this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Electric Vehicles

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Are EVs in cold countries still more energy-efficient than gasoline in the winter? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 8 months ago by ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org to c/evs@lemmy.world
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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?

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[–] Steve@communick.news 26 points 8 months ago (4 children)

They'd almost certainly still be more efficient.

EVs are 75-80% efficient at using their electrical power.
ICEs are 15-30% efficient at using their chemical power.

Until the battery looses 45% of it's capacity due to cold, it's not even close.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Not to mention extremely cold climates gas doesn't work well either. People use diseals which require electronic heaters.

It's a niche market, but not impossible to engineer an EV with something like that.

If we're doing that using cabin heat to heat the battery while in use would help too.

It really wouldn't be hard to mitigate the effects of cold. There just isn't a market to justify it yet

[–] themelm@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] mephiska@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Cars with heat pumps scavenge heat from the motor(s) as well.

[–] themelm@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah I don't know a ton about EV's because I need to be able to drive 500km+ on a tank for work and life out here. Be kinda cool to have one as a work truck someday though be handy to have that much power available for running things.