90% of the complaints appear to be from folks who have no ability to charge at home. I would agree with the sentiment that if you have to drive any significant distance daily, and live in an apartment where you can’t charge at home, having an EV is going to be a giant pain and it might be a little too soon to go that route. I’d imagine we’re still several years away from having robust enough charging infrastructure assuming the build outs continue to get government support.
The real blunder in this country is the lack of viable alternative transportation options in a majority of the nation.
Visited NYC recently and didn’t need to rent a car. Primarily took the bus, ferry, and rail car/trains. In some cases I just walked from my hotel to the destination. Could have rented one of the e-bikes as well. Transportation costs for just 1 week were less than $100 (a quarter of this was because of LIRR usage). Didn’t have to deal with traffic, or some dumbass rear ending me because they weren’t paying attention. I could effectively multitask while traveling by alternative means.
Unpopular opinion: heavy investing in “EV infrastructure” is a waste of time and money.
... but a small apartment costs $4000 in NYC which would cover the payment, gas, insurance and everything on two or three big SUVs. Without some revolution in the cost structure of urban life, "transit friendly" is going to look like going from the frying pan to the fire for most people.
According to AAA, the average cost of owning a new car is $12k per year [0], and that's just for one car. So New Yorkers can put that extra $1000 per month towards housing. As a New Yorker, $4000 is pretty high. You'd typically see that in hot areas for 1br's with in-unit w/d. Most people, including myself, do not pay that much.
Also, interesting phrasing to make it seem like a "small nyc apartment" is a bad thing. I don't pay for expensive repairs, yard maintenance, or big ticket appliances. Most renters don't pay for heat either (at least not directly). Not to mention interest on a mortgage or property taxes. All costs totaled, living in NYC isn't strictly more expensive than living in a suburb.
> According to AAA, the average cost of owning a new car is $12k per year
You're not forced to pay the average if saving money is important. My primary driver costs me ~2K a year total.
> All costs totaled, living in NYC isn't strictly more expensive than living in a suburb.
As someone who beat my head against the wall of trying to afford to live in NYC for several years and eventually gave up and moved to the suburbs, I assure you it's far cheaper to live in the suburbs.
(Sure, there are exclusive luxury suburbs that'll cost as much as living in NYC but you wouldn't move to those if affordability matters.)
True. But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! And yet, cities aren't like private businesses; they don't do what's in demand. Instead of spending millions on public transportation, they spend billions on more roads to suburbs because that's what they are used to, and why the hell not? What good will come to elected officials from millions of car-free millennials streaming in from all over the country? That will just jack up rents, because, let's face it, no one city can absorb the demand anyway. My home city, Portland, put in modest light rail and painted some bike lanes, which caused some new people to move in. That pissed everyone off, and all transit development abruptly stopped. Desirable city == pissed off locals, and the locals vote!
So we have shitty apartments in Manhattan where the land is 99% of the cost and countless, cookie cutter suburban hellscapes.
A better comparable is to consider rents in an outlying section of Queens that is far from transit and compare that to Manhattan.
For that matter a person could very much live car free in a minor city like Binghamton or Ithaca NY if they work at a place that is well served by transit.
I totally disagree. Density and transit are the defining traits of NYC. What's something else NYC offers that you can't find in a similarly sized, but spread out, population? Keeping in mind that the population of NYC is about that of the entire Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, or the entire state of Washington.
UN HQ, Wall Street, potentially one's family, etc. Cities just aren't fungible. There are way more reasons someone might prefer or be pushed towards one or another besides the traffic or transit.
Hell, if you're listing off important US map pin-points, you can't beat DC. But people would still rather live in NYC (according to the market). But even if NYC had the most destinations, that's just another way of saying "density", which is my entire point.
And I'm not talking about personal differences, like family. Paris isn't a world class city because my mom lives there. I get that individuals have reasons to live places. I'm talking about populations, not people.
Most Americans are city dwellers. It's not even close. And the trend has been consistently towards increased urbanization since the country's founding.
I'm not arguing we should ignore rural communities, just that we shouldn't rule out ideas that work in cities because they don't work outside cities.
This discussion is about public EV charging. If you live somewhere rural or suburban and can afford a car, you can probably afford a garage for it. The push for public EV charging is in more urban places, where public transit would be a better investment.
In my experience in Canada, small rural communities typically do have public transportation. Small rural communities generally have a lot of elderly people, so most small towns provide a wheelchair accessible taxi-like service.
Rural New Yorker here, we also have low intensity public transportation (contract taxis, bus lines). As a busy professional, it would be too inconvenient for me to use, but as a busy professional I can afford to drive.
Walkable cities sounds nice, but I like having space. At this point of my life, living in a suburban community is desirable.
now you're getting it. they drive into town because these areas don't have the density that cities do and the towns themselves aren't large enough to justify public transportation, especially considering that even the non-farmers typically will live many miles from where they purchase their groceries, etc.
So the town can afford dedicated transport for people who don't produce anything and your assumption is that it isn't feasible for those who do produce economic value? And it is somehow more feasible for each of those individuals to privately pay the costs?
Unless you look back 70 years and realize that many small towns only existed because they had rail (passenger and goods). (and/or private bus service). Turns out, getting your goods to market before every person had a car was a requirement.
Exactly! People say, "rural communities need cars". And sure, new sprawl does need cars, like whatever shat itself over the Front Range. But a lot of old towns had trains. Or stage coaches. Or, later, busses. You see this all over the Old West, and New England, and the Rust Belt. These little towns grew up before there were cars.
You still see this in rural Europe. There will be some little village in the middle of nowhere. But the shops and (now I'm picturing the north of England) a pub will all be in a cluster, and there are country lanes that you can actually walk on, and in that village center there's a bus stop, from which you can get to Carlisle or Newcastle and thence to Durham, or wherever.
Some developing countries too actually. You couldn't backpack around these places if they didn't have busses. The "third world" is often a better place to be a pedestrian than America is. Because everybody else is a pedestrian too.
America's problem is that all the private investment in railroads has been displaced by public investment in highways. It's Eisenhower's fault. It makes sense that the US would invest in dual use technologies for mechanized warfare, but it sucks to have to live with.
And now -- I like bike paths, but -- rails-to-trails efforts are just an admission of defeat. But they're what we're getting instead now.
> These little towns grew up before there were cars.
they used horses...
I think it's hilarious how people are trying to argue that a single train stop in a town is somehow public transportation for the citizens of that town to get around said town.
It's interesting how quickly we forget about how things used to be. My grandparents were subsistence farmers in my lifetime, and they did not use horses to get around town. I don't think they ever owned a horse.
