Cold weather

Montgolfier

Granted this may not be a major issue here in Ireland but I would love to here your views in this article.

https://anewspost.com/electric-cars-useless-in-cold-weather/

Better rely the message to the Norwegians. The electric vehicles have 50 percent of the market there these days. We should warn the people over there so that the majority won't continue to buy vehicles that cannot be driven in winter conditions.

Cold is an issue in Ireland alright, obviously not as much as places which endure - all day and night , but cold effects range and also increases charge times at fast chargers.

The headline says: "Study Shows Electric Cars Become Practically Useless In Cold Weather". Just thought it would be a good idea to let the drivers in much colder Norway to know.

scamalert

well its nothing new, theres a reason why people flood threads when they cant start their cars come autumn, low temps affect batteries, same as heat.


while numer 41% might be exaggerated surely in countries that have proper winter -10,20c you need tons of heating to defrost car.


thou thing is its been only less then decade and more like last 5 years where electric cars have picked up a bit, so such articles have little basis yeat, forced tests where they constantly freeze defrost etc, cant be accurate, but theres no doubt that such conditions do affect batteries and been well known for decades now. think even likes of tesla have counter measures for their batteries, but realistically 10 year average and comparison would do better, then some random one off tests, as now article is just another attention grab.

The range of BEVs is affected by cold but they have also have advantages like almost instant heat and built-in way to preheat the car using mains power. They also have very linear power delivery to maximise the usable grip and there is usually no drama with cold starts in general.

The anewspost.com seem pretty iffy as far as the quality of the reporting goes based on other articles I quickly scanned. It's definitely not up there with the best.

samih

samih wrote: »

The headline says: "Study Shows Electric Cars Become Practically Useless In Cold Weather". Just thought it would be a good idea to let the drivers in much colder Norway to know.

Depends, if you got a 160 Km range EV and it has a range of 100 kms it is less practical.

If you got a 64 Kwh Kona it becomes less painful but the reality is that when you need to charge your EV it and the battery is cold and you can't preheat it then charging becomes damn slow and the hassle increases no matter how many Kwh you got in the tank , when you need to replace it quickly this is important.

I've seen the i3 charging at 22 Kw when I was in Galway after a night out in the cold compared to 50 odd Kw when it's 21 Deg C, that is inconvenient even to me who is rather fond of electrics.

Now imagine a country that sees -10 and -20 regularly and below + the added range loss ?

It's really only the rex that eliminates all of this hassle apart from filling the tank with petrol more often which I will gladly do to eliminate a lot of inconvenience both due to cold charging, range loss and Charging infrastructure.

What would be rather interesting is whether higher voltage batteries will charge faster because it's the current that is limited due to increased internal resistance and watts are watts, higher voltage or current it doesn't matter it all = more watts.

For instance, if an EV charges at 110 Amps at 384 volts = 42 Kw
if it charges at 600 volts and 70 amps it still = 42 Kw

That would be interesting indeed.

When we reach 150 Kw Winter or Summer I'll be happy.

At least while setting out in the i3 with a pre-heated battery to 10 Deg C you got better chance of having a sufficiently warm battery from 100% charge than you would for instance in a Leaf which is certainly what I have observed.

The Kona and Ioniq all heat their batteries but they are not immune to cold battery charging when left out in the cold not plugged into AC. In fact I actually don't know the conditions the Kona and Ioniq heat their batteries.

In Irish winter conditions the drawbacks are not that big compared to Canada for example. The headwind is the biggest killer here but heating can also be a noticeable range killer if you don't have a heatpump.

If you have to drive somewhere far away in winter just make sure your battery is fully topped up and the car preheated before you go. By the time it's time to charge, your battery has probably heated up enough to accept an usable charge rate.

If it's a destination charger you are going to use when at the destination you should be good to charge at the maximum charge rate you car can charge and then just come back home (but you'll loose bit of a range if you can't preheat).

You will lose some range in winter and if you're already pushing the daily drving envelope in summer you might have to charge in wintertime for the car to work for you. The only solution that avoids public charging is to buy a car with bigger battery. "You should always buy a car that allows your usual daily driving using no public charging."

