. This can confuse some people, because they think the car is dynamically calculating the range based on driving conditions. It is nI don’t know about EV batteries, but a lot of batteries suffer damage if drained too much/entirely.ot. The range calculation in Teslas is static based on the batteries state of charge. Some of that state of charge is not available because it is too cold, so the static range calculation is decreased appropriately.
Where this could be a problem is if the battery is warm from driving, and it is drained very low, then is allowed to sit and get cold enough that the state of charge is into the danger zone for temperature. That is an EV “don’t do that”. ICE cars have plenty of “don’t do that” scenarios, too, they’re just different (don’t drive with the oil light on, don’t immediately put a cold engine under high load, etc.)
As mentioned, Teslas will limit regeneration and charge speed based on temperature. If it is cold enough, they will even limit acceleration, because the rate the battery can provide energy is reduced.
I have been working from home for the past two winters, but the year prior I drove my Kona EV 140 kms round trip commute in -30ish C , left it parked on the street and set it to start heating up on my walk back to the car. My range at 90% was 365 in summer and dropped to 230ish IIRC at minus 30C. Still plenty of range for my commute.
Looking at my latest monthly report from my car, I see that my total consumption was 2,977 kWh, with 2,496 kWh going to the motor, 341 to climate control and 140 to electric device consumption. Regenerated power (one pedal driver here) returned 507 kWh… basically, my braking covered the heating and electrical device consumption combined.
Maybe that’s the real danger in a 3 hour traffic jam, no braking to regen the battery
Not sure of branding or if its custom/proprietary stuff but pumps on fire apparatus are PTO and I have seen mention of ratings in the 150-200hp range. Moving 1500+gal/min (or six tons) of water a minute has some serious power needs especially when needing pressure beyond typical short fire hose lines like feeding high rise standpipe systems.
I don’t know about how it compares overall to a gas car, but it’s not all negatives. New Teslas use double-paned glass for most of their windows now, which improves both acoustic and noise insulation. Also, the giant battery covering the floor will act as a pretty good insulator since it’ll be kept well above ambient temperatures, and in any case is a think chunk of stuff between you and the environment. Should do pretty well overall.
Well sure, in the end a PTO is just a second output shaft on the transmission. In principle there’s no reason it can’t be designed to handle as much power as the main output. It usually isn’t, because it’s usually to drive auxiliary equipment, but that’s incidental.
A quick look at the John Deere website shows tractors with 335 PTO HP.
If tow trucks start fitting PTO-driven generators and there’s demand for higher output than currently available PTOs for tow trucks can deliver, Muncie or someone will design something with higher capacity.
It’s a bit long and spends a fair amount of time going through some clickbait opinion page trash from the Washington Post (as an aside: are opinion articles ever anything but FUD and/or astroturfing from think tanks, etc.?). Anyway, the description has links to the important parts.
In short, both a Model X (resistive heater) and Model Y (heat pump) did fine at ~-7 C, even with a comfy interior temp of 21 C. And that included the initial pre-heating.
Lowering the cabin temp to 15.5 C did even better. That’s a little chilly, but totally safe, and they had the seat heaters on as well, so it’s more comfortable that it sounds. They only did this test on the Model Y, but based on usage they’d get ~60 hours of life in this case. Based on his math, that’s pretty comparable to a gas car with a full tank (though as EV owners with a garage know, you’re much more likely to start your day with a full charge than you are with a full tank of gas).
There is one other aspect here worth mentioning. It’s very unlikely that anyone is going to freeze to death in a traffic jam like this. There are hundreds of cars around. If some of them run out of gas or charge, they’ll find some other friendly motorist to help them out. Emergency vehicles are also going to be checking on people (in the I-95 jam, firefighters were handing out blankets and water, and checking for medical emergencies). Sure, people were scared but there probably wasn’t much actual risk. A bigger problem is getting stranded alone somehow.
I should point out that in extreme cold temperatures, people start out wearing serious cold weather gear to their cars, so keeping the cabin anywhere above freezing should be fine. 15C is uncomfortably warm when wearing a proper parka, toque, and mitts. This isn’t applicable to the Virginia situation, but it is applicable to the OP’s question.