For regular everyday travel, they walked.
They'd sometimes need to go work out in a field. On those days, they'd hitch up the cows to the wagon and spend the day working there. This is a slow process, so they'd need to have enough work to spend the whole day there.
Horses were never a transportation method, except for the extremely rich. They were agricultural tools. Looking at France, because data is easy to get there, the population of France was about 40 million in 1900[2]. Around that time, France also had about 3 million horses, or about a horse for every 13 people. Of these 3 million horses, 2.5 million were "draft horses" used for pulling plows.
Autonomous vehicles will obsolete passenger rail. The highway network is expansive, interconnected, and hyper-local in a way that railways can never reproduce. Rapid transit in EVs is conceivable in the near future as Autonomy takes over more safety critical processes. As safety critical processes are automated the speed limits can be lifted, allowing very inexpensive travel on-demand.
The two end stations existed, and enough in between the make the railway feasible. Then the existence of paths to two big cities made some villages grow, and grow, and grow.
the two end stations exist because people were already there, they didn't build that railway across the US before these areas were settled.
What you're arguing is that there are towns that would pop up around these railways after the fact, and while that's true, they would also pop up around water, gold, and other natural resources.
It turns out there's lots of reasons why communities form, but one thing we know for sure is that railways require demand FIRST, not second.
The USA has several many towns and cities which were built because of railways.
Railways induce demand, both for work for the railway (moving trains, moving goods between trains, services for passengers), and for the excellent transport connections they provide.
Some demand has to be present first, sure. But "not second" doesn't follow. No law prevents the planners from expecting demand to grow, and basing their decision to build on that.
Most of the country is not as dense as NYC, and the less dense the area, the less public transit makes sense.
This is true from both an economic and an environmental standpoint: not only is it expensive to run public transit when fewer people use it, it’s also less environmentally friendly because you have big heavy buses and trains spending a lot of time driving around with few people riding them.
That said, I would certainly like to see better public transportation in many areas, but it’s not a silver bullet. The idea that EV infrastructure is a waste of money because we just need more public transportation is pretty preposterous, IMO.
Id like to see the US focus on walkability too, but the reality is most Americans disagree. Most Americans want to live in a SFH with a big yard in suburbia. Public transit does not really work with those constraints. Public transit is great for the people that want to live in cities, but there are more than enough that dont to make electrifying cars an important goal. NYC is great but its obvious to me that I would not enjoy living there, and Im more city postiive than the vast majority of americans.
The question here is how many people don't have a garage but still want a car. The rural and suburban folks are out - plenty of room for garages and charging. So any discussion of public charging infrastructure is focused on places where public transit would be a better investment.
This is what is always said, but for what reason can it not work?
We already spend an ABSURD amount of money to create and maintain car infrastructure. These roads are not cheap and commonly are not maintained well in part due to costs. That's not getting into externalities not covered by the cost of car ownership/usage. And where does this money come from? Generally the places where there is more density.
It just doesn't make sense for each person to have a several ton hunk of metal and for it to sit there taking up space 95+% of the time. This solution is not scaling well at all. People want to have a big suburban home, but at the expense of many, many others. It's just not right.
2/3 of americans have a garage. I suspect the percentage of americans who can afford an EV and have a garage is much higher. A SFH really is the epitome of the American dream to many.
I'm confused that these people are confused. Why did they buy an EV if they don't have a place to charge it. It's like buying a surfboard while living in Iowa.
A lot of them didn't buy them. There are a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers up there and many use the Hertz Uber rental program (https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/hertz/tes...). I'd guess that most of these would use superchargers as their idle lots to top up between rides.
I'd guess that this usually works pretty well, but with winter and a higher than normal number of broken chargers, those became more congested than normal, and this usage pattern will lead to it getting steadily worse throughout the day.
From what I heard, a lot of those chargers weren't broken. What happened in Chicago was that Tesla drivers plugged in, and the car didn't immediately start charging because it had to warm the battery first. So they did the universal signal for a broken charger and left the cord dangling rather than hooking it. It then froze.
IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the phone doesn't. The phone screen just says that it's charging with 0 amps.
I've heard of a lot of that happening too. Tesla nav was also reporting a decent number of stalls out of order, so there were some outages as well.
TBH, it sounds like a lot of things going wrong (or even just weird) at once. In every report that I saw, there were at least some cars sitting unplugged in front of stalls with noone in them. Even if those were broken, when they get fixed they might need to tow cars to make them usable again!
You are definitely right though. Someone with a cold soaked battery could easily think the charger isn't supplying current, when it is really just running the battery heater for 30+ minutes first.
> IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the phone doesn't. The phone screen just says that it's charging with 0 amps.
This isn't quite accurate. The Tesla app on iOS at least shows the battery preconditioning.
That's the funny part I don't understand. We want EVs to become mainstream but all apartment/condo dwellers should magically have a personal charging station.
And there's the assumption that everyone with a house has a place where they can charge an EV. My neighborhood was laid out prior to 1900. (Several houses, including mine, were built in 1900 or earlier.) Many houses don't have a driveway (or a place to build one). The streets are one-way, in order to allow parking on the north side of the street. Many people cannot even park in front of their house.
Or an electrical outlet within reach. “Charging station” makes it sound inordinately expensive. An outlet is all they need and is already hard enough that there’s no need to make it sound harder than it is.
That's not exactly accurate. Pick a car - say a Mustang Mach-e: a standard 15A outlet is going to charge at 4miles/hr. Say you get home a 6pm, never go anywhere, and leave it plugged in overnight - that's 48 miles of range. If you're talking dead of winter in Chicago in negative temps, assume half that.
Long story short: a 15A outlet really isn't going to get the job done for charging a car. Also you cannot just charge off a 15A outlet, you're going to need to run an extension cord within 15ft of the car give or take and plug in your charger there (you can't just plug a NEMA 5-15 plug into an EV).
That charger >> extension cord connection is going to need to be weatherproofed somehow. And oh, by the way, if you're in a big city good luck not getting your $500 charger stolen since there's probably no good way to secure it.
Not really, though. The average American drives 37 miles a day [1]. Your 48 miles overnight is more than enough 9 months out of the year even in a place like Chicago. A once a week trip to a faster charger or just a top-off when you're at a store / workplace that has chargers would cover the other 3 months. For places with less extreme winters than Chicago (the vast majority of US population centers), it's a non-issue.
48 miles assumes 12 hours of charging every day, in 50 degree or warmer weather. You haven't covered how you're planning on securing the charger or getting power to it for someone that lives in an apartment.
