Guys, Don't you hate it when it's so dang cold that your Tesla won't even take a charge?

[milyjohn]

"Charging stations have essentially turned into car graveyards in recent days as temperatures have dropped to the negative double digits, Fox Chicago reported.

"Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent," Tyler Beard, who had been trying to recharge his Tesla at an Oak Brook, Illinois Tesla supercharging station since Sunday afternoon, told the news outlet. 'And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday.' "

[DarkWinterNights]

I’ve been warning people about this for awhile. There are ways around the negatives, but the general public wants something that’s just going to work. They don’t want to go through a whole lot of trouble for the same result. Unless you’re upper middle class or rich and can afford to have a super charger installed in your heated garage, these types of vehicles are not for you. And even still- the amount of EV fires in garages are going up.
I still think the ultimate goal is for the average citizen to move into the city, not own a vehicle at all and be forced to take public transportation.

[milyjohn]

I just heard on the news yesterday, that most garbage fires (which they may mean dumpsters) are caused by lithium ion batteries. My Motorola phone started to curve. It kept curving and curving until it looked slightly like a banana. I took it to the shop, and the girl took the OtterBox off. Aside from looking like a banana, the side of the battery was split like you were gutting a fish. She said I was very lucky it didn’t catch on fire in my apartment.
Besides that, I’ve read that lithium ion batteries require many tons of raw materials to make. I heard an expert say there’s not enough raw materials on earth to make as many electric cars as we need.

[Surely]

The EV’s on their best days are only a three seasons car!

[milyjohn]

They'll get better in time. But I like the idea of that charging method you talked about. That still wouldn't work at very cold temperatures, but it beats waiting for hours for your car to charge.

[Surely]

@milyjohn. Hopefully you are correct. Thank you once again for the MHO!

[MrOracle]

Anyone know what the best-selling car in Scandinavia is? It's the Tesla Model Y. In Norway, over 80% of new car sales are EVs (with Teslas being heavily represented).

Is extreme cold an issue for EVs? To some degree, yes. But folks in Sweden and Norway deal with cold temps all the time, and they're not having these problems, because they understand how the cars work.

You can't treat an EV *exactly* the same as an ICE (internal combustion engine) car. One of the big ways you can't do that is that you can't leave an EV in a parking lot during extreme cold for weeks at a time (such as at the airport, when you're on a two-week trip), nor can you just park it with 20% battery and leave it unplugged, because is going to use that power to keep the battery pack warm. In other words, in extreme weather, you need to leave it plugged in when parked (much like people in these climates often keep ICE cars plugged in with a block heater running).

You DON'T need to be plugged in to a DC fast charger (like a Tesla supercharger) - a 110V "destination charger" is plenty, and much cheaper. Now, this isn't always possible, because lots of places lack the necessary infrastructure to do this. Norway and Sweden have invested in this kind of infrastructure, and they have few problems - they have this cold weather all the time and understand that such concessions are simply a necessary part of living with cold weather. Sooner or later, we'll have this infrastructure in the US too.

You WILL be screwed if you let your battery go to zero in very cold weather - your car won't charge at a super-charger until it can first get the battery warm, and that can take a while - and even then, it will charge more slowly until it gets going. This is quite different than how it works in the summer, when you can leave your car with 10% charge in a parking lot all day and have 8% left when you get back in it. In a freezing winter, the car simply needs more power, and you need to manage that. It's really just about education and expectations, and the MAJORITY of EV owners know this and don't get themselves in trouble. But there's always going to be SOME who never bothered to educate themselves, and have to learn the hard way.

How many ICE cars will have dead 12V batteries in this storm? A whole lot of them, but I bet we won't have any national news stories about it, because it's a well-known and well-understood problem. This is really no different, except it's a new problem to many people.

[milyjohn]

[MrOracle]

This is true - but the point isn't to fill the battery all the way, but to fill the battery enough to get home/to your destination (and that destination might be a DC fast charger, AFTER you've got your battery warmed up).

And, again, if you're going to leave your car OUTSIDE in such extreme weather, it should be left plugged in. Given the battery chemistry in the lithium batteries in most EVs currently on the road, they REALLY lose efficiency (the ability to move electricity IN *or* OUT of the battery) when the battery temp is below 0C. When plugged in, the car can keep its battery above 0C without using a lot of power, and this will dramatically increase battery performance, both for driving and for charging.

