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Autoweek (and other car news outlets) summarize some independent testing: https://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/how-much-does-cold-weather-cut-electric-vehicle-range-quite-bit-aaa-study-finds
AAA partnered with the Automotive Club of Southern California's Automotive Research Center for its tests, which allowed it to run drive-simulating dynamometer tests in 20-, 75- and 95-degree Fahrenheit temperatures in a controlled laboratory setting. This is way more scientific than anything we'd be able to achieve toodling around in an EV in Detroit the next time a polar vortex hits.
A handful of key points pulled from the report:
- The increased use of HVAC systems in extreme temperatures has a bigger impact on EV range than decreases in battery pack efficiency caused by the temperatures themselves.
- Moreover, while both extremely hot and extremely cold temperatures affect range, you'll incur a significantly larger penalty when heating up a cabin than you will cooling one down. Compare that 41 percent decrease at 20 F to a mere 17 percent decrease at 95 F.
- The BMW i3s saw the biggest reductions in range in both hot and cold conditions, losing 50 and 21 percent of range in cold and hot conditions, respectively.
- The Nissan Leaf was the most versatile, losing 31 and 11 percent of range in cold and hot conditions, respectively.
The other test cars, Tesla S, eGolf and Chevy Bolt fell between these extremes. The article includes a link (pdf) to the original report with many more details. Worth reading if you live outside southern CA and are considering an electric car.
This AC is considering an electric car, and I'm fortunate enough to have an attached garage to keep it warm-ish, probably above freezing, even if the outside temp gets down to 0F (-18C) which is a typical low for my location. That means that any trip will start with a cool (not cold) battery & cabin...but after parking outdoors at my destination(s), I'll have a reduced range for the trip home.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday May 16 2019, @04:21PM (21 children)
We have two cars. It makes sense to me to have one of them be electric. Most of the time we just putz around the city. I probably drive ~30 km/day on weekdays. My wife does less then that. If we get an ecar that has 200km of range, even on a cold day where it loses 50%, it would be very very rare that it would not meet our needs.
Then we would also have a gas car for travelling outside the city.
It makes a lot of sense. I'm hoping that this massive expansion in auto batteries leads to some breakthroughs in battery tech though. I'm kinda holding off to get a generation 2 or 3 model. I'm also a little wary about how long the batteries actually last. Do I have to replace them after 8 years? My current gas car is 8 years old and seems to be ticking along nicely.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday May 16 2019, @04:42PM
In context, with a nick like yours, I really doubt it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Thursday May 16 2019, @05:08PM (6 children)
>>> Do I have to replace them after 8 years?
Batteries don't generally fail (although it can happen, much like an engine failure in an ICE), what happens is that over time their capacity reduces. In the Tesla world, it's expected that the batteries will still be at 90+% capacity after 200,000 miles (300,000 km). See:
https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-data/ [electrek.co]
I love my Tesla Model 3.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday May 16 2019, @06:42PM (3 children)
I'd feel more comfortable to see the actual results. There will also be more (hopefully cheaper and better) selection then too.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Thursday May 16 2019, @06:46PM (2 children)
>>> to see the actual results
Well, if you had followed the link I so helpfully provided, you'll see that the data is from real-world usage, with a smattering of data going up to 250,000 km. Is that close enough for you?
It also has data for an EV that doesn't have a temperature-controlled battery - which shows why keeping the battery happy is a good thing.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday May 16 2019, @07:02PM (1 child)
The sample size in the provided link is small with sparse datapoints beyond 150K kms. I'd also like to have more confidence in how the batteries hold up with Canadian winters and the constant freeze/thaw that happens here.
If I'm going to drop $40k, I want to know it's going to work as advertised.
However, I'm glad there are people like you that take the plunge. Someone has to lead the pack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @09:05PM
There's lots of good data for the chemistries being sold right now. Basically if you don't charge or discharge below 2-3 Celsius, you can expect cell life to match the published capacity drops for charge cycles. Panasonic and others publish their cell specs*, which do vary by cell chemistry and so you have to match to the pack in the vehicle you're considering.
Freeze/thaw cycles have minimal performance on most lithium chemistry cells, so long as they're not charged/discharged while freezing but you're Canadian, you're probably used to engine warmers (and therefore, amusingly, non-electric cars with electric plugs dangling out the front).
*they have to so that engineers can plan devices around the capacities and performance windows of the cells!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 16 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)
> Batteries don't generally fail (although it can happen, much like an engine failure in an ICE), what happens is that over time their capacity reduces.
I read that you reach a cliff effect, sometimes around 40-60%, where the most degraded modules can just short and cause the rest to not work anymore.
That problem could be solved by having the manufacturers make the batteries modular enough that someone could change/remove the worst ones and keep driving on the remaining less-degraded ones, but we're not there yet. Right now you have to change the whole battery, which does give you essentially a new car.
The whole repair-rather-than-replace will probably come, as usual for these kinds of things, in another decade, through a mandate of the EU.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Luke on Friday May 17 2019, @04:36AM
The Nissan Leaf battery is modularised and you can replace individual cells.
You can even replace lower capacity batteries with larger units (eg put 24kW -> 30kW).
These guys: http://evsenhanced.com [evsenhanced.com] know all about it, and have equipment available to assist with battery swaps etc.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Thursday May 16 2019, @05:37PM (1 child)
My wife and I have a Leaf and a gas car. We live about 12 miles out of town -- the leaf is great for my regular commute and running errands. When I have to go farther, the gas car works great for that.
I get 4.4 miles per kWh at about a dime per kWh. My gas car get 30 mpg. I use 6.8 kWh to go 30 miles -- or 70 cents to go what costs $3.70 in my gas car. I have a 220v charger -- I can go from empty to full charge in about 2.5 to 3 hrs.
