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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 16 2019, @04:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-mileage-may-vary dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 16 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday May 16 2019, @08:28PM (#844450)

    > 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.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Luke on Friday May 17 2019, @04:36AM

    by Luke (175) on Friday May 17 2019, @04:36AM (#844600)

    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.