Automotive

Everything about EVs!

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Deal Expert
Feb 29, 2008
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Can't speak for other cars, but the Volt battery looses efficiency well before active battery conditioning starts. Even at 5 degrees with no heat use, I see a range drop.

The volt conditions the battery to maintain functionality and longevity, not to maximize efficiency.
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Apr 20, 2011
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Yes, that's what I mean.
The battery gives the same amount of energy year-round.
It's what you get to do with that energy that changes.
Sometimes it's driving, sometimes it's heat (battery and/or cabin), sometimes it's AC (battery and/or cabin) and any combination thereof.
The more heating and cooling, the less driving you're going to get from the same amount of energy. No way around it without external intervention.
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Sep 8, 2014
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aqnd wrote: The battery gives the same amount of energy year-round
Not quite.
As per :


As listed elsewhere in this thread, yes, battery cells need to be warmed up to an operating temperature, and kept from overheating.

Not only that, but the battery cells themselves will produce heat due to internal resistance, meaning, you can't actually get that power out of the cell, it's wasted as heat and cars like the Tesla deliberately cool the pack to dissipate that heat.
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Feb 8, 2014
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Lets not forget mileage also drops due to cold weather, cold air has more resistance, colder parts and often wind/snow effects.
This also happens in gas cars (i lose about 20%), but its more noticeable when your car is giving you an estimated range remaining and you can't buy liquid electrons in 5 minute fill ups.
In fact in Rand McNally they wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people
Deal Fanatic
Jul 4, 2004
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Pete_Coach wrote: Questions for you EV owners.
How does the car and batteries perform in the Winter. Meaning how does the heater work? The wipers and front and rear window de-icers and heated seats and steering wheels and lights on almost all the time in the up to minus 30 temps?
Does the battery a lose its charge fast/ faster. Is the range impacted dramatically? Can you notice the impact seasonal?
The questions are legitimate.
In my 2015 Leaf, if it's very cold (-15C to -20C or colder), I think I can lose 40+%. Rear window, heated seats and heated steering wheel are actually pretty efficient but the heater and the front defroster use a lot of power. Battery capacity / retention / whatever you want to call is also not nearly as good in the cold (from 20C, I believe you lose about 1% every 2C of temperature drop). Having indoor parking at night and / or during the day makes a big difference (I have neither). As others have mentioned, driving in snow / slush and with winter tires makes a difference. I have access to a charging station at work so it's not a huge issue but it's certainly very noticeable,

I've used up 50% of my battery just going to work (about 33 kms, all highway (which unlike a gas car means you use up more energy)) in the winter while in the summer, I've made it to work and back with 50% remaining.
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Oct 26, 2003
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SmartElectric wrote: Not quite.
As per :


As listed elsewhere in this thread, yes, battery cells need to be warmed up to an operating temperature, and kept from overheating.

Not only that, but the battery cells themselves will produce heat due to internal resistance, meaning, you can't actually get that power out of the cell, it's wasted as heat and cars like the Tesla deliberately cool the pack to dissipate that heat.
does our winter help with cooling the battery? it is below 0 degrees half of the year
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Feb 1, 2008
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Dealer called, Smart ED Cabrio to be released September 25 for sale. No pricing available Thinking Face

Looks like Prius might be best option at $210 month lease.
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May 24, 2008
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aqnd wrote: And the bottom line someone new to EV needs to understand is that batteries do not "charge" to x or y km. They charge the same level every time. But the computer is converting that into an estimated range, which is just that - estimated.
This is probably the number one most common post I see online - "my car only charges to x miles now". No, it charges to full. Your estimate is lower because of how you've been driving the car.
Which is exactly the same as filling up the tank on your gas car. If you're filling up 70l in the winter and you've mostly been doing city driving, the onboard computer will give you a vastly different estimated range than if you were filling up 70l in the summer and you've mostly been doing highway driving. The reported range on my car can vary from 450km - 700km depending on the circumstances. And, it changes while driving depending on how I drive and what the conditions are.