I have multiple EVs in my household, I'm completely onboard. People acting like they're for everyone today are delusional with the current state of charging infrastructure in the US.
We've had the unfortunate need to use public charging a handful of times and almost every single time it has been an absolute nightmare. From non-working chargers to long lines (because of all the aforementioned people who only have access to public chargers). The only time it has been relatively painless was road trips when it's the middle of nowhere middle america because most folks that live there don't have EVs.
We’re not talking about apartments. The parent post specifically looked at having access to a standard outlet.
If you live in an apartment without an electrified garage then of course the BEV use case is less likely to work for you. And I totally agree on public chargers. Non-Tesla is a complete crapshoot and probably will be for several more years until the adoption curve forces the infrastructure to improve.
There's also a little psychology at play. On an ICE car, a full tank shows up as 300+ miles of range, and 48 miles of range would be a strong prompt to most driver to get to a gas station, even if they only needed to drive another 15 miles. People dont like thinking they could be caught short.
People also like to think that their car can get them out of any personal jam, eg, if they need to take a family membership to the hospital, they will simply assume that their car is going to be the mode of transporter, and anything that makes them think that an EV might not be able to cut it in that hypothetical is going to be damaging for the EV transition.
You can still keep your car charged at 80 or 90 percent even if you only drive 35 miles a day in your daily commute. The charge you add each night can be toward the top of the range, instead of always staying at the bottom of the range.
For the scenarios you describe a 220 outlet will work fine. Still no charger needed. I won’t go into cable locking solutions for the same reason we don’t need to go into gas station muggings. They distract from the key point, which is that a “charging station” is not needed.
Do people need 48 miles (or 24 miles if the charging is slow because of the temperature) of range every day? Genuine question, I don't know what driving in that area is like, i.e. nearest grocery story could be 10 miles?
24 miles because the vehicle is less efficient and the heater is in use. Charging with a 120V 12A charger is when cold is a different question. Attached garage? Probably not a big deal. Outside? You might use all the power available to heat the battery for charging, fail to meet the minimum temperature, and then not charge at all. You REALLY want more power for charging than that. Even just 240V 12A prevents the 0 charge even after 12 hours due to cold problem afaik.
It's not about "every day." It's about being able to hop in the car and just go at a moment's notice. Regardless of the distance. In an ICE car, that's a given. In an EV, it's murkier. Much murkier.
Has never been an issue in 4 years of ownership. We can leave at a moments notice any time and get across the country or adjoining countries if we want or need to.
48 miles a day is plenty for me, and the few weeks where it might be 24 miles a day, I just grab lunch once or twice in the week at the food court that has a few DC chargers available to top off.
The 15A charger that came with my car is weatherproofed and locks into place when connected to my car outside my apartment building. The rent I pay also pays for that overnight trickle charge, so a replacement charger would still cost less than I was previously spending in fueling up my Ford Fusion each year.
Well, there is a narrative out there that the ICE is dead and everyone should be driving electric. The media always neglects to add the caveat that the electric future has arrived only for garage-owning suburbanites.
Yes, banning the sale of brand new non-EVs in a decade's time is often presented by people with an agenda as if everyone needs to switch to EVs overnight.
This is frankly silly though. In reality the EV sales will ramp over time and then ICEs age out of the fleet over multiple decades. And that's the timeline that is being attacked as insanely rushed.
I have seen and heard countless “range anxiety” stories in commercial and nonprofit media in the US, including many about how the issue specifically affects apartment-dwellers.
I'm not sure that this warrants such a generalization from the title. The article itself goes on to quote:
> “This is not a categorical problem for electric vehicles,” he added, “because it has largely been sorted out in other places.”
> ... Cold weather is likely to be less of an issue as companies update electric vehicles models. Even in the last few years, companies have developed capabilities that allow newer models to be more efficient in the cold.
Tesla in particular had a single charging station in Chicago that was down, but was reporting to the fleet as if it were up. Effectively summoning several cars, only to leave them stranded.
The only place where they provide specific examples of how things are "largely sorted" is Norway and they themselves admit:
> the majority of people in Norway live in houses, not apartments, and nearly 90 percent of electric vehicle owners have their own charging stations at home, he said.
I was in Oslo 5 years ago and even then, the parking meters outside apartments had been retrofitted with charger, and this was on parallel parking spots.
A lot of cold countries have plugs at every parking spot for block heaters. It's not too big a leap to retrofit those for some level of charging.
To be clear, when this problem was happening in Chicago, the temperature was a lot colder than Oslo. Like -30°C with a wind chill approaching -50°C. That's not "cold weather", that's "insanely cold weather".
According to Wikipedia, it has never been anywhere close to that cold in Oslo. And yet, due to the climate change effect on the arctic jet stream, Chicago sees this kind of temperature for a few days in 2-3 out of every 5 winters.
When the car is stopped and trying to warm the battery so it can begin fast charging, the wind makes the vehicle surface dissipate heat better. Which you don't want. But... batteries are fairly insulated so wind chill probably has a marginal effect at best. I was just emphasizing how much colder it was in Chicago than in Oslo :)
I think it is just people needing to get ready for EVs. Care and maintenance is different from ICE's, and folks are still learning what to do and when.
I'm not sure how an Uber driver can solve the Chicago problem for himself. More infrastructure is really needed. Although the amount of additional infrastructure needed isn't necessarily vast. It sounds like they had enough chargers for normal days.
-> sounds like they had enough chargers for normal days.
Normal warm days. They sold too many teslas for the number of charging stations available for the cold climate.
My take is that this is one of the inevitable complications discovered along the energy transition path. Lesson here: Making and selling cars is the first hurdle, and they got over it. Build a factory, build a marketing apparatus, get them out there. Placing fixed assets to support the service needs in individual markets is lagging behind - a process may not be in place to anticipate and support market adoption at current pace.
This last quote just showcases a few people’s ignorance (at a minimum the author, the editor, and the person being quoted) of the fact that nobody needs a “charging station” at home. All you need is an outlet and a charging cable.
I have to assume you either don’t drive much, or don’t actually own an electric car. Those are the only explanations I have for making such an inaccurate (I hesitate to quote the word “ignorant“) statement.
—
Owner of an EV that would take days to charge on 120V
I used an EV for years with a 120V. It also would "take days to charge", but 12 hours would net ~24%. It is surprisingly usable, especially if there is a nearby DCFC bottom charge at if you ever get a little low.