If you live in a cold climate, get a car with a het pump. There’s a pretty big difference in power consumption.
In extreme cold, use the seat heaters, heated steering wheel, and dress heavily so you don’t need as much cabin heat. Electric socks would be a good investment. Point heating is more efficient than area heating.
Have to say, I laughed when I read @Dr.Strangelove 's post. (Piper, who drove him this evening when the temp was -18 in my car, thinking, “Wow, it really warmed up today!”)
I live in the CA Bay Area. If the temperatures get below about 10 C, I start getting alerts about extreme weather events in the area. Sometimes it gets so cold I have to wear a sweatshirt and a light jacket!
The real takeaway should be: don’t worry about any of this. Any EV you can buy today will be perfectly fine. And the fact that the I-95 event made the news means, by definition, that it is completely unimportant (“newsworthy” is almost synonymous with “statistically improbable”).
You’ll have to excuse us western Canadians for caring about vehicle heating. It can literally be life and death. You will never convince us to not worry about this. You may convince us that some particular EV’s heating is adequate to meet our concerns, but you won’t convince us that it’s not worth being concerned about.
I went for a walk on New Year’s Day. I wore:
long-sleeve synthetic base layer
long-sleeve merino sweater (relatively lightweight)
polyester fleece shirt
polyester fleece jacket
North Face winter jacket w/ Primaloft insulation & Goretex shell
and similar numbers of layers on lower body.
It was colder than New Year’s several days this week.
Yep. I’m sure a regular EV will be fine 99% of the time. But if I get stuck on a remote road or go into the ditch in a storm in extremely cold weather, I would like my battery to warm me for as oong as possible.
An old aviation saying, “In an emergency, there’s nothing more useless than altitude above you, runway behind you, and fuel you left in the truck.” For extreme cold EV drivers I’d add “Or battery energy you are wasting with inefficient heating.”
I was unclear. My point is simply that if you apply the same level of care to an EV as you would a gas car, then basically any modern EV will do just fine in these cases, even extreme ones. ICE owners already have to make allowances in extreme cold. EVs are no different, but the specific details change.
It’s FUD to say that EVs are worse than ICE vehicles in the cold overall. They do worse in some situations and better in others. I don’t think anyone in this thread is really saying otherwise, but opinion articles like this one in the Washington Post are just right-wing propaganda. Over 2/3 of the new cars sold in Norway are pure EVs, and they don’t seem to have a rash of people freezing to death in their cars (the author actually notes the Norway sales, but can’t quite make the connection that it undermines his entire point).
One common mistake in comparing two technologies is to only look at the cases that get worse and not examine where they get better. ICE cars fail all the time for reasons that don’t apply to EVs. If you’re trying to make a decision about which technology is better for you, you need to examine all the possible failure modes. What about the case where you didn’t get a chance to fill up (or the gas stations are closed) and you only have two gallons left in your tank? An EV driver doesn’t have that problem; they can just charge at home. We can go on and on with scenarios: what if the power is out? But then, maybe the owner has a generator. And so on. Point is, some large subset of these scenarios favor EVs.
Of course, in practice, few people actually do this at any significant level of detail. How many people make a car-buying decision based on how many hours they can idle in the cold? How many even know how many hours this is? Most are going to just assume that any decent car is going to be good enough for most situations. And that applies equally to an EV and ICE.
Even putting it this way gives a distorted view, and makes it sound like an EV will always be slightly worse than an ICE. But one could say exactly the reverse just as accurately: “I’m sure an ICE will be fine 99% of the time, but…” Extreme scenarios can favor the EV as easily as the ICE.
That said, I agree that if I were stuck somewhere waiting for rescue, I’d take every reasonable measure to extend the battery life, such as turning the thermostat down to the minimum and using clothing/seat heaters as much as possible. That’s not necessarily a point against the EV, though–I’d want to take similar measures with an ICE, but would worry that if I shut off the motor I wouldn’t be able to start it again. That would be a hard decision if I’m trying to save my last couple gallons of gas for the cold night.
