Comment by md5crypto@lemmy.world on Electric vehicles fail at a lower rate than gas cars in extreme cold

People seem to forget that gas cars have a battery in them too and that fails in cold weather.

Lead-acid batteries aren’t lithium ion? And the car starter battery isn’t equivalent to that of an EV?

You might as well say that I have trouble starting my gas weed wacker, therefore cars are hard to start.

There’s a 12volt battery in every EV for starting and accessories like heat and a/C.

You can buy a lithium car battery these days. Expensive as all get out, but you can get one.

You shouldn’t replace a different type of battery with another. The vehicle will be set up with a different charging profile and you’d need to change that as well.

I’ve been told there are addon charge controllers available for such situations. But as I said, it’s stupidly expensive.

Yeah, that’s a fantastic way to start a fire. Lithium really doesn’t like being treated like lead acid…

And I’m not too certain what hardware is in cars but if its not setup to charge the li-ions just how they like, they tend to explode

I’m guessing the batteries advertised as drop-in replacements have BMSs built in.

All chemical reactions slow down in cold weather, including lead-acid cells. In extreme cold, everything is going to have issues. At least EVs have internal heaters that let you warm them up.

… battery heaters and block heaters are a thing for ICE too though?

How many cars have them? They come by default in EVs, and to use it, you’d plug it in like you do all the time.

And unless you keep that EV plugged in and charging during frigid temperatures, that warming will cost you in usable mileage. And you might need a better charging system than a simple 110/120V circuit. Because that might not be enough to prevent some loss of charge.

The point is, there ain’t no free lunch here. Batteries, at the current tech, just tend to suck at low and high temps outside of their intended operating range.

I’d rather a vehicle that can actually move, but has a lower range vs one that wont start to move at all.

Uhh, yes. You generally have it plugged in when it’s in the garage. And there are lots of programs for getting a 240V circuit to your garage by either manufacutuers or your local power utility.

What happens if you aren’t at home? How much extra planning is needed to check possible hotels along a long distance route to see if they offer overnight chargers? And knowing the lack of commercial charge points outside of metro areas, or even in metro areas that might not even be working when you get there, what do you do then? People don’t just never travel long distances. And traveling by plane, train, or bus is not always an option.

And yes, I know about the charging programs, I would love to buy an EV, but the sad hard facts are they will not work for me. Even a Hybrid is kind of iffy. And I will probably be well dead before they will be viable choices for where I live.

Thank god your day to day presumably isn’t filled with driving to hotels in the cold eh?

Realistically if this tiny pint actually matters you could probably just rent a car with all the money saved on gas

"But sometimes . . . "

90% of what 90% of people do can be served fine with an EV with everything as it exists right now. In fact, I find it’s better. Maybe it can’t be your only car. Your personal issues with the technology for your case is no reason to hold back the rest of society.

Oh, yeah.

If your point is that ICE car batteries have problems in the cold, so cold batteries is a problem for everyone and worse for ICE cars, that’s fair.

If your point is that ICE car batteries suck therefore EVs suck, that’s not really valid logic.

I can pull my 12V out and bring it inside to warm up though

I think you missed the point. EVs also have a 12v, for the same basic reason of starting the vehicle. But the bigger factor is that EVs are often plugged in, which will automatically warm the battery.

I was under the impression that the 12v also runs all the standard car electronics

It does, but that’s because the 12v starter battery was already present. The electric starter predates any electronics. This just made an easy and available source of power for anything else that came later.

There’s actually a movement to switch to a higher voltage, such as 48v, but there is a ton of inertia to overcome with that.

That is correct, and EV’s are equally dependant on the 12V battery as ICE vehicles

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