Of course, there are caveats. If it is cold and the vehicle has to be charged at the street, charge times will be much longer. But he's right that people often underestimate the usefulness of L1 charging, even though it would literally take days.
Coincidentally, in this thread we have people talking about a car that ran out at the airport and required a tow. L1 is perfect for airport parking.
Yes, and it sounds like this is exactly what happened in some cases. People would charge hunt until they were out, wait in line for hours, then get to the unit with a cold soaked battery.
Even if the charger is working perfectly, the first 30 minutes might be spent just running the battery heater. It might even be worse with rear drive model 3, which unfortunately might also be a big part of the Uber rental fleet.
It is a really odd situation, so most people would likely be seeing it for the first time.
Yeah, that's the video that I was thinking of that explicitly tested it. It usually isn't a thing that happens in the real world.
The last couple of days have been different. People have left their cars in the parking lot for hours, which effectively is what OOS did in their test.
True, but in an extreme case, the battery may not take a charge at all without being warmed up. This may take 30+ minutes if it is extremely cold soaked.
If we’re going to extreme cases, even worse, the battery won’t work at all if you disconnect it or grind it into small bits.
Or, you could take care of your car as recommended and if a battery preheat will help, use scheduled departure features and plug it in if needed and possible.
I can see what you are getting that there. The problem is that Chicago actually caused a pretty extreme case, mostly due to infrastructure issues. Cars waiting in line for hours at low states of charge effectively couldn't precondition.
I've never seen this scenario happen in the real world, but I guess we've found one weird edge case where it can happen.
We own three BEVs for quite some years now and no ICE cars and I drive a lot so your assumptions are wrong right at the start.
You seem to be making a common mistake of thinking that one always needs to charge from empty to full in every charge. Not so. A common scenario would be arriving home with 190 miles of range left on the battery, and plugging in. After a few minutes, you have to go out again, no problem. Eventually you come home for the night with 160 miles of charge left, and plug in again. Overnight you get let’s say (super slow case) 40 miles and now you’re at 200 or more. Not the problem you are envisioning.
You may also be forgetting that public fast chargers which can be used in a pinch do exist.
220 is also an option so let’s not restrict ourselves to 110/120.
But if we must talk about 110, I’ll point out that we survived just fine for 2 years with 2 BEVs sharing (alternating cars) ONE 110 outlet in an apartment after laboring, like many mistakenly do, under the false assumption that you still carry that it was not an option, for an entire year, before we realized that it was totally doable. It worked great. We also used fast chargers when needed but they were not needed very often.
Ignorance is definitely a thing, but it works both ways.
A North American outlet can provide a continuous power of around 1440W.
The comment could be someone in Europe (etc) where "an outlet" means 220-240V, with a continuous power of around 2500-3500W, depending on the regulations in that country.
But most people also aren't draining their battery every day.
I live in Toronto, own a Kona EV, and am lucky enough to have a garage. I've literally never needed anything more than 120V except when going on >300km car trips. Any daily commute that wouldn't be handled by an overnight charge at 120V probably isn't a commute I'd put up with even with an ICE vehicle.
This is what I keep saying. The EV transition is bound up with the housing crisis. Not only do you need to find a place to go to sleep and recharge yourself each night; now you also need a garage for your car to do the same.
Solve that, and EVs will become more viable. Only the "road trip problem" will remain.
Edit: Let me be clear. I am not saying that EVs are causing the housing crisis. That would be crazy. But I am saying that the housing crisis is blocking the adoption of EVs.
Tesla manual says you need to precondition the battery for upwards of an hour before fast charging in cold weather.
That's clearly not an option for the cars that are abandoned and dead because they couldn't charge.
It's also not just the one station that was an issue. One guy left his Tesla at the airport parking lot, came back after his trip, and had to pay to get it towed to a charger.
>That's clearly not an option for the cars that are abandoned and dead because they couldn't charge.
Plugging in to a charger provides all the power to heat (and slowly charge) the battery, you just won't get full speed while the battery is below-freezing.
In this case, the chargers weren't operating either. There's a whole parking lot (at least one, I heard more but one for sure) full of cars that couldn't go anywhere because there was no power to be had.
If gas stations stopped working there would also be cars stuck. Yes they are more ubiquitous currently but this isn't an inherent flaw of electric vehicles.
In a comparable situation, you can walk or get a ride to the next station, get a gas can and fill it with a bit of gas, walk back to your car and you're good to go.
Barring a fleet of mobile generators, this is in fact something that ICE cars handle better than BEV.
Tow/push the cars to a place where Level 1 or Level 2 charging is available and they'll be fine to get going if someone has allowed the battery to be totally depleted in the cold.
True, and the issues haven't been prevalent in other cold parts of the US as well. Less urban areas wouldn't have the same issues, even if they are colder.
Let's put things in perspective. In Calgary, and many other cold cities, every apartment's outdoor parking lot has outlets where you plug in your ICE's block heater and battery blanket. Without them, you probably won't start your car this morning.
When I lived in Calgary, I sometimes had to spray a can of ether into the carburetor to get my car started.
Fairbanks in Alaska is the same. In Siberia they have huge car gloves that you can envelop your car in, also since they don’t have a lot of outlets you just leave your car running.
Yes. And then when you left, did you have an accurate gauge of exactly how far you could travel? Did you have stops along the way to add fuel in a reasonable amount of time? Did you have reliable, strong heat in the cabin?
If the car was plugged in before I left, then yes to all three.
The first is always true for at least a Tesla and you use the nav. A Tesla knows it's cold outside. If you punch a destination into your nav, it'll tell it what percentage will remain when you get there and it's always accurate.
The second is true if you charge the car while it's warm. We travelled from Ottawa to Quebec City in the cold, stopping to charge 3 times, and it always charged quickly. We knew enough to charge before parking the car rather than charging after the car has been parked.
The third is true if the car is plugged in and you tell it when you want to leave. It prewarms the cabin & battery.
Yes, my kids can't drive for more than 2 hours without a bathroom break, we never let the battery go below 40% in the winter in case of emergency, and the 3rd one was a charge at the end of the trip (see my answer to the second question).
ICE cars have to go to a gas station every ~500 miles. For some EV owners like me, the trade off in time saved refuelling an ICE car is spent on charging on rare long journeys. I actually save time overall. But each use-case is different.
I would filled up twice on a trip between Ottawa and Quebec City in a gasoline car in the winter. Never let your tank get below 50% in case of emergency, and there's no such thing as a "destination charger" for ICE's.
In the old days, they used to say that if you let your tank get too low in the winter, you could end up with moisture in the tank. It's probably been a while since that was actually true.
