How well do electric vehicles handle extreme cold?

Factual Questions
61

Something I learnt about people with cars in seriously cold climates. They will not brook any hint of unreliability. I know of Swedes that only keep a car for a few years, and at even the slightest suggestion of issues, will replace it.

Norway is an interesting data point. Despite what we might imagine due to its latitude, it isn’t as cold. We forget the North Atlantic Conveyor aka Gulf Stream. Just for fun I compared Edmonton with Oslo. Olso is significantly warmer. Right now Edmonton is about -30 C, Olso about -7 C. Overall there seems to be an average of 15 C difference, and the extremes could be worse. Sweden is similar. Not until you get into the northern boonies does it get seriously cold. The further East you go the worse Europe gets. But going north does not bring about the brutal extremes that North America sees.

Both ICE and EV technologies can let you down. ICE gets you a huge number of wizzy things and thermal management problems, any failure of which can render the car useless. EVs are much simpler. Less to fail generally. But the failure modes are different, and that can matter. A similar question about EVs would be owning one in outback Oz. Right now the odds are stacked against them, but for different reasons. Distances are huge, and the ability to get a vehicle fixed wherever where you happen to be is an important part of the ownership question. ^{\dagger}

{\dagger} We have a saying. “Want to go the the outback? Sure, get a Land Rover. Want to come back? Get a Toyota.”

62

As a short side-track, of course they are.

A paper can usually get a free quarter page of filler from a think tank, whose purpose in life is to produce puff pieces to advance the tank sponsors’ point of view. Actual journalism takes a back seat, but this applies to half the “news”. If it’s not an actual newsworthy event like an election or disaster, any news item such as “thirty four percent of workers suffer from boredom!” or “Cows produce too much methane!” is most likely a news release put out by an organization with an agenda, and if we’re really lucky, the news media actually re-wrote it before publishing.

I remember back in the day, a bunch of us went camping. One fellow after a bit too much to drink was feeling cold, so he “slept” in his car with the engine running. 8 or 9 hours later, he’d gone through more than half a tank of gas. I would say that 60 hours - or even 30 hours - of cabin heat in an EV compares favourably. Saw a news item about some fellow out west on New years who got frostbite on a few fingers, stuck in the cold -30 with his mother and a flat tire for 2 hours and started to run out of gas. (It was about the good Samaritan who came along) As Dr. Strangelove points out, most EV’s start the day with a full charge, not usually 1/4 full.

63

Understandably. You can see what happens when a place with seriously cold weather gets tourists driving up from a place with ….not that cold weather.
People freeze to death in cars.
Happening about 30 miles from me right now.

64

That came up in my CBC news feed. So sad.

65

Here is a tweet of a screenshot of Facebook Messenger, but if it can be believed it is a first hand account of somebody stuck on I-95 in a Tesla Model Y.

Link to original tweet.

and as somebody replies Headline: Tesla driver falls asleep at the wheel on I-95.

66

“Authorities have not said if Autopilot was enabled at the time…”

The AP article mentions carbon monoxide poisoning as a possibility. These cars may not have all the pollution controls and such that a typical US car would have, but if snow piles up around your car and causes the exhaust to be directed into the cabin, just about any ICE car could cause CO poisoning under the wrong conditions.

67

Oh yes I quite agree. EVs have some significant advantages over ICE in extreme cold. ICE suffer from significant chances of failing to start as the temperature drops below -35. An EV will go, so long as it has a charge. Granted it needs to use some of that charge to keep the batteries at an acceptable temperature, so parking it for extended periods at -40 will eventually get dicy, but in most scenarios it will actually be more reliable. And it should generally have superior cabin heating performance. I’m well aware of these advantages. They’re part of why I’d very much like an EV. Once prices come down to the point that a small EV is priced competitively with subcompact hatchbacks I’ll probably make the leap.

But I will absolutely “worry” about how it heats the cabin, insofar as that means understanding how it can be expected to perform during cold snaps and particularly in emergency/stranded situations, and having some non-negotiable standards for that performance. In much the same way, with modern ICE vehicles you could pretty much not worry about having a block heater installed, as in almost all situations you’ll get by without one. But I would still insist on having one, and it’s not up for discussion.

68

I never said anything of the sort, in my original post or the followup. I said that my takeaways were to get an EV with a heat pump and a big battery if you live in cold weather. That does not imply that an EV without those things is worse than an ICE car.

I actually haven’t done the comparison, but let’s do it just to see what happens.

