Cold makes the chemical method that ev batteries use to store energy slow down which is why with much of the US in a extreme cold. Electric Vehicle owners are facing issues with reduced battery performance and increased charging times.
Currently below 2% of vehicles in US are electric so the problem is not affecting mega numbers of people and the state with mega sales is still California where cold is not usual. According to Cox Automotive US EV buying set a huge record in the 3rd quarter of 2023 making up 7.9% of all light truck sales and new car.
The gas mileage of a gasoline car is about 15% lower at 20 degrees than at 77 degrees according to US Department of Energy. American Automobile Association found that at 20 degrees and EV can lose 12% of its range.After turning on the cabin heater can bring that up to 40%.
No trucks or cars do good when it is chilling out but evs do worse.
Tips to get the best performance from ev cars in cold weather
Park Indoors
This keeps your electric cars in cold weather warmer as well as its battery. So not much energy used to warm it up later. A car cover also assist electric car charging in cold weather.
Drive with eco mode on
Multiple EVs offer this which requires the minimum amount of energy while sacrificing some performance. This is one of the factor for huge electric car sales in US last year.
Preheat your battery
EVs automatically pre heat their batteries when they are moving to a charger. This permit them to charger rapidly when plugged in.If you charge at home or electric car charging stations plugging in right way while the vehicle is still warm.
Heat the Cabin before you drive
electric cars in extreme cold consider turning on your car heater while is still charging. Using a heater at 20 degrees resulted in a 41% decrease in driving range and 39% decrease in fuel economy, If you warm up inside the vehicle is still charging you do not have to use battery power to bring to reasonable temperature.
Don’t let your battery get below 20%
It will need power to warm up to charge electric cars stranded in cold.
Cold batteries do not work well. The good operating temperature for an EV battery is between 68 and 86 degrees depending on the model. As the temperature down, the electrochemical processes the battery uses to charge decrease down. To charge the the cold weather electric cars the ions flow less efficiently through the battery and anode capacity decreases.
Electric car sales in 2024 without subsidies
In Germany electric car market fall down after government dropped subsidies on December 17 fro battery electric models.Since 2014 government provides $16.2 billion dollars subsidies.With out the help of incentives PHEVs in Germany had a rash year with sales down 51 percent.Evs sales better with subsidies but sales drop huge amount after subsidy take out on 17th december.December sales down 58% on December 2022. These will show PHEV early adopters will suffer huge loss for resale of their cars. Toyota in Australia enjoying 8% of market share in hybrid sales and demand is spiking. The demise of subsidies in Australia also estimated to impact evs sales. NSW dropped $3000 rebate at the start of this month and in july Victoria dropped $3000 subsidy.
The electric vehicle market in Germany may see jolt in 2024 as Chinese manufactures make entry into the market and decreased government subsidies halt on growth in the market.