It seems that fewer and fewer people actually have any plan at all for emergencies.
I started thinking maybe a sporty car (thus gas tank is not huge) with a huge engine (bad MPG) but couldn't find anything, even a Viper seems to get over 300 miles on the highway. Maybe some Ferrari with particularly bad MPG? Seems the worst is a 812GT, but that has a range of just under 300 miles. So I give up, what is it?
On long journeys I stop every 300-350 miles. Bladders can't make it longer than that, although the cars certainly can. I wouldn't stop at all on a 275 mile trip. I would fill up before I return, however.
Even in the winter? I've been stuck for hours in a vehicle in the winter; an empty fuel tank can't provide the heat that will keep you alive in that situation.
P.S. Most gasoline vehicles in my experience don't have 500 mile range, either. My Mazda 5 has a 375 mile range.
> did you have an accurate gauge of exactly how far you could travel?
My ICE almost stranded me during the recent freeze. Conditions affect fuel economy for all vehicles.
> Did you have reliable, strong heat in the cabin?
This feels like an imagined problem. EVs heat their cabin more efficiently than ICEs. If you end up off the road during a storm (been there) an EV will last longer for the same fill level. They also tend to heat up faster due to not having to adjust the entire thermal mass of the engine block. I used to leave my heat off in my ol' minivan during most commutes. If there wasn't snow on the windshield for me to clean off while the car warmed up, it wouldn't heat up fast enough.
> EVs heat their cabin more efficiently than ICEs.
Citation needed. Are EVs using different cabin heating to ICEs? My Audi will recirculate waste engine and coolant heat to the cabin for up to 20 minutes (like if you're in a grocery store) with nothing but a fan.
> They also tend to heat up faster due to not having to adjust the entire thermal mass of the engine block.
An ICE doesn't heat the engine block? Modern ICEs also use auxiliary heating on cold starts. I can have warm air out of the cabin vents within ~30s even on a 20F day (not horribly cold, granted, but I'm talking properly warm air).
> Citation needed. Are EVs using different cabin heating to ICEs?
I'm not sure how to cite the fact that EVs do not have engines. Electric motors do generate waste heat, but via a significantly more efficient process, so an additional source of heat is needed.
> An ICE doesn't heat the engine block?
Yes they do. Where's your Audi recirculating waste heat from?
Auxiliary heating systems like you describe are the exact same design that EVs use as primaries, just driven electrically. Advantages are that the electricity to torque conversion is still significantly more efficient than chemical energy conversion, and you can run the system without powering the main drive.
> Auxiliary heating systems like you describe are the exact same design that EVs use as primaries, just driven electrically.
I'm confused, what non-electrical method of generating cabin heat are EVs using, then?
But for the sake of argument - auxiliary heating in an ICE is similar to a floor heater, electrical resistance heating.
Beyond that, the argument is that on an ICE, the heat in the engine block is a byproduct of the combustion required to move the vehicle. That heat isn't "free", but is paid for by the primary purpose of moving the vehicle. The effort to push it into the cabin via fans is relatively minimal.
> I'm confused, what non-electrical method of generating cabin heat are EVs using, then?
Heat pumps are the fancy way to do it that can be installed in both ICEs and EVs.
> the heat in the engine block is a byproduct of the combustion required to move the vehicle. That heat isn't "free", but is paid for by the primary purpose of moving the vehicle.
Agreed! It's free in the sense that it's already being generated, but it's still waste because it's generated regardless of need as a result of a suboptimal conversion process. We use it as heat because it's unusable for anything else, but it'd be nicer if it wasn't generated in the first place.
> EVs heat their cabin more efficiently than ICEs.
Given that ICEs take advantage of waste heat - which they will have in abundance as long as the engine is running - I disagree. Especially since many EVs still use resistive heating (the F150 Lightning and some Tesla models, for example).
And even vehicles with heat pumps will have to use backup resistive heating on really cold days, since they have a lower limit where they can operate.
> which they will have in abundance as long as the engine is running
Right, as long as the engine is running (and warm). It's still inefficient, however, as a significant portion of the heat still leaves with the exhaust. An EV can add a resistor inside the cabin for 100% conversion efficiency, and can power it for longer than a tank of gas will allow an ICE to idle.
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. "Strong, reliable heat" is not a clear differentiator.
I just drove the Tesla Model Y around where this past weekend it was -10F. Range was probably 15% lower overall (lots of heating / heated seats etc) and we were cautious to make sure we stayed charged up (huge traffic delays due to the storm meant you could be stuck in your car for 6-10 hours). Overall everything worked out, I did have battery anxiety but there were also gas cars which had anxiety.
We should have pushed for hybrid cars. This way, we can build the infrastructure along-side our current gas stations and give people an incentive to buy them (increases range of gas powered cars). It would have been a win-win all around.
Instead, governments want to force us to all electric too early with nowhere near the proper infrastructure.
Completely agree. I’m looking for a new car and I’ve dry runned some long road trips I commonly do between Yorkshire and Dublin, and in a pure ev car, it’s a very different prospect to petrol only.
Plus, hybrid has lots of regenerative energy recovery that can be done to extend the mpg on the same fuel.
How so? Using Whitby as an example, it's about 240 miles (4h40) to Holyhead; you could stop on the way for a little top-up and loo break. If you wanted to arrive in Dublin with a fullish battery, there's a Gridserve at the port itself, or it looks like you can even charge onboard the ferry.
https://www.irishferries.com/ie-en/frequently-asked-question...
I'm sure those chargers are all relatively expensive per kWh though, so yes compared to a petrol/diesel it would be a more expensive journey.
Who's this "we"? Toyota has already sold millions of hybrid vehicles to willing customers all over the world, probably more than all electric vehicles combined.
Also, government can't force anything, if people don't have the money and the home charging needed for an EV, then they won't get it, short of govt giving them a free car.
The differences are a) you don't lose notable range in cold weather (and your car continues to reliably tell you your remaining range), and b) there's always another gas station a block down.
It's really interesting what sort of things are considered problems with EVs that just get ignored with gas cars. The dual standard is pretty interesting to observe.
I don't necessarily think the problem is the range loss; the problem is the lower range to begin with, and the unreliable public charging infrastructure.
The 2024 Toyota Camry gets over 600 miles of highway range. We don't think about ICE vehicles in that way, but compare that to a Model 3 Long Range: ~340 miles @100% battery, but realistically you're running 90%-10%, so its more like ~270 miles. Losing 20% of your range to cold weather is A LOT more tenable when you're working with 400+ miles of range to begin with.