Letting the battery cold-soak - i. e., leaving it outdoors in far-below-0C weather for more than a day without being plugged in - is going to give you a battery that struggles to work at all. It's not a problem if you can park it in a garage, or if you can plug it in, but you can't just leave it in an open parking lot.

A lot of these people were showing up at Superchargers with ice-cold batteries, and instead of recharging in 20-30 minutes, it would take several hours because the batteries had to be heated first, and even that could only be done slowly.

Extreme weather is called "extreme" for a reason. Even ICE cars often struggle in it. Yes, they have somewhat different challenges, but they still struggle, and people who live in those conditions learn to adapt. That will happen with EVs eventually too.

[milyjohn]

Not everyone has a fast charger or a garage. A regular house outlet would take 4 days to charge. I'll pass on that.

[MrOracle]

Generally, people who own an EV (not just a plug-in hybrid or a tiny car with a tiny battery) have a 220V "level 2" charger installed. It's more-or-less the same as the plug you'd have for an electric dryer or stove. These can charge a completely empty battery to 100% full in 8-10 hours, which is MORE than fast enough for nearly anyone's use. And most people avoid charging their battery to 100% anyway. It's not good for batteries (at least, the ones common in current EVs) to be fully charged all the time, and the last 20% charges much more slowly than the first 80% anyway. Most people come home, plug their car in, and it's ready to go the next time they drive. Most people only use a public charger if they're on a long road trip.

A big part of THIS problem is that Chicago has several companies (including Uber) who are renting or leasing EVs to people who don't understand EVs, who don't have a way to charge them at home, and in the case of Uber, who DO rely on public fast-charging because they recharge their cars a couple of times a day, since they drive so much. That works fine in normal weather, but extreme weather wreaks havoc when people don't know what to do, and end up doing everything wrong.

[milyjohn]

That's why Hertz is selling 20 thousand of their electrics.

[MrOracle]

Yes. The general public isn't educated enough or experienced enough to understand EVs (obviously people who own one have no issues, but many people rent them with NO idea how they work), and when you show up in an unfamiliar place, driving a car you don't understand very well is not a recipe for success.

EVENTUALLY they'll rent EVs again, but they were a few years premature in buying that many given the state of familiarity of them in the US. In some countries (Norway, Sweden, China), where EVs are already the norm, it would be fine. The US will get there, but we're not quite there yet. 2-3 years from now, I suspect.

[milyjohn]

Just have it market driven and not forced by the government.

[MrOracle]

I fully agree. EVs are going to win eventually, because they'll eventually be far better for everything. We aren't quite there yet, but it's going to happen with or without any government mandates or incentives, so those should all end. Even Elon Musk agrees - he's called for the end of all of that many times over the years, because it's unnecessary. But if they insist on giving them out anyway, he's not going to turn down the money, because that would harm Tesla's competitiveness on the market.

[milyjohn]

16 states are banning new gas cars in eleven years. That will be a real mess.

[Wise4myage]

Yet another example of how big of a failure electric cars are.

[milyjohn]

Their day will come, but it's years away. The batteries are a disaster.

[Wise4myage]

I agree, and Biden needs to stop pushing his electric car agenda.

[milyjohn]

Exactly. Just let the market decide what the market wants. The government fucks everything up.

[Amur8711]

One type of battery I have learned of that I like is called the Gravity battery. It's not going to work for vehicles but for homes and cities it will. Basically its the same concept as how they used to power clocks without electricity. Using weights that pulled down, very slowly, using gravity to turn a generator.

[milyjohn]

@Amur8711

Then how do you get the weights back up to the top?

[Amur8711]

You would use some external source to raise it up. Either power from solar or something else. But the biggest thing is its a battery that will always hold a charge because gravity never stops. Heck you could have people or an house work to crack it up if you had too.

[milyjohn]

@Amur8711


This looks interesting. Rather than wasting energy while braking, capture the energy in a flywheel.

[Amur8711]

Also old technology coming back

[TheSpaceGnome]

I remember when gameboys didn't work at night without a light attachment.
Then screen internal backlights were put into handhelds and suddenly the problem went away.

I wonder kind of thermal regulation mechanics would fix that issue.

[milyjohn]

There’s hope yet.