One of the things that makes EVs more efficient than internal combustion is that they convert a lot more energy into motion rather than shedding it as heat and noise. But when it’s really cold, the advantage must go down somewhat because the waste heat from the engine is used to heat the interior in a gas car.

And ICE cars generally carry a lot more energy than an EV. A gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.7 kWh of energy. But I found this site, which uses data from National Resources Canada:

https://www.autotrader.ca/newsfeatures/20190201/how-long-can-you-stay-warm-on-a-tank-of-gas/

The rule of thumb the NRC gave them is rhat the formula for roughly how long a car can idle is found by multiplying the displacement of the engine by 0.6 to get litres per hour of idle consumption, then multiply that by the size of the gas tank.

For example, my Ford Escape has a 2L engine. So it would consume roughly 1.2L per hour. I have a 60L gas tank, so the Escape should idle for about 50 hours on a full tank.

An equivalent EV might be a Kia Niro, which has a 64 kWh battery and a heat pump. I couldn’t find the consumption specs for the heat pump, but if a Tesla sedan uses 750W to heat the interior with a heat pump, let’s assume that the Niro is about 1 kW with its larger interior. So we are roughly in the same ballpark as the ICE Escape.

This tells me that some EVs will be better than some ICE cars, and vice versa when it comes to staying warm when stuck in the cold. And the differences are probably swamped by how much fuel/charge you have at the start.

But if you get an EV without a heat pump and say, a 5 kW heater, you aren’t going to come close to the endurance of an ICE car. And if you combine that with a short range battery, say 50 kWh, you will be out of charge in 10 hours. And if you hit the traffic jam with half range and need say 20% to get the rest of the way to a charger, you’ve got three hours of heat before you can’t make it home. The same situation in my gas Escape would leave me with 18 hours of idling time.

So I stand by what I said: If you live in a cold climate, get an EV with a long range battery and a heat pump. Or don’t go on long winter trips in your EV.

69

No, but phrasing it that way without mentioning the reverse could lead to someone getting the wrong impression. If a news station reports only airplane crashes and rarely automobile crashes, have they explicitly said that airplanes are more dangerous than cars? No, but a hell of a lot of people come away with that impression, even if only subconsciously.

Somehow it’s always the EVs that have to be defended. The numerous cases of mechanical breakdowns, fires, deaths from carbon monoxide, and so on are just assumed to be the baseline of how cars work and never get questioned. It’s only ever the deficiencies of EVs that have to be addressed by advocates.

70

I don’t think that it’s at all. I know how ICE cars work, and how they handle the extreme cold; I’ve grown up with that, so don’t need to ask. (And trust me, having walked to work in -40 C, without counting windchill, because my ICE car said “uh-uh, no way today”, and having replaced batteries that have cracked from the cold, I know the weaknesses of ICE vehicles. I don’t need to ask.)

EVs are new; I don’t know how they handle extreme cold, which is an important issue for me, so I started a thread to ask. I’ve learnt a lot from the responses here. That doesn’t mean I started with an assumption that they aren’t good.

71

One might guess that the block heater outlets available in many places may be usefully re-purposed as battery heater outlets. It sounds as it it would be a good idea to provide a mode in EVs where they can connect to a standard domestic outlet and only draw enough current to maintain working battery temperatures. That alone could represent a doubling in available range.

An interesting question I have not seen an answer to. If the range drops to half when the battery gets cold, does the energy return when the battery is warmed, or has it dissipated? I suspect it is lost. So one needs to keep the battery warm all the time.

An interesting issue with EV design is battery cooling. The impression I get is that most EV design goes into keeping the battery cool. The large underplate of the car being made from the battery housing, and taking advantage of the cooling surface this presents. Which is what one really doesn’t want when things get properly chilly. So, I wonder if there is scope for winterising the underside. The difficulty would be a reduction in ground clearance, something that may be at a bit of a premium in snow.

72

Yeah, no thanks. Unless the vehicle starts with significantly above-average clearance, I guess, but most current EVs don’t.

73

To be clear, I wasn’t speaking of your OP or any genuine questions about EVs from someone experienced with ICE vehicles. I’m always happy to answer questions like those. I was addressing Sam Stone’s phrasing specifically, and more generally the treatment in the media (such as the WaPo article I linked to earlier).