Superchargers are pretty reliable. Inhumanly reliable actually, especially compared to other charging networks. Many, many parts of the country have stretches of 130+ miles with no DC Fast Charging options, or just a Supercharger and one non-Tesla option.
So, run the math on that. You're looking at a 280 mile range EV. Subtract 20% just because you can only run it 90%-10%, not 100%-0%: 224 miles. Subtract 20% because cold weather (and that's charitable; some of these brands are more like 30%-40%, bad insulation, no heat pump, etc): 180 miles. There's one DC Fast Charging station between you and your destination. Your destination is 160 miles away, and that DC Fast Charger is managed by Electrify America. This isn't a double-standard or "range anxiety": This is a legitimate problem.
Read your own link more carefully. If I'm taking my car on a short commute so that it never gets up to temperature, then maybe, the absolute worst case scenario, I might suffer as much range loss as the best case scenario for an EV. But when the engine is at temperature and remains at such (for example, I'm taking a long-distance drive where range actually matters), the range loss on a gas car is minuscule, whereas the EV car still suffers significant range loss.
> Fuel economy tests show that, in city driving, a conventional gasoline car's gas mileage is roughly 15% lower at 20°F than it would be at 77°F. It can drop as much as 24% for short (3- to 4-mile) trips.
> The effect on hybrids is typically greater. Their fuel economy can drop about 30% to 34% under these conditions.
> For electric vehicles (EVs), fuel economy can drop roughly 39% in mixed city and highway driving, and range can drop by 41%. About two-thirds of the extra energy consumed is used to heat the cabin.
Gee, I wonder why people are more concerned about EV's. Could it be that they lose upwards of 40% range whereas ICE loses roughly 15% fuel economy?
And don't tell me I'm being unfair, ICE can lose up to 25% for 3-4 mile trips, which is not the use case anyone is worrying about.
The largest offender for ICE fuel economy loss in winter is low tire pressure (IIRC accounts for 3% loss). The winter gasoline blended fuel accounts for the next largest but IIRC it's semi made up for because winter blends are less expensive then summer blended fuel.
And a longer commute makes a gas car more efficient as the engine has time to come up to operating temperature. Something that EV's are weaker at.
So it is more of an issue for BEV's depending on what kind of commute you have and whether you easy access to daily charging.
Anyone who has driven long distances in the cold (where you can calculate your mpg easily, as you are just driving all day, what else are you doing?) knows that is bullshit. My van that gets 20-25 mpg in the summer gets... 20-25 mpg in the winter. The only time it's affected is when I'm crossing the rockies. Mountains...
And as somebody who drives an EV, occasionally in cold weather, I would also assert based on my personal experience that losing range is "bullshit" but I also realize that others have different experiences.
That's exactly the sort of vehicle that has not been designed to preserve battery life in cold weather. Legacy auto manufacturers have not taken batteries seriously, and so I would totally believe that the tiny battery would not have the thermal management it needs to stay warm enough for maximum capacity.
Hey signed up just to answer this. We have had an EV in Saskatchewan for 2+ years now. We live on a farm and have a daily commute of about 40km. Other vehicle is a gas F150. The EV has been far and away the better vehicle in our bitter winters. Have not had one single issue. Heats up super quick. Yes when it minus 50 we lose half our range but still leaves us with 200km or so on the worst days. As far as charging in the extreme cold it hasn’t been a noticeable difference whatsoever to charging in the summer. Just plug it in and forget about it. Truck averages 17 litres per 100km in the winter and car does about 25-30 kWh/100km on those absolute worst days and 14 kWh /100km in the summer. Electricity costs 15 cents a kWh and gas $1.40 a litre so even in the worst examples for the EV it is way way cheaper.
Thanks for taking the time to answer! This is both surprising and unsurprising. On paper, everything you say makes sense. But to see that it's true in practice is great news.
Keg River was -50 without the wind chill. But none of this is the point. “Cold” isn’t a fixed concept. It really matters just how cold a kind of vehicle can get before there’s an issue. And at a certain level of coldness you’ve still got to plug in your ICE.
I'm not disputing that, just commenting on the specific reference to wind chill.
I have plenty of experience with plugging in block heaters. One nice thing is they don't have to be plugged in all night long, just for an hour or so in the morning. In fact, modern vehicles specifically call out not keeping them plugged in all night long.
It seems like electric cars necessitate garages. Basically all these problems seem to be caused by people leaving them outside unplugged overnight, which I don't know how they deal with during the summer even. I can't imagine driving a car I have to stop for an hour to publicly charge every week. I guess it would be fine if you could charge it on the street or whatever, but you would still be using a lot of power just to heat the darn thing.
A garage is not needed, and you don't need to plug it in overnight. (My electric car is in a carport, and I only plug it in charge is below 50%.)
Yes, it is inconvenient (and likely more expensive) if you can't charge the car at home, or at work. Cities have electric street lights, but curb-side EV charging is rare so far. I guess that will change.
Heating the battery does need some energy, but heating the interior of the car (for the passengers) needs more. But driving needs most energy, of course. Electric cars typically have a heat pump by the way. Gas cars don't need that because they can use the waste heat of the engine, which is otherwise lost.
I wish charging stations were a bus along the row of spaces with arms that rise up from the center of a parking spot to couple with the charging port of a car on the underside. Then, if its not a EV - the arm just stays down and the spot is just a flat regular spot.
As nice as that sounds, I don't think using expensive and high demand charging slots as dumb storage spaces makes much sense at the moment. At least until they're a lot more common.
It would make sense for certain areas of parking garages. Especially in car-smart places like singapore.
(I have a bias on singapore, because the car market/culture there is, in my experience, rather unique. Singaporians, in my experiences (which is a decade ago) - really treat their cars/car infra with a lot more care than the US due to how expensive it is to get a car there (for good reason)...
They 80%+ of the time back into their spots, their roads are clean and I dont recall seeing a dirty car in Singapore... They integrate green parking lots (vegetation growing through the X cobbles, plants on the sides of over passes - they SEEM to have a healthier relationship with the car than most)
Cities aren't writing tickets or fines if you don't decide to purchase an electric vehicle.
They may choose policies that incentivize EV use to meet climate/environmental goals, but any sort of enforcement policy that mandates private citizens must purchase and drive EVs would quickly get shot down in court.
> any sort of enforcement policy that mandates private citizens must purchase and drive EVs would quickly get shot down in court.
Citation? Have any been shot down in court? There are plenty of locations that have passed laws that all new cars be EVs after year 20XX (for example 2035 in California).
