I bet Musk got into EVs so he’d have something decent to drive when he gets to Mars. No oxy in the air there, so ICE cars ain’t gonna hack it on Mars.
Thanks for this thread. I’ve been curious about this issue and there’s a chance I learned something.
This bears repeating. When people up here say it takes a while to warm up our cars, that’s not a critique of the heater. It’s a comment that when the car has been sitting overnight in -35 C, that’s not just the cabin air that needs to be heated. It’s the seats, the dash, the console, the roof, the door panels - because all of them are at -35, and the heat from the air is immediately cooled by the car cabin structure. Even with the heater blowing full blast, it can take quite a while for the car interior to warm up.
That disproves the point, though. Heaters are oversized so they can blast through the cold soak in a reasonable time. But once the interior is at a decent temperature, the heater only has to deal with the losses. The seats and such don’t lose heat on their own; heat is only lost through the surface of the car. Even at extreme cold, these losses are going to be relatively small compared to the power needed to bring large chunks of mass from -35 to 20 in a few minutes.
Furthermore, an EV can blast through this cold soak while sitting in your garage and still plugged in. This isn’t going to apply to all situations, but at least for the start of your day you won’t be depleting your battery for the initial warm-up period.
I’m talking about how much heat you need just maintaining the interior temp after it has warmed up.
I have had cars that would not maintain room temperature in the cabin in -30 weather no matter what you did. One car I had could not put enough heat on the windshield in those temperatures to keep it from frosting over while driving. I would have to pull over and get the airflow off the windshield before max defrost would work.
Remember, when the car is moving ir’s not just cold, but wind is blowing over the exterior surfaces sucking heat away fast.
I know. And I’m responding to say that the heater is sized for that initial burst of heat, not for the steady-state case. There’s no reason to believe that even in extreme cold, the steady state would be anywhere close to the 7.5 kW maximum on the Bolt.
I’m not surprised, but that just indicates poor or cheap design. There’s plenty of thermal energy available, but most of that is going out the exhaust, and only a portion of the remaining (depending on the size/efficiency of your heater core) will actually end up in the cabin.
You mentioned before that you expect your Escape to burn about 1.2 l/h at idle. That’s 11,400 W of thermal power, which is quite a lot–but I’d be shocked if even 25% of that power made it back into the cabin. That would put the heater at 2850 W equivalent.
That’s true, but mostly only applies in motion. Part of the discussion here is about being stuck in traffic or otherwise. Unless it’s very windy, you’ll have an efficiency advantage while stationary (and while moving, even EVs have some waste heat to get rid of).
One of the pleasant surprises I had was buying a 2000 BMW and finding that unlike my previous Honda Civics, the drive at -30 was quite nice. But not because the engine could not heat the car - because the airflow was better directed than a 1995 Civic, and the driver’s left foot did not feel perpetually cold.
Another point - after that BMW, all my cars have been AWD. (That first BMW had traction control, which worked well until both wheels lost grip) For an ICE car, AWD means a complex arrangement. of gears to drive all 4 engines. For my Tesla, this means 2 separate motors.- front and back, which I presume greatly increases simplicity and presumably reliability. (Not sure what would happen if one engine died, because I’ve never heard of such an incident. I’ve never heard of the engine failing in a Tesla either, since electric engines are so simple.
The new heat pump is probably very efficient because although I hit -30° temperatures, the majority of my time and others’ time is spent closer to room temperature, and the heat pump is most efficient when pumping heat uphill with a smaller temperature hill.
Yes the ground clearance is less. I had to buy a new hydraulic jack to change between the winter tires on the Tesla, since the jack that works with a BMW 330 did not fit. Plus, there are “hockey puck” inserts you can get for the Tesla jack points, subtracting another almost 1 inch from the clearance. Fuel efficiency is helped by having less ground clearance, as I understand. (I recall one experimental high-efficiency car in the news that had an adjustable spoiler, so it could be lowered by the driver when driving on smooth roads at higher speeds. IIRC, some cars use this concept or suspension adjustment to get the same effect - less drag.) The main thing is, the weight in the Tesla is evenly distributed giving it better all-around traction. I have managed to get an AWD Audi A6 stuck in snow. About 5 minutes of progressively further back-and-forth eventually got it unstuck.
I mentioned some fellow who went to sleep in his car and used a half tank or more overnight - but that was with an approximately 1970 Detroit station wagon - I imagine idle efficiency has improved since then with fuel injection…
The vast majority on non-Tesla ones that I’ve seen, in shopping centers, parks, corporate centers, etc. only have two chargers. If you’ve been stuck for ±24 hrs & are only given enough of a charge to get you to the nearest charging station, that may not be a Tesla charger. Even if all the EVs are Teslas & the nearest charging station is a Tesla charging station, just tweak the numbers a bit so you’re the 30th EV in line instead of the 10th.