My experience with cold and hot matches the experiment above. I have found that heating the car takes way more energy than cooling it. Last winter I bought a small space heater and a half hour before I left in the morning, I would turn it on (I just ran it off regular wall power through an extension cord). That would totally defrost all the ice from the car and make the interior absorb warmth (different than just having an interior full of hot air). I would use the heated seat and heated steering wheel and I'd often even have to crack the window to let some hot air out at the start. On the way home from work, I'd just use the climate controls. When temps were in the 20s, this made a big difference in range.
Running AC in the summer seems to have only the most minimal impact on range. I don't even think about it -- I just use it if I'm hot.
Used Leafs with the 80-90 mile battery are very cheap, comfortable, quiet, roomy, and really zoomy. I love the car.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday May 16 2019, @05:40PM
My Leaf is a 2012 model BTW.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16 2019, @06:03PM (7 children)
An electric car as 1 of 2 cars is a great idea. The interesting question though is ... if you can manage on a single (ICE) car, is it more eco to buy an electric car for the short runs and keep the ice car, or just use the existing ice car all the time? It's certainly *cheaper* to only have the 1 car.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday May 16 2019, @06:44PM (1 child)
One of the cars is my wife's. We need (well not NEED, but...) 2 cars.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16 2019, @10:46PM
Your wife is a car that put your open marriage in perspective
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Thursday May 16 2019, @06:52PM
That math is a good point and the answer is almost definitely no. It mostly only matters to single people though. My wife and I need 2 cars anyway due to work schedules and location. Both of them don't need to be able to do long range trips though. We considered it heavily when we replaced her car 2 years ago but every option was too expensive for our budget or too small for her needs.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Thursday May 16 2019, @07:40PM
I can't imagine that the lifecycle costs (both $$ and, for example, CO2) would ever favor the second car. There's a lot of energy involved in building a car.
That said, choosing the right EV means you don't need the second car. Tesla is the only manufacturer who provides that right now, but companies like VW are likely to get there in a few years. I own a Tesla Model 3, and it's great in town. I wake up every morning with a full "tank", and have no issues doing all the driving I need to do in a day before plugging in again at night. That would apply to a number of other attractive EVs today also - the Bolt, i3, Leaf (with the big battery), etc. However, it's also great when I want to drive 350 miles to SoCal or Page from Phoenix; I'd also have no problem if I needed to drive to Orlando tomorrow. Tesla is the only manufacturer who has solved the long distance travel issue with it's network of Superchargers - for everyone else, charging is seen as "Someone Else's Problem". Even if the manufacturer builds fast charging capabilities into the car, they certainly haven't done any work to assure that you can use that capability on a road trip.
As a point of reference, the Cannonball Run (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-To-Shining-Sea_Memorial_Trophy_Dash) takes about 30 hours in a prepared car (60 gallons of fuel, radar detectors and jammers, relief drivers, etc) (https://jalopnik.com/meet-the-guy-who-drove-across-the-u-s-in-a-record-28-h-1454092837), about 40 hours in a stock ICE vehicle, and about 50 hours in a stock Tesla Model 3 (https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/17312/tesla-model-3-sets-new-ev-cannonball-run-record-of-50-hours-16-minutes). So, there's a time penalty to be paid for using an EV currently, but it's not nearly as bad as people believe. I'm still waiting for someone in a Chevy or BMW or Jaguar or Audi or VW EV to even be able to make the run.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday May 16 2019, @11:10PM (2 children)
One option if you only _need_ one car, but rarely go very far, is to rent a car for those long trips.
I save about $3 for every 30 miles I drive my Leaf compared to the gas car. If I drive 30 miles per day, 5 days per week, that's $15/wk in gas savings, or about $780/year. I looked at budget and an intermediate size SUV is about $50/day. I'm sure there are other costs involved -- insurance, gas, whatever BS they tack on, hassle factor -- call it $75 bucks/day. Using my 30 mpg ICEcar as baseline for the cost breakdown, I would break if I had to rent a car 10x per year and lose money if I needed to rent more often than that. In my case, I do need an ICEcar more than 10x year, so that's why both cars aren't electrics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @07:30AM (1 child)
Good point - although car rental is *much* cheaper in the USA than Europe. It's also really inconvenient to hire a car when you only own one car and have to drive to get a rental. If it was once/twice a year that would work, but I need 400 miles for a weekend about 8 times a year, so the balance is off.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Friday May 17 2019, @03:15PM
That depends on where in Europe. I've had some shockingly cheap rentals in the Netherlands and Germany.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 16 2019, @08:15PM (2 children)
The most we ever paid for a vehicle was $19,000 for a brand new pickup truck in 1999. After that, it was $14,000 for a brand new Miata in 1991. The most expensive used car we ever bought was $12,000.
My main beef with auto battery power is the cost of the battery packs - which can range to $20K and higher. I can't imagine an auto battery pack lasting 200,000 miles or 20 years - which both of those purchased new vehicles have done.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday May 16 2019, @09:01PM (1 child)
As above [soylentnews.org] you don't have to imagine, they have already managed the distance..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 17 2019, @02:11AM
Put another way, by the time I put 200,000 miles on an "around town" vehicle, it's more than 20 years old - proven twice now.
Where will those battery packs be after 20 years of hot/cold charge/discharge water ingress, and other real-life challenges?
I know Lithium-Iron is better (and more expensive), than Lead-Acid, but the very same concern has kept me away from the lead-acid battery vehicle market - at least for big four+ seaters. On the other hand, I pretty much love my fat-tired electric bike, even if its Lithium-Iron battery pack has noticeably degraded already in less than a year of use, it's only a few hundred dollars to replace.
🌻🌻 [google.com]