[MrOracle]

Teslas already have heaters for the battery pack - they normally pre-condition (warm up) the battery pack if you navigate to a Supercharger, but you need to do this at least 20 minutes before arrival, and perhaps longer in more extreme cold weather - but these DO take energy to run, so if you leave a Tesla outside for a week without charging it, or much less time if you leave it with a low state of charge, you can run the battery to zero, and then you're screwed. It can take 60-90 minutes to warm up a cold-soaked battery before it starts charging at something close to normal speeds - when the battery pack is below 0C, you can barely get a tiny trickle of power into or out of the battery, and that will only improve when the battery gets warmer.

Cars like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt, which have no thermal management, are nearly useless in these conditions and they really have no way to improve the situation. Most larger, more expensive EVs have some kind of thermal management, but the quality and performance of these is, ahem, "variable."

[TheSpaceGnome]

@MrOracle Thats terrible design, the heater shouldn't run off the car's battery if the battery stops working when too cold.

[MrOracle]

You think they should install a gasoline motor to keep the battery warm? In reality, on a Tesla, keeping the battery above 0C only uses about 5-6% of battery power per day. Teslas use a heat pump system that's normally quite efficient, power-wise. But, yeah, there are limits to everything, and you have to make adjustments in extreme weather. Most people need only plug in their car when they're at home, which most EV owners already do anyway.

[TheSpaceGnome]

@MrOracle I'm not sure what they should install, cars are not my zone of expertise, but none the less making that sort of codependency is going to result in failure conditions during cold temps, so for that reason its a bad design. My initial though was maybe coupling in solar paneling on the car's shell. Making it a hybrid or just powering the heater with fuel could also work, or a separate battery just for the heater but that likely would be just as prone to cold. But of course someone could at some point invent a battery that works at 30 below zero and charges with solar panels. I think its too soon to speculate at this point.

[TheSpaceGnome]

thought*

[MrOracle]

A solar panel the size of the roof would add between 1 and 2 miles of range on a cloudless summer day. Obviously it's going to provide far less power in the middle of a blizzard in Chicago in the winter.

But you are right in that there is a TON of research and developement going on with battery technologies, and breathroughs are being made all the time - but there's a long road between breakthroughs in the lab and getting that to the point where such batteries can be manufactured at scale at a reasonable price. Still, there's too much need and too much upside for anyone who can make a better battery, so we're going to see significant battery improvements over the next decade. 10 years from now, the cold may no longer be a relevant issue. But, today, we have to work around it.

[TheSpaceGnome]

@MrOracle Would the panels be enough to charge the heater though? At least eventually anyway. I recall seeing a car covered in panels as its fuel, but I have no idea what purpose the car was made for, how far it could go, or even if it ever left concept or protoype stage.

[MrOracle]

A panel might be able to power the heater on a summer day in the direct sun, but certainly not on a cloudy winter day, not to mention if snow has accumulated on the panel.

[Astarlessnightsky]

Gasoline also freezes when it gets too cold, so don't pretend its ONLY electric cars having problems in the cold.

[milyjohn]

Very true. Gas freezes at -100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The world record for the lowest temperature recorded is -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The temperature was recorded on July 21, 1983, in Vostok, Antarctica and confirmed by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in Russia.

I'm not too worried about my gas freezing, are you?

[Surely]

@milyjohn. He probably means diesel and home heating oil gels at around zero and below. Without special treatment!

[milyjohn]

@Surely

I've heard of truckers in Alaska that never turn their trucks off.

[Surely]

@milyjohn. Back in the nineties. We had 22 degrees below zero. Some truckers that were not prepared for it. Their trucks would only idle account of the fuel gelling..

[milyjohn]

@Surely
Everything has its downsides. The nice thing about diesels is that any oil will work. I had a friend who powered his clunker Mercedes from used McDonald's fryer grease. (and other restaurants)

[QuietRunner]

I'll have to check my hybrid out soon

[milyjohn]

All cars should be hybrids.

[zagor]

Tesla's are great second cars.

[milyjohn]

Exactly. Hope for the best and plan for the worst.

[Ironco]

What's a Tesla?

[milyjohn]

I have no idea.

[Ironco]

Lol, I will never buy one.
I like Elon though

[Fireguy17]

wouldn't know.

[Luckycharms12]

Lol wouldn't know.