Those are destination chargers and not the kind of charging station used by long distance travellers. For one thing, they’re only level 2, which means a couple-three hours to get a decent charge for long distance travel. So I don’t know why the rescue van would only give enough charge to reach one of those.
You can always tweak numbers of a scenario to make it cause whatever catastrophe you want, but is the resulting scenario all that likely?
Do those 4/6/8-unit level 3 chargers exist for non-Teslas in any type of quantity? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one. (I have seen the Tesla ones but they don’t do anything for other EVs)
24+ hrs stuck on an interstate isn’t all that common, yet it happened in VA last week. It’s happened a few times on the PA turnpike, as well, but it’s only a once every couple of years occurrence
There’s a bunch along I-5 here in CA. Though in many cases they just illustrate the lead of the Supercharger network. In Firebaugh, there’s a 6-port CCS/CHAdeMO station. Across the street is a Tesla Supercharger station with 56 stalls. Similar result in Kettleman: a 4-stall CCS station, and a nearby Supercharger with 96 stalls.
Evidently the OP isn’t the only person wondering about this, as someone on the Saskatchewan subreddit just asked much the same question. Click here if you’d like to see the experiences of EV owners who have operated them in cold that’s extreme by the standards of Saskatchewanians.
Apparently heat pumps with most common refrigerants stop working around -30. I did not know that.
Tesla’s system works in a variety of different modes, and among other things is able to use the motors to generate waste heat that goes into the rest of the system (this is as good as an ordinary resistive heater). I’m not sure if anyone has actually proven it, but it should be possible for Tesla to heat the cold side to above whatever the minimum is (-30 C or whatever), and then use the heat pump the rest of the way. The result won’t be as efficient as using the heat pump for the full temperature gap, but it should still work and degrade gracefully (i.e., -31 C will only be slightly less efficient than -30 C).
I found these stats barely a month old. Tesla has way more ports per charging station than others, & even within Tesla, Calif has the most per station. Not totally surprising with 45% of total EV sales.
ElectrifyAmerica averages 4.2 ports/station & EVGo averages only 1.9 so my original numbers were accurate.
If ElectrifyAmerica is averaging 4.2 ports/station, then they must have a decent number of 4/6/8 port stations (and a bunch of 2-port stations as well). EVGo’s not doing so hot with 1.9, though.
It’s unfortunate that still, no one is taking the charging situation seriously aside from Tesla. Even though EV drivers know that charging on the road is relatively rare compared to home charging, it’s still important to have fast, prevalent charging stations. For all that other automakers say they’re “all in” with EVs at this point, they still aren’t committing as much as they should.
In between those two is another station at Harris Ranch in Coaling Station A, er, make that Coalinga. Tesla currently has 18 stalls, but they have a permit application submitted for 80 more. There was a report that EA is building a station there too, but I don’t know details.
Typical legacy automakers. Waiting for the government or someone to do the hard work/give a bailout.
If we ever get to the point that dozens of EVs are stuck on the freeway at once, there’s going to be lots and lots more level 3 charging stations for them to get to once the road is clear. Your scenario is combining future growth of EV sales with today’s level of charging infrastructure.
I remember when Harris Ranch was considered the “big” Supercharger station on the way to LA. I’m not sure if it was always 18 stalls or even less originally, but it sounded big at the time. Now it’s the dinky one (though 80 extra is a pretty nice upgrade).
It’s weird that others just don’t quite get it yet. This mid-way point on I-5 is probably the single most obvious place for a big charging station there is in the country. A state with high EV penetration, a well-traveled route that’s a little too far for most cars–so you build some stations at roughly the halfway point. I guess EA is finally getting the picture, but it feels like someone-that-isn’t-Tesla could have figured this out years ago.
I think the point is just to pay close attention to this matter when choosing a vehicle if you live in a place like western Canada. There are multiple reports of some (not all or even most) Tesla owners up here not having any cabin heat. Tesla is working on it and says they can fix it with a software update. But software updates don’t heat the cabin in a cold snap, and there are some unhappy owners at the moment.
Tesla wouldn’t be the first California company to be cavalier about software updates and heating. Nest fucked a lot of people over a few years back (pre-Google days) with a November update that borked time to temp algorithms.
Heat in Saskatchewan in January is not something you just wave your hands and say, “oh it should all work out don’t worry.” It’s like if you’re on a submerged sub that’s taking on water and you radio command for assistance and they say, “oh your pumps are rated to handle that much water per minute, and we have some engineers working on a way to improve their performance by 10%.”
Here’s an article about how EVs would fare in a snowbound traffic jam: