Electric Cars: Can they finally become popular in the United States?

[Frugal Lizard]

Even with that, they put in heated seats for all passengers and a heated steering wheel for the driver because heating the body directly is far more efficient than heating the air.

How does that work with defrosting?  Hot air coming out of people hitting cold windows quickly makes an opaque layer of frost.  Even if you've got a front window heater blowing directly on the main windscreen, all the side windows are going to frost over from the moisture from passenger breath without a warm enough cabin.

There is a conventional heated air / ac defrost and heat blower as well. They don't need to run on high when your butt and hands are toasty.

[NorCal]

While the cold weather impact is a thing, I also want to point out that it is blown WAY out of proportion.  Here's some anecdotes based on my experience with a Rivian.  It doesn't have a heat pump, but it supposedly isn't impacted by cold as much as Ford's or some other brands.  So research each specific brand.  But my statements below would still hold true in most other circumstances.

It has zero impact on my day-to-day driving where I'm maybe driving tens-of-miles at most.  The car gets plugged in at the end of the day and I start each day with a 70% charge.  I can't even notice the difference in range on these days.

My winter efficiency runs at 2mi/kWh.  My summer efficiency runs at 2.25mi/kWh.  This factors in the combination of cold weather, less efficient snow tires, and I generally make a higher percentage of low-mileage (less efficient) trips in the winter.  This is an 11% efficiency drop on average, although individual trips obviously fall on either side of that range.  I've seen numbers like 33% range loss for Ford's, but I expect this is an extreme extreme scenario, and not a day-to-day scenario.

For our December holiday road-trip, cold weather had literally zero impact on our driving plans.  Our plan was to leave Denver around 8pm on a Thursday night.  It was a late departure because of a kids event, and wanting to get to Los Angeles by Saturday.  The plan was to just make it to Glenwood Springs that night (easily doable on a single charge, summer or winter).  It was in the low 20's when we left, and ranged in the teens and single-digits while driving through the mountains.  We ended up stopping to charge for 10-15 minutes in Silverthorne, just because the kids needed to use the bathroom.  We stayed at a hotel in Glenwood Springs right across from a DCFC.  I just plugged the car in while everyone was eating breakfast in the morning and nearly filled the battery to 100%.  Whatever range impact the cold had was not noticeable in the context of our other plans. 

We had a similar experience driving home through the mountains coming home.  We were tired and grumpy because of a long day of driving.  It was mostly single-digit temps through the mountains.  We stopped at one charger to have a quick dinner in the western rockies.  We were a little impatient, so we didn't get quite enough charge to get home.  But we stopped and charged in Silverthorne again for a quick bathroom break, and that got us the rest of the way home.  I didn't measure the cold impact, but it impacted our charging times by no more than a minute or two.  Our other needs to stop for food and bathrooms were the bigger driver of stopping needs. 

I just wouldn't worry too much about the practical impacts of cold unless you do a lot of long road trips in sub-zero temperatures. 

[NorCal]

Even with that, they put in heated seats for all passengers and a heated steering wheel for the driver because heating the body directly is far more efficient than heating the air.

How does that work with defrosting?  Hot air coming out of people hitting cold windows quickly makes an opaque layer of frost.  Even if you've got a front window heater blowing directly on the main windscreen, all the side windows are going to frost over from the moisture from passenger breath without a warm enough cabin.

There is a conventional heated air / ac defrost and heat blower as well. They don't need to run on high when your butt and hands are toasty.

Also, a minor benefit of EV's is that the defrost works crazy fast.  An ICE car requires you to turn on the engine and burn gas for ~5-10 minutes to warm it up.  An EV heats the air directly.  I can get to a fully defrosted windshield on an icy morning in 1-2 minutes.

I personally don't get a huge benefit from the seat-heaters, as my kids are still on booster seats.  But it is technically more efficient to set the cabin heat at maybe 65 and use the seat warmers than to set the cabin at 70.  I usually just set the cabin at 70 though. 

[geekette]

At first I was confused why the car was running the A/C in the winter, but yeah, it's really working as a dehumidifier, since the air blowing out is still warm.

We were averaging 4.3mi/kWh in the Niro, but with the cold weather it went down to...4.2.  But it's a small crossover and we don't do mountains or single digits around here!

[GuitarStv]

Even with that, they put in heated seats for all passengers and a heated steering wheel for the driver because heating the body directly is far more efficient than heating the air.

How does that work with defrosting?  Hot air coming out of people hitting cold windows quickly makes an opaque layer of frost.  Even if you've got a front window heater blowing directly on the main windscreen, all the side windows are going to frost over from the moisture from passenger breath without a warm enough cabin.

There is a conventional heated air / ac defrost and heat blower as well. They don't need to run on high when your butt and hands are toasty.