Maybe the delta is a little bigger with an EV, but most people should already be used to range differences depending on conditions with their ICE car. Problem is, many people choose to ignore this just to find yet another thing they can use to criticize EVs.
Glazers Out!
Deal Expert
Feb 29, 2008
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aqnd wrote: Yes, that's what I mean.
The battery gives the same amount of energy year-round.
It's what you get to do with that energy that changes.
No that's a common misconception. The very electro chemical nature of batteries are degraded at low temps. It is more costly to pull charge out of battery at lower temperatures, due to degraded chemistry.

https://www.comsol.com/blogs/why-car-ba ... d-weather/

Image

This is nothing special as ice cars suffer range degradation in winter also. The only difference is you see it as increased gas cost and more frequent trips to the pump. Wait for all the "winter gas" threads in November. The EV owner sees reduced range between charges.
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Apr 20, 2011
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Little Tim wrote:
Which is exactly the same as filling up the tank on your gas car. If you're filling up 70l in the winter and you've mostly been doing city driving, the onboard computer will give you a vastly different estimated range than if you were filling up 70l in the summer and you've mostly been doing highway driving. The reported range on my car can vary from 450km - 700km depending on the circumstances. And, it changes while driving depending on how I drive and what the conditions are.

Maybe the delta is a little bigger with an EV, but most people should already be used to range differences depending on conditions with their ICE car. Problem is, many people choose to ignore this just to find yet another thing they can use to criticize EVs.
Maybe it's because I didn't have a fancy enough car, but I never went by estimated range in a gas car. It was always by the gas gauge needle position.
mr_raider wrote: No that's a common misconception. The very electro chemical nature of batteries are degraded at low temps. It is more costly to pull charge out of battery at lower temperatures, due to degraded chemistry.

https://www.comsol.com/blogs/why-car-ba ... d-weather/

Image

This is nothing special as ice cars suffer range degradation in winter also. The only difference is you see it as increased gas cost and more frequent trips to the pump. Wait for all the "winter gas" threads in November. The EV owner sees reduced range between charges.
The batteries are kept in proper temp, that's the point.
Only leaf was cheap enough to just let anything go for battery operating temp, and they are well known as garbage batteries because of it.
A volt never lets the car run with battery less than 10c for more than the few mins it takes for battery heater to warm it. If it gets so cold, it will run solely on engine power until the battery is warm again. And with the liquid TMS, you need to park outside in -25C for at least 10h for that to happen.
Tesla and others don't have the engine, they will use some heat while vehicle is not on in order to prevent it getting that cold.

5% worse for 5 minutes of an hour drive may be something you worry about, but at the end of the day, I work in the real world, where 99.6% is considered "100%" for all intents and purposes.
And again, I'm not saying the battery is heated for free. I'm saying by heating itself you're getting "100%" (99.x if you really want to be precise) of the energy you put in back out. But a certain chunk of it can never be used for driving. It was used for heat.

Also, don't confuse capacity (energy) with power. Those are two different things. Based on your chart, it seems that you are.

Tldr; the battery is used/kept in a proper operating temp range for well designed batteries (read: not leaf). The only time they're outside this range is a short few mins on startup, if you weren't plugged in for automatic temp maintenance routines to be active by default. And some cars will just bypass the battery when too cold, waiting for it to warm. You are not running the battery when it's -10C and frozen.
alanbrenton wrote: ^ this degradation is temporary?
When cold, yes. If battery is warmed, it returns to normal.
When hot, no. The excess heat has damaged the structure of the battery microscopically.
The cold is just sluggish movement of ions making power flow more slowly.
Deal Expert
Feb 29, 2008
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Montreal
The volt only heats the battery back under extreme cold, far below the degradation point. You see it as the yellow bar in the circle chart. It maintains that so that the battery offers sufficient power to assist the ice if needed.
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Aug 1, 2006
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Toronto
zoro69 wrote: Tesla spiraling towards a disaster. The chances of bankruptcy remain significant.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/408578 ... alls-apart
Seeking Alpha is a notoriously anti-Tesla site. The short sellers have lost billions already and still won't give up...
Home automation, NOVO (HiFi) Magazine, Google Trusted Photographer, electric vehicles.
Deal Fanatic
Apr 20, 2011
7747 posts
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ON
mr_raider wrote: The volt only heats the battery back under extreme cold, far below the degradation point. You see it as the yellow bar in the circle chart. It maintains that so that the battery offers sufficient power to assist the ice if needed.
Yeah you're talking about something entirely different than I have been.
Power of batteries is limited by cold - maximum electrical output of the battery that can be released. It is limited by colder temps slowing the ion flow.
Energy of the battery is the total capacity of it - how much energy is contained within and how much can be released over time from full to empty.
If you charge a battery to full at 25C and let it cool to 0C and then discharge it, you may only see 75% come back out until it is "dead". But if you do nothing to that battery except bring it indoors to warm it up, you will get that remaining 25% out. It doesn't disappear, it's just limited by the chemistry within being suppressed by the lack of ambient heat.
This is what I'm describing - the car may have reduced energy when left out in the cold, but that is quickly remedied by the onboard heater. It uses say, 10% of the total battery power, but it unlocks that extra 25% to allow you to use the total amount of energy that you charged it up with.
Net result is 90% is only usable as electricty, but you're still 15% better off than you were by using the battery cold.

