Good thing they never have cold weather in norway - they've got plenty of EVs...

Norway is coastal. Average winter temps are nowhere near the US mid-west which is in the middle of a massive land mass and gets *cold*! Like -50C cold.

Sure, nobody’s going to Norway for a beach holiday in February, but given its latitude it’s fairly mild, so EVs are pretty practical.

Learned some figures from a project specification for an installation in Kazakhstan many years ago and contrasted it with the Isle of Wight, which is on the same latitude :

Isle of Wight temperature range maybe -8 to +36 °C.

Kazakhstan temperature range: -40 to +40 °C

It's amazing what a coastal location and a bit of Gulf Stream magic does.

Was just logging in to post this. Not sure how many times Oslo has seen -30 C but surely someone from there or who knows it could help here...

per Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Norway

Olso records

Records-26.0(-14.8F) -- 35.0(+95.0F)

Typical Jan low -- -4.7(23.5F)

Typical Jul high -- 22.7(72.9F)

Mild summers, nippy winters. Can, but usually doesn't, get really cold

Oslo temperatures last week were around -20C.

At that temperature, diesel engines can also start giving trouble, and I believe petrol freezes at around -40C. So -50C is an extremely hostile environment for all vehicles anyway, requiring special antifreezing additives to the fuel as well as to other required fluids (hydraulics and, ironically, cooling fluids). I guess the options in order are:

- if you live somewhere where it gets ridiculously cold, just don't get an electric car

- if you live somewhere where it gets ridiculously cold, just don't go outside when it's ridiculously cold

- if you live somewhere where it gets ridiculously cold, just don't!!!

I've not found the air con taking much range out of my EV's battery. The heating, however, does eat 10-15% range and the cold weather kills the range of the car: I'm seeing a reduction of 30% in range due to the cold weather.

I’ve heard recommendations to turn off the heat and use the seat warmers instead. Not tried it myself yet (rarely gets that cold here).

this is to be expected with EVs that don't have an "inverter" heat-pump. Air-con is done via said heat-pump, that has an efficiency tipically in the 400% range (for every unit of energy consumed you get 4 units of heating or cooling), whereas most EVs have simple resistive heating, basically a wire with high resistance that gets hot, just like an old light bulb, and that is at best 100% efficient, but often not even that.

So yes, your EV uses less battery to cool the cabin than to heat it.

All automotive heat pumps are "inverter" heat pumps, because the EV battery is DC, and all motors (except brushed ones which nobody uses for more than a few watts) use AC.

The thing that makes a heat pump reversible or not, isn't the inverter though.

I'd be very surprised if any still-in-production EV used resistive heating for the cabin except when it is too cold to use a heat-pump.

But, no heat pump is going to be 400% efficient when it is sub-zero outside. The 400% figure is useless marketing blather, because it's the max efficiency and only applies when the temperatures inside and outside are the same.

More likely, the heat pump sucks heat out of the electronics & battery coolant, but when that coolant is too cold, they need to switch to resistive heating, because running the heat-pump and chilling the battery even further would be counter-productive.

But, no heat pump is going to be 400% efficient when it is sub-zero outside. The 400% figure is useless marketing blather, because it's the max efficiency and only applies when the temperatures inside and outside are the same.

what? you obviously lying as everyone knows heat pumps are more than 100% efficient all the time, they wouldn't say 400% if it wasn't always true, etc etc etc

/s

obviously sarcasm if I hadn't made it clear

So why is this happening?

Well maybe perhaps it's that *one* charging station broke in the cold and wouldn't charge any cars..? Is that really newsworthy?

Well maybe perhaps it's that *one* charging station broke in the cold and wouldn't charge any cars..? Is that really newsworthy?

I dunno. It's been very newsworthy the last few days where hell's freezing over in Iowa. -24C in Iowa's capital, Des Moines, where the caucus came to town. A fair chunk of the US East Coast is also getting rather cold. Or there's Canada-

https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1746347778047877440

At this moment 92.3% of Alberta's electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 2.6% of capacity and producing 1.0% of total generation, while solar is at 0.0% of capacity and producing 0.00% of total generation. At the same time we are importing 343 MW or 3%

Or closer to home, N.Ireland-

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/amber-alert-on-nis-electricity-grid-as-wind-doesnt-blow-and-loss-of-kilroot-slashes-margins/a19035892.html

About 43MW of wind power was being generated this afternoon — a fraction of the 1,060MW peak wind generation. Most of the rest of the electricity in the system is coming from gas, with the remainder being imported from Scotland via the Moyle Interconnector.

At times of shortage, that means that Northern Ireland has to pay whatever the market rate happens to be — even if it is astronomically high due to shortages in Great Britain — to keep the lights on.

And then of course there's the UK. Where we've been due snow and -10C or so for the last week. So kind of a perfect storm. Temperatures drop, wind stops, solar stops, heating demand increases, EV ranges drop, and it all goes horribly wrong. Unless you run a charger in a private car park and can make a fortune towing or ticketing stranded EVs.

