No, they aren’t. I live where there’s 4 to 5 months of freezing temps per year. Right now we’re at -4 F. I have never had a refueling issue with an ICE car. I don’t know anyone who had had issues. As we speak the local road service reports they have had to rescue electric cars as the temps plummeted. One of the three main reasons are the frozen shut charge ports.
I don’t think (but don’t know, either) that this is due to an inherent difference between ICE’s and electrics, but for some reason the present-day electric car loading ports aren’t up to the challenge of serious winter weather, while the ICE fuel doors are.
Now that’s very interesting. And a new likely fact to add to this burgeoning hijack I inadvertently triggered. Sorry.
I lived 20 years in ice country. And often left my car outdoors for several days at a time while out of town for work. I have had my whole car iced up many times, including the fuel door.
The fuel door on an ICE is mostly about cosmetics. The inner fuel filler neck cap is what keeps the precipitation out of the fuel tank. As such, there’s usually no gasket and the door isn’t meant to be water tight, just to deflect most of any direct spray.
I wonder if the nature of an EV charging port and the importance of keeping watery stuff away from the connector means that the door is designed to fit much more snugly, there is a waterproof gasket, etc., such that it would take much less ice & snow to freeze one shut?
Or are we just reading about “man bites dog”? Hellifino.
I don’t remember having problems getting my fuel door open on a gas vehicle, but I’ve had trouble getting the door to my car itself open when it is really iced over, so I guess it’s possible.
Maybe it’s because if I’m trying to gas my car up, by the time I get it to a gas station it won’t be an issue.
To be fair, when it gets as cold as it has been, ICE cars have their own problems. Old heater cores might not warm up the interior properly. Many won’t start at all without preheating. Gas mileage goes down almost as much as electric mileage - it’s just easier to mitigate. At the airport we used to have a 'Herman Nelson" propane heater we’d have to put around the noses of aircraft to warm them up before the engines would start.
But here’s the thing: car designers have had more than a century to work out the bugs in gas cars. Electric cars are relatively new, and are still going to present issues as we push the usage envelope.
Thinking about this, I suspect it’s a self-inflicted wound.
EV makers love the gee-whiz gadgets, like door handles that buzz open and fuel doors on little electric motors. I wonder if that’s the issue- not that the door is really frozen shut, but the little plastic gear and motor can’t deliver the torque to overcome 1/16" of ice. That is, put a manual door on there and problem goes away(?)
Many people aren’t aware, but most cars have locking fuel covers. When the car is locked, the cover is also locked. It may be a simple solenoid that pulls back a latch so that the door can open when the car is unlocked. Even if it’s a manual door, you won’t be able to open the fuel port cover if the internal lock is engaged. Cars will typically have a manual override cable that you can access from the trunk so you can pull back the latch yourself if the door is staying locked for some reason. It could be that in EVs, whatever disengages the lock on the charge port door freezes up and the door stays locked.
Oh, I’ve sure had car door problems due to ice etc. I even documented here at the SDMB how the plastic back door handle of my shitty Volvo V40 tore off on one such occasion - and that was a Swedish car, for chrissakes.
But fuel door troubles? Never, and never heard of anyone having them, on ICEs.
Oh, you can freeze a fuel door. I’ve had them freeze shut. I never had a problem eventually getting a frozen one open, though. And car doors. I once snapped the handle right off a car door in sub -30 temperatures. The door itself was frozen shut, so when I yanked on the handle it just snapped.
Really cold weather is hard on everything. Even the air sounds different at -40. Lubricants turn into molasses. Metal can become brittle. Thermal shock when you do get things running is always a risk, especially with air cooled engines.
So, car designers have had almost a century to work out the bugs in gas cars and they still have the same bugs you whined about existing in electric cars?
I had a 1970ies diesel golf (late 80ies/early 90ies) which stalled dead on the highway in extremely cold very early morning weather … would not start again …
1-2 hours later mr. tow-truck comes, turns the key and the engine turns over … he generously shook my hand while passing me the bill for his service…
(took me a while to figure out that the diesel had “turned to wax” due to extreme cold in the thin underbody fuel lines … and later defrosted (liquified again) when the sun came up, that’s why the engine started again …)
so there you have it … ICEs have (had?) their own problems as well
In our recent very cold snap (today is finally almost to -8C…we’ve been in the -20 to -25 range for many days), sounds like a lot diesel gelling going on with our facilities folks. I went to an onsite meeting and they pulled up in their Chevy Bolt complaining that they hadn’t prepared vehicles properly.
I’d expect a Ford or GM EV to have the same issues, be they lots, few, or none as a Ford or GM ICE. The accumulated knowledge is there and they (probably) would design their EV doors and ICE doors the same.
The Tesla or Rivian engineering team is not composed of total noobs, but they also aren’t necessarily as steeped in the details. They’re probably also attitudinally more inclined to default to “Let’s do it different just because.” rather than “Let’s do it the same because that’s familiar and cheaper.”
And to the degree anyone did build a charge port door that relies on a weak motor and gear train for essentially stylistic reasons, and that lacks any sort of well-known manual override, well … Oops on them.
Yeah, of course ICE cars have problems in extreme cold. For example, every Canadian does, or should, carry jumper cables in winter. My neighbor had to get his car jump-started the other day. EVs don’t have that problem. If they don’t start in the cold, it’s because they are dead, not because a slightly less than new 12v batterry froze.
One other issue EV owners (and other people with all-season tires) need to pay attention to - Tires not explicitly made for winter typically have rubber compounds that turn hard as rock in really cold weather. EVs have low rolling resistance tires that are not designed for freezing weather. If you replace them with winter tires as you should, you’ll lose 5-10% of your range before it even gets cold. This isn’t a huge downer for EVs because it affects ICE cars too, but I would be especially wary of EV tires and make sure to get a set of winter tires and rims. Then reduce my range calculations accordingly.
Yeah–we had -40 (the airport was -45) the other day, so any ungaraged diesel was probably inoperable, block heater or not. Our new EV did fine although range was definitely impacted.
One other thing about the Reddit thread: the general consensus there was that you shouldn’t own an electric car if you don’t have your own charger at home. And not one you rent, but one you own.
Since @Sam_Stone seems to be up on EV stuff, do you have any opinion on that statement?