Although many millions know otherwise at this point, there still seems to be a sentiment in the general public that EVs are kinda like your current car, but worse in a bunch of ways. You must sacrifice your comfort for the greater good of climate change. Right-wingers love this attitude since it allows them to cast the whole thing as some kind of fight against environmental authoritarians. And a few on the far left of the environmental spectrum actually do seem to hold this attitude that saving Earth isn’t worthwhile unless it comes with extreme sacrifice. But of course both attitudes are wrong; we can have our cake and eat it too. An all EV future will be immensely better than the current state, even ignoring the environmental benefits.

74

That’s assuming you run the heater at full blast the entire time. So the better answer is “10 hours of full heating power.” Also, the heater is only going to need a minute or so to start producing that heat. An ICE engine will have to warm the coolant before it starts producing heat, and obviously will burn gas during that time.

There are several things happening in cold weather to reduce range, and they need to be separated to answer this.

Much of the range decrease in cold weather comes from using more energy when driving the car. The heater, snow tires, snow on the road, and denser air all combine to mean that the same amount of energy produces fewer miles than in the summer. This range isn’t lost until you try to use it. Here in the Colorado front range, we may have a snowy 5F day, followed by a 50F day where the roads are dry. One way to think about that, is the range can be “restored” by putting a drive off for a day.

The second thing that happens is the computer will change the battery’s energy storage and release limits based on temperature. When it is cold then (say) 15% of the stored energy in the battery is not available for use, because the computer won’t let the battery drain that low to protect it from the cold. When the battery warms up, either from driving or because a 50F degree swing in daily highs is normal here, then the computer will allow that additional 15% of energy to be used.

So basically the answer is the energy “returns” when the cold is over. Whether because it was always there, but not available to use, or because conditions changed so the same amount of energy is good for a longer drive.

75

In another, Anecdotes aren’t Data post by Ford, it’s not dissipated. Right as the world was just beginning to be engulfed by the COVID 19 virus, my wife and I took our kids to Thailand for a 3 week trip in January/February 2019. We left our EV at home, unplugged in the middle of a Manitoba winter for 3 weeks… Let the car manage itself and manage battery maintenance and left our old Ford Escape to rot at the airport. When we got home, the battery had dropped precipitiiously from 90% to 89%. EV cars do spend so much energy maintaining battery readiness, it is almost apocalyptic.

Which is a semi-sarcastic way of saying, why are all the naysayers and guessers of EV tech not fucking listening to all the actual EV drivers’ experiences? Sure, if my car was stuck on Mars, I might be fucked, but why the hell am I driving on Mars anyway?

76

Actually, a feature of EVs is that they don’t have a transmission and big differential lump hanging below the car, so their ground clearance starts off better than an ICE vehicle. The Rivian truck, for example, does way better off-road than other trucks of its class due to instant torque from the electric motors and the flat, armored underside which allows it to skid over rocks and such that would be hit by the differential in a gas truck that isn’t lifted.

First of all, I’m not seeing any naysayers. We are talking about tradeoffs. Everything has them.

Second, no one is ‘guessing’. People have posted lots of actual test data and reviews.

Third, I prefer data to anecdotes.

Fourth, Mars ain’t the kind of place to drive your EV. In fact, it’s cold as hell. And besides, you want global warming on Mars. Methane cars FTW!

77

They do. The problem in this case is drivers inexperienced in such conditions, (heavy snow, very cold, in mountainous terrain). Most of the stuck cars are of tourists the lowland areas several hundred miles to the south.
Us locals know what a snow warning means.

78

The Chevy Bolt that sits in our driveway next to our Tesla has a 7,500 watt resistance heater. It”s less efficient than the Tesla heat pump, but if you ran that at full blast indefinitely, you’d need someone to come baste you as you’d be sitting in an oven. Once the car is up to temperature, which happens very quickly, the real duty cycle is some small fraction of full power. I would expect in your hypothetical, that the true run time would be 3x or more of that 10 hour projection.

79

I find this happens in almost any area where for some reason people feel the need to “take sides.” The detractors try to spread FUD by making a bunch of outrageous clams. Because they aren’t actually familiar with what they’re bashing, the claims are either overblown or nonsensical. The detractors could be anything from randos on a message board to corporate lobbying organizations.

If you want to find out the true downsides of EVs go to a dedicated EV forum. You’ll find lots of people with legitimate complaints about their EV, which they may also love. Same if you want to find real problems with iPhones—talk to iPhone users, not people who just hate on Apple.

I hate when I hit the wrong button in my car and end up on Mars.

80

We are talking about extreme colds. When it’s -35, your heater will likely be running full blast, or close to it, all the time.