I've known it since I was old enough to drive. Cold weather affects batteries. When most of what I was driving was .. ahem... junk... senior vehicles, I learned that when I had a battery that was four or five years old, and the first cold snap hit, I was changing the battery in the vehicle. I learned to keep jumper cables in every vehicle. It was part of the driving experience.
Even these days, when I have to put a new battery in the car, it's generally after the first cold snap.
But, now we're learning that cold weather affects batteries. Especially EV batteries.
This chart compares 12 popular EV models to show range loss in freezing temperatures, as compared to the ideal driving temperature. Note that the ideal driving temperature is defined as the temperature at which a specific model sees its highest average range. This exact temperature varies from car to car.
Expect about a 30% reduction in driving range in cold weather.
One of these days, electric, self-driving cars will rule the road, and the idea of internal combustion engines will seem as strange to us as the steam driven cars of the early 20th century seem to us today. But, that day ain't here yet.
3 comments:
Like others I drove electric vehicles daily for 20 years. No not cars but electric fork trucks and Cushman battery powered service carts. Cold weather and extremely hot weather would reduce usage time. Some times you plugged them into an automated charger over night and the next morning it was still zero, no reason known but just quirky.
Nope, and they will be prying my ICE vehicle from my cold dead hands...
When I was a young, poor, community college student and it was subzero winter, jumper cables and a second battery came in handy.
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