Heat pump isn't effective enough when the weather becomes cold enough to be an issue for cars without a hp, even in Ireland. Better above say 5 or 6 degrees, it's to get notably milder during the week, but crap mist, rain and wind so we can't win either way, on the plus side, fast charge times should improve.

I drove to work this morning and the when I got to work I checked the battery temp was 13 deg a far cry from the optimal 21 degrees. That was after a drive from Carlow to Dublin, 120 -125 Km/hr all the way to the Kilcullen turn off then back roads all the way to Grangecastle.

And Preheating will always use the restive part of the heater regardless of heatpump or not because the HP only comes on when the HV system is energised.

Winter in General will always have an effect unless you live in a much milder, less windy and wet country.

Actually the optimum battery temperature for fast charging speeds would be between 30 and 50 degrees (but the cars with passive temperature management have to keep the temp below 50 degrees by charging slowly). LEAF will easily heat up to 30 degrees plus when driven at 120 km/h even on the coldest day in Ireland. Tesla Model 3 battery actually heats up to about 55 degrees during fast charging but because it has efficient cooling system the temperature can be quickly brought back to 30 degrees in short while after the charging finishes. Based on some clips the Model 3 will never intentionally cool the battery much below about 30'C 40'C. And for the Ludicruous mode the battery is heated to about 50'C.

The heatpump heater will need to use some resistive heating in temperatures below about 5 to stop the outside condenser freezing but the the heatpump still continues to work at low temperatures even down to minus 10'C or so. In LEAF you can monitor the heating system using LEAFspy and you see that the proportion of resistive heating start to shoot up below about +5'C.

ShauntaMetzel

Very informative article. According to this article, the battery life of electric vehicles would be affected by severe weather condition either it is too cold and hot. That's should a considerable point not only for owners but also for manufacturers. Hopefully, it will be fixed in the upcoming years.

Lumen

samih wrote: »

LEAF will easily heat up to 30 degrees plus when driven at 120 km/h even on the coldest day in Ireland.

This ("rapidgate") is also an issue for the e-Golf, which is similarly "passively cooled" (or rather not cooled at all, judging by Bjørn Nyland's 1000km test).

graememk

Lumen wrote: »

This ("rapidgate") is also an issue for the e-Golf, which is similarly "passively cooled" (or rather not cooled at all, judging by Bjørn Nyland's 1000km test).

Bjorn is the youtuber we need, most of his videos it's snowing or freezing outside, proves that evs work fine in the cold. Sure he was just in Thailand where it was 30+ too

unkel

ShauntaMetzel wrote: »

the battery life of electric vehicles would be affected by severe weather condition either it is too cold and hot.

That's why EV batteries are cooled / heated depending on the circumstances. If you charge a lithium battery when it is below zero degrees, it dies very quickly.

samih

samih wrote: »

Actually the optimum battery temperature for fast charging speeds would be between 30 and 50 degrees

To allow 45 Kw for the Leaf or 50 Kw for i3 temp needs to be at least 21 Deg C.

If I remember correctly I think the i3 Battery AC kicks in around 39 Deg C, don't think I ever saw higher than that. I can hear it kick in in Summer even if I have the AC off.

It certainly has no issue keeping the battery cool enough even on the hottest day driving hard and fast charging twice.

Old diesel

Lumen wrote: »

This ("rapidgate") is also an issue for the e-Golf, which is similarly "passively cooled" (or rather not cooled at all, judging by Bjørn Nyland's 1000km test).

Yes there is a "rapidgate" issue on eGolf but eGolfs will tend to go longer before it hits and the eGolf trottles the charge less when it happens usually. On a one day trip or day 1 of a trip at least.

If you do a long trip in one day you will have a battery the following day that's hotter then when you started the journey the day before. So you will hit the rapidgate faster on day 2 should you try to do big miles again on day two.

Bjorns was fairly bad by eGolf standard because he was on such a long trip.