Cold Weather Kills electric car mileage!?

[Ufatz]

Saw a brief story today and then lost it, but the gist of it was that some testing of several electric or hybrid cars revealed that sometimes the available mileage dropped in HALF at 20-degrees!!

And when you stop to think about it, it makes sense. Cold weather is very tough on batteries. So is hot desert weather.

Let's be watching to see how this unfolds. Heck, for all I know it may be an old story and you guys are already on it!

[PurpleFloyd]

You don't suppose running a heater would have any impact on that do you?And leave a cordless drill outside in the cold overnight and then see how it works.

[rundrave]

Having owned a hybrid (Prius) personally I can vouge that winter time Mpg was no worse than what any other vehicles happens to see in reduction during the winter time. Let's say my summer mpg was 48mpg, our winter mpg may have dropped to 43mpg.

Certainly no where near a 50% reduction but it also wasn't -20 everyday either.

[h8go4s]

AVAILABLE mileage is what the OP was talking about. You might call it range, or something else. It will be less in cold weather. And a Prius is not an electric car, it's a hybrid.

[Ufatz]

Okay r-dave....a report from an owner. I THINK the brief story I saw may have involved just those few cars that are fully electric. But as soon as I saw it I realized they were onto something....we all know that cold knocks heck out of a battery, of any kind. I wonder if auto makers gave that any thought as they designed thier products?

Perhaps we'll see more on the subject.

[Jaspernuts]

Hybrid or full electric, it drops the mileage significantly. My wife has a prius for her commute and in the summer she gets over 50. Last tank was 41. Still way better than my f150! Where I work they have plug in stations for the chevy volt. The owners say it will drop 50% at 0 degrees.

[delcecchi]

Okay r-dave....a report from an owner. I THINK the brief story I saw may have involved just those few cars that are fully electric. But as soon as I saw it I realized they were onto something....we all know that cold knocks heck out of a battery, of any kind. I wonder if auto makers gave that any thought as they designed thier products?

Perhaps we'll see more on the subject.

Heat and air conditioning also suck power from the battery.

An example, a Tesla Model S has a 60 or 85 KWhr battery pack depending on model. The 60 kW version is good for a little over 200 miles, so a kWhr is about 3.5 miles. I would estimate a decent heater would take between 1 and 2 kw, so an hour of heat might cost 5 miles or so of range.

The big hit comes from the reduction in battery capacity. From what I found, a Lithium Ion battery loses at least a third to half of its capacity when used at -20C (-4 F).