Cold Cars Electric cars have been struggling with the cold snap, with the weather draining their batteries. Chevy's Bolt and Nissan's Leaf have been falling victim to this syndrome, as has Tesla's Model 3, which also has another issue: the design of the car's door handles makes it pretty tough to open when ice is involved. Fortune
The weather is not actually draining the batteries. What happens is that the batteries can't store as much energy when they're cold compared to normal temperatures. So if you charge your batteries overnight, at low temperatures, less energy will be stored. Resulting in a lower range the next day. Also, the batteries will have a larger series resistance when they are cold, so the acceleration of the car might be less at low temperatures. My guess is that this is only temporary, as the batteries warm up during driving (i.e. when delivering energy). The Tesla door handle thing which is mentioned has nothing to do with the car being an electrical car. If it were a gasoline car it would still suffer from frozen door handles. Silly design fault which would have been detected if they had done a proper winter test.
In my model S, in the winter, I will lose 4-6percent charge overnight. In summer I lose nothing. Also, in the winter I will use about 450 kilowatts per mile. In the summer I will use about 300 kilowatts per mile. That could be because of the heater but that seems like a lot. I never measured it but I wonder if IC cars are less efficient in the winter as well.
yes, ICE are less efficient in the winter but that is not interesting news or info lol. still plenty of battery to get it all done in the day. same issues with winter battery here but still more fun and far more efficient than burning gas. power plants make energy cleaner and more efficiently than the gas engine, and electric in turn puts that energy to use 6-10x better. the S pop out handles had their early issues which also have zero to do with being an EV. since i added the 3; i even had my lower tech handles freeze in my garage. such is life and all i did was small bang the the area and off i went.
That depends on what kind of power plant it is. A coal-fired plant (and yes, there are still a lot of those around) powering a Tesla is not cleaner than a car with gasoline engine.
I disagree. Do some research; if you find scientific unbiased data you will find coal fired to battery beats the hell out of gas in an ICE. I'm amazed how fake biased news actually works as intended.