On top of all of that is what you describe - a cold battery will not be able to release as much power (kW). You'll only get max output when it is warmed up.
But you'll get the same energy (kWh) by the end of your drive if that battery has warmed up by time you hit empty.

And the first part of your statement is incorrect. The volt will heat the battery to 12-15C (floating setpoint - not strict) at any time the battery temp drops below that. Doesn't matter if it's 15C outside. If the battery is 8C from a cold soak overnight, heater goes on until it hits 15C and then lets it coast a little bit before turning heater on again if it drops below 10-12. You can view this on OBD, or more crudely see your dash display at idle is >0.5kW
The volt battery is also capable of supplying much more than the maximum allowed 110kW. So even if it's mildly thermally limited at 10C, you'd never know from car performance standpoint. It's gotta get down to 5C or so before it starts to limit you to 80-90kW.
At -10C battery temp it is almost entirely locked out (a handful of kW in/out, max) and the engine does all the work until battery is above freezing.
Circling back, though, when that battery warms up, you still get full use of all energy put in it (kWh).
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Sep 8, 2014
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divx wrote: does our winter help with cooling the battery? it is below 0 degrees half of the year
EV's like spring and fall best.

My Smart ED uses up to 40% more power on cold days as it heats the pack with an electric heater.
The Tesla is far more advanced and uses only about 20% more power for a long winter trip, than a trip in the spring or fall.

The Tesla battery pack prefers to operate at "room temperature", so in the winter, Tesla will use the waste heat from the motor and inverter to heat the pack.
A "cold" pack is not a happy pack, the car will limit power and regenerative braking force to avoid drawing too much power, or pushing too much back.
Once the pack is up to temperature (10C or so), full power is available.

We do the majority of our long trips in the winter, and average 20000 km of driving every winter, and 10000 km for the rest of the year. The Tesla is the best winter car we've ever owned.

My Smart ED is awesome in the winter, it's limited to perhaps 60 km of range on the coldest (-34C) days, but that works well as my commute is less than 50 km.
I blog my range experiences here:
http://mysmartelectricdrive.blogspot.ca ... ences.html
Sr. Member
Jun 12, 2016
715 posts
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Mississauga
Just a heads up for those of you who were looking at the Costco GE Wattstation, as of right now, it is available again. This model does not appear to be eligible for government rebate.
https://www.costco.ca/GE-Wattstation-Re ... 42085.html
Model #: EVWSWBC-CP01

They also have the cheaper and uglier model available for $599. https://www.costco.ca/GE-DuraStation-Le ... 14616.html
Deal Addict
May 18, 2005
3412 posts
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LauD14 wrote: Just a heads up for those of you who were looking at the Costco GE Wattstation, as of right now, it is available again. This model does not appear to be eligible for government rebate.
https://www.costco.ca/GE-Wattstation-Re ... 42085.html
Model #: EVWSWBC-CP01

They also have the cheaper and uglier model available for $599. https://www.costco.ca/GE-DuraStation-Le ... 14616.html
The $799 EVWSWBC-CP01 should be eligible for rebate.

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