> and battery life, especially in winter, can be a life-or-death issue
How so? A full battery can run your seat heaters for about a month. That's a lot better than the hours of heat you'd get out of a full tank of gasoline.
Not to mention that you'll never get carbon monoxide poisoning from a gasoline engine with a tailpipe blocked with snow.
I believe they are talking about how the range/capacity is significantly affected in deep cold weather. It's not about life-or-death that you'll freeze to death - it's that your 300mi EV turns into a 150mi EV and that makes range planning unpredictable and more challenging in rural areas.
-30 isnt really even challenging for a gasoline car, you would need -60 or more for gasoline to become thick enough to be a concern. More likely at that temperature is your battery being unable to turn your engine over to try and start it and might require a jump to get turning over.
Diesels may struggle at that temperature, buts its a known issue that northerners add anti-gelling additives and/or block heaters for. Of course an EV can and should have built in battery heaters for that too.
Such a weird comment. Tailpipe blocked with snow? I've lived in (the cold part of) Canada nearly my whole life, never happened. Snow doesn't fall sideways and upwards to block a tailpipe lol. And range is the relevant part of a vehicle, given Canada is so large and sparsely populated, not how long seat heaters heat.
But it sounds like it's hard to get a handle on how common it is. It feels like it's more on the level of "a handful a year in North America/freak occurrance", rather than "common way to die".
Right, but in particularly heavy snowfall, it's not hard to imagine snow encasing the chassis. Once the snow forms a barrier around the body, the exhaust has nowhere to go. Or if the pipe gets blocked (which is a bit harder to imagine, since there's heat coming out of there), and there are exhaust leaks, the exhaust is directed up through the chassis. It doesn't have to be a perfect seal to raise the CO level!
I was recently stuck in a 3 hour backup in sub-freezing temps in moderate snowfall, and it was nice to be able to leave the engine running for heat. In the winter, we have a contingency where it's possible to be stuck in your vehicle overnight in heavy snowfall, and my plan was always to wake up every couple of hours to ensure the snow was clear of the car.
Did you learn to drive in Canada? A prominent part of the your driving lessons should have been that one of the first things you do after getting stuck in mud or snow is to ensure your tail pipe is clear.
What kills in the winter is unpredictability. Range is predictable and easy to mitigate.
It's the winter. You've slid off the road. You're probably in the ditch. You've probably taken some damage to the vehicle. Whether or not you've taken damage, you're now stuck. Something is preventing you from safely walking for help. At -30 or worse after an accident that's more likely than not.
The above is not an uncommon scenario in the winter. So you wait in the vehicle for help to arrive, hoping you don't freeze to death before it does.
You're safer in an electric vehicle.
- If you've plowed into a snow covered ditch, your car may be partially or fully entombed, and you're at risk of a carbon monoxide poisoning.
- there are stories of such vehicles not being found for days. Having heat for days might save your life
> Did you learn to drive in Canada? A prominent part of the your driving lessons should have been that one of the first things you do after getting stuck in mud or snow is to ensure your tail pipe is clear.
Yes I learned to drive in Canada. In a snowy region (3-10 metres of snow yearly depending on elevation). And I ski 50-100+ days per year. And will drive extra for powder snow.
Amount of times I've got stuck in snow? Zero. If you learn to drive in the snow, have winter tires, you just don't get stuck. Especially when you're putting in thousands (tens?) of kms and hundreds of days on snow covered roads.
Did YOU learn to drive here? Guessing no if you get stuck in the snow or slide off the road...
Edit - should add, around here (Alberta Rockies to the BC interior) there's as much as hundreds of KMs between towns/cities. Bad place to ever get stuck. Which is why you simply don't. Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
The only place I've ever gotten stuck in the snow is in my own yard, and I've been driving in snow for over 40 years.
But every single time I go out in the winter I have a plan for what I'll do if it does happen. Because it happens to people, good drivers and bad, snow tires or not.
> Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
You shouldn't be trusting any vehicle. Both an electric car and a gasoline car might let you down when you need it. The gasoline car is more likely to let you down, though. I presume you have a proper winter kit in your vehicle so you don't have to trust your vehicle.
Winter kit? Of course. My father gave me one the day I turned 16. Never needed it but you're right, when it's -40 and you're in the middle of nowhere, better safe than sorry.
Is it road-accessible? What kinds of vehicles can get there?
The cars in the article have twice as much range as a gas car or more, even in the cold. And it's easier to charge them at remote locations than to get fuel deliveries to those same remote locations.
I'm sure a scenario could be contrived where any type of car wins, but on average I expect a long range battery car to do quite well.
None of the ‘answers’ address the range issues with batteries in the cold. Or how you can be totally fucked if your pack drops below a certain temp, and you don’t have enough charge to heat the pack and get home.
Probably even more fucked than if your diesel tank gelled. At least you can heat it up directly if you really need to.
You handle it the exact same way you do on a gasoline vehicle. You never let your tank go below 50%. If you slide off the road with a low tank or a low battery you can get in trouble, so don't do that.
If I let my electric car sit overnight with at least 20% charge, I know it will start in the morning, even if it was -45 overnight. You can't say that with a gasoline vehicle. It'll take almost all of that 20% to get up to temperature, but once it's up it maintains it well.
And anyplace cold has ubiquitous block heater plugs. At really cold temperatures it'll barely charge on a block heater plug because it'll use all the energy keeping the battery warm, but it means you start with a warm battery and a warm car, so the range drop is massively reduced.
It’s delusional that you think you actually need to not go below half a tank (unlike electrical in the same situation), or that you can’t start a well maintained winterized vehicle at -48 cold (it’ll be hard on it, but it should still work) - as compared to an electric that flat out won’t work without heating the battery first. Especially gasoline powered.
EV’s at these temps are very problematic and much more likely to get you actually killed if something goes wrong, because of how they work. That’s just the truth.
Thinking that somehow it isn’t is the delusional part.
With enough care can you potentially avoid getting into a situation where you’ll actually get in deep trouble? I guess. But the margins are way thinner, and it requires a lot of range reduction, and your worst case scenarios are much more likely to happen.
How so? A full battery can run your seat heaters for about a month. That's a lot better than the hours of heat you'd get out of a full tank of gasoline.
Not to mention that you'll never get carbon monoxide poisoning from a gasoline engine with a tailpipe blocked with snow.