Cold Weather

 

Are EVs good winter cars?

Yes, they are. They heat faster because you don’t have to wait for the engine block to heat up before the cabin gets some warmth. You can also set up an EV to heat up at a specific time to be ready for you, even in a closed garage because there are no local emissions. You can use your phone to start the heating again even in closed areas. Most EVs are also available as AWD because the electric drive train technology enables easy AWD setups. Overall EVs are great winter cars.
"Why Electric Vehicles Are Great Winter Cars" (CleanTechnia)

 

How much range do present EVs provide in the winter?

Electric cars, like cars with internal combustion engines, function less efficiently in the cold. As long as we are aware of this impact, it is fine. Cold weather range is becoming less of an issue with the rapid advancement of battery technologies. Every year, electric vehicle battery capacities get bigger and ranges get longer. Battery size plays a big role here because this has less of an impact the bigger the batteries get. If we, for example, assume that two-hour-long commutes consume 10kWh of energy on a very cold day and you do that commuting with a 2012 Nissan Leaf that has only a 24kWh battery capacity, you just used over 40% of your battery capacity to heating. If you do the same with a 2019 Nissan Leaf Plus which has a 62kWh battery, you only used 16% of your capacity to heat the cabin. This means that the bigger the batteries get, the less cold weather impacts our driving range. The average range of BEVs sold in 2019 was over 250 miles so range is a much smaller concern than what it used to be in, for example, 2012 when the average range was less than 100 miles. Also if range is a concern for you, you can always choose a plug-in hybrid that doesn’t have any range limitations.

 

How do you heat the cabin in the winter?

Interior heating is also done with electricity. First generation EVs used resistive heaters which are relatively fast but consume quite a bit of energy. Many newer models have moved to heat pump heating systems which are like an air-conditioning system running in reverse, and those are much more energy efficient and respond even faster. It is common that these systems start blowing hot air within a minute of a cold start. 
"Can heat pumps solve cold-weather range loss for EVs?" (Green Car Reports)
 

 

Any tips for cold weather driving with an EV?

Our tips would be very similar to what you could expect for an internal combustion engine car:

• Use winter tires. Getting a good second winter tire set is a better investment than AWD because winter tires also help you when you slow down the car. Every mile that you put to your winter tires also saves your summer tires so it doesn’t increase your tire expenses as much as you would think.

• Check your tire pressure. Cold temperatures lower the tire pressure so you need to compensate that by adding some extra air to the tires during cold months.

• Make sure you use cold weather windshield wiper fluid so the system doesn’t freeze.

• Use the preheating especially when the car is plugged in. This way the majority of the energy used for heating the car comes right from the grid and not from the battery. When driving, use as much heat as you need. If you have chosen a right range car for your use case, you should have plenty of range during winter times too, so enjoy your ride.

"8 tips for driving electric vehicles in cold climates" (GEOTAB) 

 

How about cooling in the summertime?

During the hot summer days, you will want to cool down the car and may wonder how much energy that uses. The good news is that air conditioning uses much less energy than the heating does during winter months. This is actually just simple physics. We usually like to keep our car cabin around 70 degrees. If the outside temperature on a nice summer day is around 95 degrees the system needs to lower the cabin temperature by 25 degrees, but on a cold winter day when the outside air might be a brisk -10 degrees, the system needs to make an 80-degree temperature change happen. In addition to this, there are sun and wind loads that make the math a bit more complicated, but the difference in temperature has the biggest impact. So on summer days running the AC might result in a 5-10% drop in range, which is not that much.