I (still) don’t own an EV for various reasons, but I’m still interested. One question that keeps popping up in my mind is this one:
Where I live way up north, many people drive EVs - mostly Teslas apparently. A solid third of the parking lot at work is filled with EVs. The one thing that always strikes me when I leave work around the same time as everybody else is the sheer amount of noise of all those Teslas warming up their batteries before their owners come out to drive home make in the winter: it’s like dozens of heating cannons running at the same time.
Each time, I wonder how much juice is used just to prime the battery before use vs. actual miles traveled.
If you leave in a cold country, have you worked out how much energy you burn simply keeping the battery alive in the winter? Is your EV still more energy efficient than an ICE in the winter for your particular use pattern?
Gasoline works better in cold climates than diesel. But once you get around -20 to -30°C and colder all vehicles will need an engine block heater to start reliably. The oil gets too thick.
And the batteries start to freeze if they have a slight drain. So lots of the time if you don’t run your vehicle for a week or two you’ll need a new battery because the lead acids freeze and are ruined when their voltage drops.
I think it will be tricky but not impossible to mitigate the effects of extreme cold on battery life. All the cabin heat is made by the EV battery anyways right?