"And then of course there's the UK. Where we've been due snow and -10C or so for the last week."

I am disappointed in this worble globing. Bloody cold and I thought our children wouldnt know snow?

Oh look! Codejunky’s here too!

@Ace2

"Oh look! Codejunky’s here too!"

Been missing me? You are welcome to just read the comments if you have nothing to add.

I knew you wouldn’t disappoint us, JE.

WTAF does power production to do with EV's charging?

Are you drunk?

"WTAF does power production to do with EV's charging?

Are you drunk?"

If you are trolling you made me laugh hard. If you are serious wait until you sober up then reread your comment. It is comedy gold.

They can then offer it as payment to another driver who will give them a lift, or pour it over their battery compartment and set fire to it in order to warm their batteries up.

Actually, I heard stories like this from Siberia, where they make a fire – a real fire – under a truck's engine to warm it up before starting in the morning.

There was a programme years ago covering a cold trip, using arctic trucks and ford mondeo mk1s. The mondeos were only going like, 10% of the trip, and had to be left running over night to keep the engines going. One of them ran out of fuel at like, 3am, and froze. And lighting a fire under the car's engine bay was precisely how they got it going again.

> I heard stories like this from Siberia, where they make a fire – a real fire – under a truck's engine to warm it up before starting in the morning.

Here's the Electric equivalent to that!

https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicle-owner-denmark-toaster-warm-car-battery-starts-fire-2023-12

According to that link over one in 30 petrol-powered cars catch fire. Really?

Only when you light a fire under the wrong end to warm the engine...

Reminds me of the 70s/80s winters in East Anglia when I used to crawl in the snow to point a blowlamp at the sump and the (derv) fuel tank. Maybe Tesla could provide a "patch" to do the same with their batteries? Maybe a small coke stove with flues through the battery?

Thats ok. Let the early adopters work out the kinks. Just very important to not force people out of the working technology.

This is more of a problem for people that are traveling and need to recharge on route or do not have a charger at home, in a garage. Tesla/electric car charge times are normally pretty quick so there are a fair number of owners that charge up once a week at a public charger and don't have anything at home so are in trouble now.

That said I remember being in Chicago during a similar cold snap in the 90's that decharged/reduced the charge a lot of 12V batteries across town. It's a combination of older battery, losing charge and thicker oil making it unable to turn the engine over and start the car. The tow truck drove down the street collecting $10 for every car that it jump started.

Likewise there will be some diesel owners that are having problems with the fuel gelling in areas there the fuel is not winterized with additives and it is far colder than expected or are driving north with a full tank of standard diesel.

It's no surprise that weather extremes cause all sort of issues.

I once had an elderly (10 year old) lead-acid battery actually freeze on me during a Northern New England cold snap. Took the fill caps off, and there was ice where sulfuric acid belonged. Surprisingly perhaps, after being thawed out in the bathtub,it managed to start the car.

Yes, oil can be a problem. My impression is that modern multi-viscosity oils have much reduced the problem. But a chemist once told me that the viscosity extenders are the first thing to fail if intervals between oil changes are too long.

Even when temperatures are cool rather than actually freezing it is a good idea to fast-charge before you park for the night rather than waiting until the morning. Below about 40F lithium-ion batteries have to be charged frustratingly slowly and below 30F they cannot be charged safely at all. Lithium-ion batteries have to be pretty warm to fast-charge, over 100F.

It is important to keep the battery warm on a long trip in cold conditions. Leaving an EV parked outdoors in very cold weather, unless it is plugged in, is risky. As many people have pointed out, this is true of diesels and even gas-powered vehicles to some extent.

Went to college in Illinois.

Had an older car.

Last task of the day was to take the car battery into my apartment at night.

Had a similar issue reported with "stop start" technology on certain models in the UK.

Get caught in a traffic jam which moves occasionally. The car starts, pulls forward and cuts the engine after a few seconds exactly as designed. This particular model could not have auto-stop disabled which meant after an estimated 13 engine start stop cycles the battery died ... Wonderful in theory but implementation has to be correct for it to work well in real life.

I had a Honda Civic and the stop-start would auto-disable if the battery voltage was too low.

My Q30 needs the battery to be at a certain level, the engine temp to be at a certain level, and even then it limits itself to 3 stop/start cycles till it gets some real charge back in the battery.

Bought a Ford, had that “feature”. The next year model for a surcharge of $50 you could order it without the “feature”.

Sounds like something Microsoft would do.

Anyone who has actually done "due diligence" on pure EVs should know that the current crop are best suited to users who:

. Live in mild climates

. Don't make many (preferably no) long trips.

. Are driven frequently. (parasitic drains of various sorts will likely eventually kill the battery if you let them sit without charging for many months -- and yes people do that with ICE cars sometimes).

. Have a place to charge them (and a power grid capable of charging a large number of EVs if one's neighbors are also buying EVs)

. Don't drive in very mountainous areas.