I suspect most of those will be reverted as overly optimistic, but for now, they are in place.
Alright, then give me a municipality that enforces "all new cars must be EVs." I'm particularly interested in the enforcement action taken if a resident purchases a new ICE vehicle in the next county or state over.
I just did a long mile road trip in my 2023 Model Y LR, and it wasn't a lot of fun. Even in the 30Fs I would get around 200 miles of range. I tried to get to the next charger with at least 15-20% just in case.
One example leg was 156mi using 84% of battery in 30F weather. The stats said I lost 13.1% due to a 9.5mph wind, and 1.3% for low tire pressure. I topped the tires up after that one. When it was well below 0 I was doing less. I still got where I was going, but I spent so much time charging, and it's not cheap enough that the time cost made any sense.
Some of my legs really did need close to 100% to get to the next charger with any margin for error. That means sitting at a charger for 30-60 minutes at times. Several of the chargers were in locations that didn't feel safe, so I actually took a longer route back to hit different chargers.
Keep in mind that probably like most people, long road trips are infrequent. In daily use it's charged every morning (at cheap rates) and ready to go, no matter the temperature. Plus I warm it up without needing to open the garage! I will take another car for a long trip now, but I still like having an EV for daily driving.
Thank you for your honesty. Too many here seem to make excuses for how bad EVs are at this. I'll buy an EV when I can get one with an 800 mile range. At that point I don't care if it takes an hour to charge, I'll have to stop to eat (at the time of my choosing though) or rest for the night, etc.
Motor oil does not provide lubricity until it starts flowing into the engine. One of the worst things you can do to an ICE is consistently start it at negative temperatures.
I don't know, I live in eastern Canada, modern cars don't seem to have much of an issue on the handful of -20 to -25 Celsius mornings we get every year, as long as the battery is in good shape.
Even the 2007 Yaris we had up to 2018 never had an issue (after I replaced the dying battery).
Now the -40 C weather they've been having in the prairies recently is a different issue, one I can happily say I don't have any experience with.
Even if you get them started, diesel fuel can gel and clog your fuel filter. I had to stop plowing early Saturday because my tractor was no longer able to make power. (with some anti-gel in the tank and yesterday being warmer I was able to finish the job)
I think it depends on how cold is cold. They likely have different min temps before you start seeing issues.
Though engine block heaters are also standard in cars where it gets cold so at some temperatures this is a “nowhere to plug the car in” problem for both kinds.
Not hard to add if your car doesn't have one. I've never needed a block heater in a car but I installed them on two tractors that we use to plow the driveway. My current tractor is this (particular) Diesel
to start in the winter (even with the block heater) and probably killed it by switching it to a multi-viscosity oil when the straight 20 oil specified for it became almost impossible to get and could well be blamed for the hard starting.
Modern cars have no trouble starting down to -20C. My 10 year old car was parked outside all of last winter and never had trouble starting even on the coldest days
What a crappy article. One can't complain NYT is too pro-EV.
This problem is a combination of growing pains, uneducated EV drivers, old EVs with crappy batteries, some bad infrastructure, and EV manufacturers that don't put enough diagnostics.
1. Ask anyone who has lived in these kinds of cold temperatures. Cold starts in ICEs are always a problem. in upstate NY, you always need a pair of jumper cables ready. you might get to where you're going, and then can't make it back.
2. Different battery chemistries have different cold vs. warm characteristics. Surprise, surprise, the newer, better, more expensive battery packs don't suffer in the cold as much. The loss can be as low as 3% (Jaguar I-Pace) to 30% (Ford Mustang Mach-E, VW ID.4). See https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-temperature-affec...
3. EVs have two battery packs: a small 12V one, like a regular car battery, and the BIG one. If the 12V one dies, you can't start the car, even if the BIG one is good. (EV manufacturers should install better 12V batteries and provide better diagnostics for this kind of problem.)
4. EVs also have a "pre-conditioning" charge, where (massively simplified) battery warms itself to prevent damaging itself when it's too cold. This can drain the battery, but if the car is plugged in, it's not a problem, it'll just pull the charge from the plug (even if the battery doesn't need charging).
5. Sounds like a few chargers "froze" up. Just like gas pumps, but obviously it's a much bigger issue because there's always another gas station down the road, unlike EV chargers.
6. Most EV owners charge at home, and we just plug in all the time because it's easy, convenient, and we can pre-heat the car with a button on our remotes, saving on battery.
7. Some EVs use resistive heat instead of a heat pump for heat gen, which can eat a lot of juice, but it's not a big deal anymore because the battery packs are so big.
So, really, my takeaway is that Tesla and the other EV manufacturers need to:
- cold proof their charging stations (probably a simple "growing pain")
- educate their users a bit. (if the car won't make it overnight because it'll have to do a conditioning charge based on the weather forecast, WARN the driver!)
- use better batteries. this issue will fix itself as the better manufacturing techniques spread throughout the industry
This is something they could do immediately. Send a push notification showing how tomorrow's bitter cold forecast will reduce their vehicle's range by XX%.
It's the number one thing really. Even in CA, my Nissan Leaf would lose a solid 25% in the winter. Can't imagine what negative temps would have been like. Won't be solved until we have solid electrolyte cells, and that's a long way off.
A simple solution would be to warm the battery to a reasonable temperature but I don't know if that's feasible for such a large battery. It's not as easy as keeping a phone in an inside pocket vs an outside one. The car should be built with heaters around the battery. The power must come from the charger at charge time (but maybe the battery self warms itself while charging,) then from the battery. What's more: power for the heaters or power to move the car? Probably the latter.
Depends on the car. My Bolt battery takes a LONG time to get warm just from driving, even with the battery heater running. You can speed it up a bit with yoyo driving (speed up to use power, then regen brake to dump power back into the battery, repeat as necessary) for about a half hour.
They already do this, but it tends to turn off at low states of charge. I'm guessing that people saw the lines and tried to put off charging as long as possible.
If everyone does that and shows up to chargers with cold-soaked batteries, the only result can be chaos.
I find myself a bit of an outcast in my social groups. My conservative friends dislike EVs, but I very much love them and will be buying an EV next. I'm holding out for a solid state battery generation.
When it's -40c and you're running the video security systems. It only drains about 1% a day.
Yes you have less range, but so does gasoline. About the same amount of loss.
Turning it on... harder for gasoline. Better plug in those block heaters!
Blackout at your house because the grid failed because renewables arent generating? Your car is your house battery backup.
