EV Use in Cold Winter Conditions

Good video, he is easy to understand. In cold weather around town, the heater time on is far more dragging on energy percentage from the battery than road driving. It's all about heater time on, not miles. He used about 676 kwh I believe without relooking, and the cost is $177 at super chargers. I can drive a number of gas cars for that cost or less, and not be calculating if I should charge half way now or wait, etc. Depends on the price of gas and also electric in the areas driven.
 
Interesting. CR and others reportedly had upwards of 41% range loss, yet he had 19%? I wonder if this is road trip vs short trip. Short trips heat the car interior up and then lose that when parked, whereas on road trip, once warm the interior needed less heat. Or not that unlike for ICE, in operation.

I still wonder though about loss with snow tires--didn't watch all of the video, didn't look like he had aggressive snows on there.
 
He used about 676 kwh I believe without relooking, and the cost is $177 at super chargers. I can drive a number of gas cars for that cost or less, and not be calculating if I should charge half way now or wait, etc. Depends on the price of gas and also electric in the areas driven.
Interesting. Lemme think, my car gets 30mpg and gas is what, $2.10? That's $140 for driving that in my car. Not that a twenty year old Camry and a Tesla have much in common. :)

We'll have to see if charging stations continue to expand in number. Once a certain level is reached, with distances between the dropping, then it won't be nearly what it is right now.
 
The other issues with EVs will be when people are stranded in freezing cold weather with totally dead batteries and will need to be towed to a charging station in order to get back on the road. AAA won't be able to provide top up roadside charging. This may be an opportunity for new business ventures.

Range anxiety will be an issue for some.
 
Did he drive slower during his winter trip? That could mitigate the range loss some. Edit seems he drove a bit faster even
 
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Good video, he is easy to understand. In cold weather around town, the heater time on is far more dragging on energy percentage from the battery than road driving. It's all about heater time on, not miles. He used about 676 kwh I believe without relooking, and the cost is $177 at super chargers. I can drive a number of gas cars for that cost or less, and not be calculating if I should charge half way now or wait, etc. Depends on the price of gas and also electric in the areas driven.
What is the value of virtue signaling that you are saving the world??? Electric cars will have their place I think an electric car has its place. would like to see a 5 or 10year cost of maintenance and repair costs. This is still a fairly new technology.
 
It is fairly new tech. I suspect too new to figure out TCO?
TCO numbers have been coming in. Tesla Model 3s cost about as much as a BMW 3 Series and Audi 5, depending on configurations.
Way more than a Camry or Accord...
If you charge mostly at home, especially if you have solar, fuel savings are big plus.
The only scheduled services are cabin air filter and to clean / lube brakes (in colder climates).
Brakes are expected to last 100K miles. I believe there are like 17 moving parts in the drivetrain.
Teslas are mechanically solid; they don't break down.

Resale is high on Model 3s, but that is in part due to current low volume and high demand.
When Fremont deliveries shift to Europe and Asia, used prices tend to go up due to long lead times of the new cars.
I would expect resale to drop as more cars are available both new and used.

I am not sure how insurance costs compare; I have heard Model 3 quotes can be high.
Mine is low, but that is due to adding it in to the other cars. None are driven 10K per year.

Teslas are expensive cars to buy. While you will likely save in operating costs, they are expensive.
 
His trip involved a lot of driving and very little in the way of "cold soak". He also compared "worst" cold to "worst" hot numbers.

Canadian EV owners tell a very different story. Where the car is stone cold in the AM prior to the drive to work, and stone cold upon leaving work. Energy use and range in these cases is affected greatly.

The batteries do maintain temperature well under constant use. They don't when short tripping in cold weather.
 
His trip involved a lot of driving and very little in the way of "cold soak". He also compared "worst" cold to "worst" hot numbers.
He probably had 4 or 5 overnight cold soaks. Sure, if you cold soak every night and only drive 10 miles every day, it's going to be much worse overall battery charge loss.
 
He probably had 4 or 5 overnight cold soaks. Sure, if you cold soak every night and only drive 10 miles every day, it's going to be much worse overall battery charge loss.
I think he said he was able to charge some at night too. Keeping the batteries warm.
 
He averaged 3.7 miles/kwh, not great, but not bad driving 80 mph with the heat on in winter. The driving time was 30 hours I think, which means for a guy alone like that two stops over night I bet. What else did he have to do except drive and think about the car's state of charge.
 
Nobody ever considers the power generation needed to charge an electric car or the line losses in power from the power station or the transformer losses in adapting the incoming high level power to typical home voltages. When all that is considered then they aren't very green at all.
 
But then you would also have to consider the power needed to distill fuel from crude, and diesel used to transport the fuel to the fuel station etc...

I agree electric cars are only as green as the ways used to generate the electricity we all use, but they are definitely more efficient in isolation.
 
Nobody ever considers the power generation needed to charge an electric car or the line losses in power from the power station or the transformer losses in adapting the incoming high level power to typical home voltages. When all that is considered then they aren't very green at all.
I do. In fact, I post the details here regularly.

I enjoy Jason's videos. However, he is disingenuous at best when he makes claims about gasoline consumption equivalents. He knows better. I've asked him repeatedly to produce a video showing how far a Tesla will go with 112,500 BTU's consumed by the power plant.

A best-case summer/winter EV average is that a Tesla can go 19 highway miles for every gallon of gasoline a power plant consumes (the equivalent of course) That would be 10 pounds of coal, 0,87 gallon of fuel oil (as a secondary fuel source when running the turbine in a typical natural gas combined cycle plant) or 112,500 BTU of natural gas.

Strangely enough, the numbers are very close if using one of the more efficient turbodiesel generators to directly charge an EV.

IMG-0738.jpg
 
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Clarification: The "lifetime" "Watt-hours per mile" number that an EV provides is NOT how many watts the power plant produced to drive the car, NOR is it a representation of how much power the power meter records (the electric bill).

It's become common to completely discount the power meter's numbers when talking about EV energy consumption and to simply use what the EV "claims" (in watt-hours per mile). This is bad.

In that generator picture above, they performed just such a calculation. They took the KWH produced by the generator and associated it with the lifetime watt-hours per mile on each vehicle's display. Ignoring a number of losses along the way.

Had they been honest and published the actual highway miles driven on the fuel consumed, we would have been a lot better off.(Highway miles are required as regenerative braking recaptures wildly varying energy and is NOT a factor on long highway trips) Remember any hybrid can recapture energy and get amazing fuel economy when hypermiled.
 
How much energy does it take to produce and get 1 gallon of gasoline into a gas tank - all factors included? And how much energy does it take to put the equivalent energy of 1 gallon of gasoline energy into an EV battery - all factors included?
 
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