abatis

Location Montana. On my 21 CT Montana during summer temps I get 2.9 to 3.1 mi/kWh. During a winter cold snap on a 445 mile trip I dropped to 2.1 kWh. Using 2.9 kWh as a base, I experienced a ~27% drop in range in the cold. You just have to plan around that with an EV.

ipse dixit

Yeah, when you have driven an EV for a daily you begin to realize just how good EVs are as daily vehicles -- call them "appliances" if you want -- to get from Point A to B and back to Point A.

The 0-60 times get all the headlines, but regardless of how fast they are off the line, the acceleration is so effortless, even the slowest and heaviest of EVs (like the Kia Niro or Hyundai Ioniq) still feels faster than some of the fastest ICE cars out there.

And for daily driving, that's what's really important. Ease of use and effortless, well, effort.

Are EVs for everyone? No. Are they suitable for every type of environment? Not yet certainly. But then neither are ICE cars.

kayjh

I don't get the above, What environment is an ICE car not suitable for? One where there are no gas stations?

Zhao

EV's are good in winter as long as you don't care about electricity costs or usage and don't leave the city and have a house with a garage, or at least an outside charger.

I just finished a week of -40c weather and honestly it worked pretty good, although power usage literally tripled and charge times probably doubled, and that is in a heated garage that stayed at about -1 degree c. parking outside, it used about 10-15% of the battery to go from sub -30c to 20c. barely used any power to maintain that temp though while driving. I absolutely would not trust it to leave the city though as at high speeds it is completely unpredictable what range it will actually get and not worth the risk. You could be stuck somewhere for 10 hours to just get 10% battery life back trickle charging, which would last you no time at all.

The big pros are it drives like its normal temps out, it had no issues starting or heating up, and you don't have to pump gas in -40.

flygdchman

So I was at a local grocery store with EA chargers and saw a guy charging his base Taycan. I asked him "How is your range in this weather?" He smiled and said, "Not good", paused and followed up with "About 200 miles". Which I thought was surprisingly good actually.

d00d

Yeah, ~200 miles is pretty good for the standard battery in the cold, although in my case I had to drive under 65 MPH and part of it was stop and go traffic through Boston.
That's no longer enough, I changed my commute from 190 miles to a 210 mile route, now I have wait anxiety.
Twice if I had arrived a minute later the four at Seabrook would have all been taken, but the upside is I can drive at normal speeds.
I may have to go another route where there are six at Merrimack and four at Manchester.

Anyone know what the algorithm for preconditioning the battery is?
In 25F the temperature started going up 40 minutes and 35 miles away.

24Neptune

I saw in the Porsche manual that range may be lower when new, below 1,875 miles. Have those with more mileage vs. new found that to be true?

whiz944

One of my brothers lives in the Chicago area, and is probably going to buy a new EV soon. (Replacing their ML 350.) After the fiasco last weekend, he texted me about it. I told him three things:

1.) Anyone charging at home won't have a problem,
2.) If you do use public DC fast chargers/Superchargers, use pre-conditioning to make sure the pack is warm enough to start charging upon arrival. Not all EVs are good about doing preconditioning
3.) Buy one with a heat pump-based cabin heating system to mitigate range loss when it is cold out. (Of course heated seats and steering wheel are also "must haves".)

Kyle's youtube video confirms the first two of these recommendations. He also comments on how a lot of the congestion problems were with Uber/Lyft drivers that did not have home charging. Plus, surprise, some chargers not working. Even a few Tesla stalls! FWIW, I'm pretty sure the Supercharger site Kyle is standing at in the beginning of his video report is in Skokie. I've charged there before. It has 20 Urban (72 kW) stalls.

In my brothers case, road trips aren't a huge priority. He is a private pilot, and they mostly travel longer distances in one of his airplanes. Funny thing is last time I visited, we went flying. The plane were were going to take had a dead battery, so we had to take the other one...

b787fo

Great points Whiz944.
Unexpected update to my earlier post “Winter Range Experiment”: evening news called for 1-2” snow along the Lake Michigan shoreline last night, but that was off a bit. I opened the garage door this morning to 5” and not enough time to plow with the John Deere on my way to the airport. I put the GTS ST in normal suspension height and was able to get out the 175 yard driveway, then 3 miles to the village where the county finally had begun plowing the highway south. No probs with traction given the Pirelli snow tires, but plowing with the Taycan was “interesting” to say the least. Managed to not pack the radiator inlets with snow but just barely. I hope to never repeat this experience 😳. But for the need to make the flight I’d have used the tractor instead.

flygdchman

Would be a set-up for The Straight Story II

Tupper

Wow, I know how cold it was last week, and for that dude to be wearing just a sweatshirt in such frigid weather........he gets my respect just for that alone

usctrojanGT3

How cold was it when he was filming?

whiz944

Kyle lives in Colorado. He is used to cold weather. His hoodie is a common "uniform" in many of his videos.

b787fo

Recently left my GTS ST parked outside at a northern Michigan airport for 10 days. Daytime highs started in the teens and were into the low 30s by the last few of the 10 days. Vampire loss to the battery was 1% from when I parked it.

kort677

that is normal. range anxiety is usually cause by the loss of range cause by extremely cold temps