Also, a minor benefit of EV's is that the defrost works crazy fast.  An ICE car requires you to turn on the engine and burn gas for ~5-10 minutes to warm it up.  An EV heats the air directly.  I can get to a fully defrosted windshield on an icy morning in 1-2 minutes.

I'm just thinking about my own Corolla here.  In the winter I am usually doing 30ish minute trips in the car and exclusively run the cabin heater full on the windscreen for defrosting purposes because it takes so long.  If the cabin is too cold (say ten or fifteen below with a windchill on top of that), the windows will be completely clear when you get in but ice over really fast from your breath after a couple minutes driving and can rapidly become scary/dangerous.  I wonder if the fast defrost would solve this problem.

[Tyson]

One other cool thing about an EV is you can heat it up remotely.  I have a garage so it's nice because I can preheat it while putting on my shoes and it takes about 2 minutes to get fully warm. 

I imagine if I had to park on the street it would be even nicer to preheat and defrost the car remotely while I was still getting ready inside the house.  If you try to do that in an ICE car here on Denver, you get a ticket or get your car stolen (they are called 'puffers' and they are a magnet for theft).

[NorCal]

Link #1 is a by-model survey of how much range EV's lose in the winter.  It's actually more than I expected based on my experience, although my model isn't listed.

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss

[Tyson]

Link #1 is a by-model survey of how much range EV's lose in the winter.  It's actually more than I expected based on my experience, although my model isn't listed.

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss

Interesting.  Looks like the Audi e-tron, the F150 and the all the Teslas do the best in cold weather.

[AccidentialMustache]

My winter efficiency runs at 2mi/kWh.  My summer efficiency runs at 2.25mi/kWh.  This factors in the combination of cold weather, less efficient snow tires, and I generally make a higher percentage of low-mileage (less efficient) trips in the winter.  This is an 11% efficiency drop on average, although individual trips obviously fall on either side of that range.  I've seen numbers like 33% range loss for Ford's, but I expect this is an extreme extreme scenario, and not a day-to-day scenario.

Yeah that's the reason you think it is blown out of proportion. Well that and you have chargers every hour or less down the road.

The Rivan (and F150, Cybertruck... I sense a theme here) is shaped like a brick and has, honestly, abysmal efficiency numbers to start with. That means the hit from the resistance heater isn't nearly as notable. It isn't going to take substantially different amounts of power to heat your cabin vs my cabin. In the winter on the highway in our MME, I'll get 2.2mi/kWh. In the summer that's close to or above 3. This isn't extreme winter conditions -- I'm talking "it is around freezing" and "road trip with 3-4 people and luggage" nor am I going 80 mph -- I'll set the cruise to 70.

Your longest stretch between Denver and LA is, what, a bit over 60 miles before the next charger? I've got 120+ mile stretches with a bank of 4 EA chargers on each end, eg Rockford to Bloomington IL. I've done that a few times in both directions. In the summer, fine no biggie. In the winter? Scary. 88kWh usable, 80%->10%, 2.2mi/kWh -> 135 miles. Not a lot of room for error and certainly not enough power to get to the next charger that's 30 miles away. Could I charge to 90%? Sure. Adds a lot of time at busy chargers that have had a line most times I've been there, so that's not great.

It is still better than parts of WV where there's one charger for 100 miles in any direction. At a car dealership. Good luck, you'll need it!

The Tesla adapter can't come soon enough. The problem basically completely vanishes (in the midwest, for me) when it does. Still some sketch routes -- KC to Des Moines looks bad -- but mostly it is fine then.

[RWD]

I've got 120+ mile stretches with a bank of 4 EA chargers on each end, eg Rockford to Bloomington IL. I've done that a few times in both directions. In the summer, fine no biggie. In the winter? Scary. 88kWh usable, 80%->10%, 2.2mi/kWh -> 135 miles. Not a lot of room for error and certainly not enough power to get to the next charger that's 30 miles away. Could I charge to 90%? Sure. Adds a lot of time at busy chargers that have had a line most times I've been there, so that's not great.

I've done that exact leg both directions. About 129 miles, according to my records. Used 52% of our battery going North, then 63% going South (maybe I was driving faster?). That was in the summer. Winter definitely would be stretching it, though our Polestar 2 does have a heat pump at least. We haven't done enough cold weather driving to get a good sense of the range penalty (thanks mostly to living in warmer climates). Maybe 20-30% for our Polestar?

I've done 175 miles between chargers twice (different locations). The first time required 71% of our battery and the second was 79% (higher speed limits). Again in summer. At the time I don't think there were any other DCFC along the route in both cases (for the second one there might have been one single stall 50 kW if you go out of your way but it was often out of service).

[Tyson]

With NMC it's OK to charge above 80% for the occasional road trip.  Just don't do it every day. 

With LFP it's fine to charge to 100% all the time, it doesn't affect that battery at all.