One doesn't have to fully satisfy ALL those criteria in order to be happy with an EV. But satisfying most would be a good idea.

Hybrid EVs should be a satisfactory alternative for many folks. They still burn fossil fuels, but often significantly less than pure ICEs.

Future EVs will be better. Probably on all counts. But it'll be a long time (maybe never) before EVs are the right vehicle for every use case.

Generally agree except for long trips - they’re awesome for long drives. Stopping every 2-3 hours for 15 mins isn’t actually bad. At the end of a long day of driving, you’re much better off than if you had tried to drive straight through.

I agree. If you can use the Tesla Supercharger network, long trips in summer are no problem. Once you get away from the Interstate system, there are still plenty of routes where Superchargers are thin on the ground and you may need to plan your route carefully. I think driver satisfaction for these Robert Frost fans will depend on whether this kind of navigation puzzle is a joy or a torment.

If you're getting an EV, the biggest win is charging for cheap overnight (or from solar) If you can't charge cheaply at home I wouldn't recommend an EV.

That is, of course, until your EV starts metering the charge that it receives so that the government can collect tax from it like they do for petrol/diesel.

If my government wants to screw a few more pennies out of me, there are *much* easier ways of doing it than adding instruments to every EV (which no other country will need) and setting up a bureaucracy to look at the numbers.

Your EV already has said instruments (coulomb-counting is necessary to estimate the battery's state of charge etc.) and the means to report the data (5G connectivity in every car). The rest is just software and legislation.

EVs cause a lot of potholes and represent a huge hole in tax revenues compared to the fuel duty and vehicle excise duty that are levied on ICE vehicles. Governments WILL start taxing them when they have finished stamping out ICE vehicle production.

Also, governments just LOVE setting up bureaucracies for anything and everything. What better way to reward party donors than giving them a cushy job as a director of a new quango!

And there are those of us who do have an EV and take long trips in the winter.

I've just returned from a trip to the French Alps. 800+ miles each way and with an early start using the Chunnel, I was able to drive to Annecy in one day and the temp never went above +1C.

My first charge in France was at the Ionity site near Rhiems. I'd programmed that into the car and 40km away, the car started heating the battery (preconditioning). Arrived with 16% (or 50km) of range left.

By careful planning the whole trip including a week in the Alps was done without a major panic.

There were two Tesla Model Y's at the Rhiems site. The drivers commented on the speed that my EV-6 was charging when compared to their cars. Neither driver knew how to make sure that their cars preconditioned.

Piss Poor Planning etc etc etc.

"the current crop are best suited to users who:"

You're absolutely right on all counts. I would point out, however, that "Live in mild climates", "Lives in cities / suburbs" and "lives in a non-mountainous area" covers at least 70-80% of world population. In other words, EVs as they are already comfortably cover the needs of, I would say, a good 20% of world population, with a further 20-30% for whom it's 'good enough'.

"Future EVs will be better. Probably on all counts. But it'll be a long time (maybe never) before EVs are the right vehicle for every use case."

Absolutely they will get better. The only way future EVs will completely replace EVs is if they can have an 800km range with 10 minute recharge time (meaning >150 kWh battery capacity, >800kW charging power and 500 Wh/kg specific energy density). Theoretically possible, but practically???

In the before time, in the long, long ago, literally thousands of minutes in the past, diesel used to freeze in fuel tanks.

It was a news trope to see a snow bound artic (see what i did there, language setting=en-gb) with a blazing fire under the tank.

But haterz are just gonna amp up the hate against Elon’s glorified milk floats.

Or not, if it’s a bit chilly.

People who live in these climates often have engine-block heaters. It’s not like extreme cold makes anything easier.

If it is cold enough even block heaters may not be sufficient and some places run their big diesels continuously through periods of very cold weather. One Arctic location where I worked had signs asking drivers not to idle their trucks unless the temperature was colder than -40 degrees. When the temperature is very cold rubber and plastic can become very brittle. I have seen someone pull out a spool of wire with PVC insulation and be left with a handful of bare copper and a pile of plastic shards. I have seen a small sample placed in a ziplock bag shatter the plastic and fall to the ground.

There is a learning process both for the engineers designing EVs and for drivers finding ways to use them effectively. Happily, you can trickle charge your EV from the same 120V outlets that are provided for block heaters. If you keep your car in a heated garage at night and plug in the trickle charger every place you park I expect most EVs will do OK even in freezing temperatures.

keep your car in a heated garage at night

so I f we all transition to EV's & heat pumps, some will need to waste more energy keeping there garage warm to keep the car working.

There is so much to this transition that people haven't even scratched the surface of.

we are far better using petrol/diesel for road transport, yes some ICE cars in extreme climates may need electric to keep the engine warm, but it won't take as much electric as keeping an electric cars vitals warm.

"and plug in the trickle charger every place you park I expect most EVs will do OK even in freezing temperatures."

If for no other reason than the inevitable losses incurred by trickle charging the battery will keep it warm.

Thanks.