Very poor traction? Better put sandbags in the bed of your truck. Oh wait not a problem for heavy EVs. Not to mention traction control is next level in EVs.
you say 'average ev' to include the 1st generation evs that are trash and had no cold weather capabilities. Yes -50% range can be expected. Terrible!
The kia soul for example, which originally had 150km range has been upgraded now. I believe the cold weather package is standard now?
Today in 3rd generation evs, you have to cross the heat pump temp limit of -25c for there to be worse then ICE range losses.
There's obviously always going to be rough losses. Afterall, the colder it is, the more I want to jack up the heat.
Ford, chevy, and vw I believe are still in 2nd gen? Though honestly I havent heard how well the new ultium are doing for chevy?
I believe 3rd gens, jaguar, audi, and tesla at -20c will be around -5% range loss or so?
Personally I'm waiting on 4th gen with solid state batteries in hopes/expectations they handle the cold weather better. afterall it is -15c right now for me. Toyota has all the patents and might be first to market?
> When it's -40c and you're running the video security systems. It only drains about 1% a day.
At least with Tesla, it isn't this good. Running sentry mode will cost a lot more than 1% a day. Best to leave it off if the car will be sitting at the airport for days, for example.
Otherwise, I agree. EVs in the winter work great for many (but, of course not all) use cases.
My only experience with -40C was in Harbin where my cell phone and camera battery died quickly. This was back in 2006 though, and I’m guessing the batteries were just not ready for it.
yet another reason why “EVs won’t save the world but rather save the dying auto industry”
Country needs to invest in supporting alternative transportation options across the nation. Cities need to be redesigned. The attitudes need to change. Car centric transportation doesn’t work at scale.
Hard to say. I see cars deployed at great scale today in the US though certainly you run into trouble at high densities. High-density cities in the US are unaffordable to the extent that it's not so clear that the millionaires who can afford to live in them will want to if school teachers, barristas, police officers, sanitation engineers and such can't afford to live there.
High-density cities have received a huge amount of subsidization from the internet bezzle too such as half-price Uber rides and same day Amazon deliveries. I think a lot of this is about deceiving the chattering classes so they can deceive us. If my farm had 1-day Amazon shipping and Hollywood had the 5-day shipping I get you can be sure that you wouldn't hear glib talk about how fast Amazon shipping is and in fact slow AMZN shipping would be a running gag on sitcoms. It's no accident that Jim Cramer gets 1-day shipping or that my congressman gets 1-day shipping (otherwise Bezos buying The Washington Post would have been a waste.)
In 2024, NYC and San Francisco have more to answer for in the "sustainability" department than Austin, TX, Scranton, PA, or any "normal" city in the US which is affordable.
It's not hard to say. The car experiment is not going well. We're funneling absurd amounts of money to maintain the infrastructure and still the roads are often crumbling. Traffic continues to get worse everywhere that depends on them. People are dying when they don't need to.
This being the first midwest winter I've had a Model Y: there's parts of the experience that are really bad, and parts that aren't as bad as I thought they'd be.
I don't have a place to plug it in most evenings, and it is parked outside. So, worst possible conditions. The amount of power the battery just loses overnight doing nothing is extremely predictable; if its -10-0F outside, it will lose 2%. 10F-20F, about 1%. 30F+, you won't notice drain. That's manageable.
The door SUCKS. Its so stupidly bad that its startlingly obvious no one's fair-weather skin at Tesla in sunny California has ever experienced low temperatures. If the door is iced over, it takes "I'm going to break this" slamming force to break the ice and get the lever exposed. When you do, if the window seam is also iced over it won't recede below the frameless door when you open it, so you inevitably damage the trim every time you open the door (unless, maybe, you kept a blowtorch around to deice the window?)
A friend with a Mach-E (long range) took a ~140 mile trip the other day. Left with 90% charge; made it to the destination with 4 miles of range left. -15F outside. IIRC that car should have something like 280 mile range. It might not have been as close if she could have stopped at the one non-Tesla DCFC (Electrify America) between the two places, but none of the stalls were functional. Just a horrible situation all around. You can't rely on Ford, Electrify America, anyone; you're sold a car on promises that did not materialize, and of the few people I know who purchased non-Tesla EVs, all of them are buying Teslas next.
That being said, I think its a grass-is-greener situation, and while Teslas are better in almost every way, we're talking about very core aspects of the technology shared between brands. Nothing has put me more in the "BEVs are a fad" camp than owning a BEV. This isn't the next generation of propulsion. At minimum, the sector needs: double the raw battery capacity standard; triple the roadside charging speed (~500kw) standard; including when its cold (supercharger @~0F won't go above 60kw; that's ~90m 20%-80%); ~20x (yes, twenty times, maybe more) the number of roadside DCFCs; and regulate/litigate the hell out of these DCFC networks who take federal clean energy funding (EA was founded by VW as part of their emissions scandal restitutions. They do not deserve even a drop of free market capitalism.)
None of that feels likely to happen at costs comparable to ICE, even with considerable technology advancements. Which is why I tend to feel that by 2035 we'll look back on BEVs as a weird little fad in automobile history; interesting for fleet vehicles and warn climate metropolitans, but a really poor choice for the rest of the country.
> The door SUCKS. Its so stupidly bad that its startlingly obvious no one's fair-weather skin at Tesla in sunny California has ever experienced low temperatures. If the door is iced over, it takes "I'm going to break this" slamming force to break the ice and get the lever exposed. When you do, if the window seam is also iced over it won't recede below the frameless door when you open it, so you inevitably damage the trim every time you open the door (unless, maybe, you kept a blowtorch around to deice the window?)
What's worse is that this isn't a new problem. My Audi has frameless doors, and zero issue opening in the cold.
> None of that feels likely to happen at costs comparable to ICE, even with considerable technology advancements.
That's the other part too - though slightly orthogonal. Way too many Tesla owners seem to believe that auto makers haven't advanced since the 90s, and parade things like adjustable ride height as miraculous, while the "dinosaurs" have nothing of the sort. Meanwhile my car is mapping the road surface, actively leaning into corners and following road camber, actively avoiding potholes, and adjusting the suspension, including ride height, constantly.
Most Tesla owners' sense of how advanced other cars have gotten is influenced directly by the frames per second their infotainment systems run at; which, admittedly, is quite bad, but hardly a broad indicator.
Also door handles freeze as Musk genius design failed to include cold climate drivers. Now inapp unlock is an upgrade that you have to pay. You would have to pay me to own a Tesla.
Agreed, but that's only on the budget-end "3" Model. I think Tesla made a mistake branding their entry-level model as Tesla. They should have called it a "Yearn" or a "Strive"
