I (still) don’t own an EV for various reasons, but I’m still interested. One question that keeps popping up in my mind is this one:
Where I live way up north, many people drive EVs - mostly Teslas apparently. A solid third of the parking lot at work is filled with EVs. The one thing that always strikes me when I leave work around the same time as everybody else is the sheer amount of noise of all those Teslas warming up their batteries before their owners come out to drive home make in the winter: it’s like dozens of heating cannons running at the same time.
Each time, I wonder how much juice is used just to prime the battery before use vs. actual miles traveled.
If you leave in a cold country, have you worked out how much energy you burn simply keeping the battery alive in the winter? Is your EV still more energy efficient than an ICE in the winter for your particular use pattern?
Yes, even if the electricity was generated using a gas turbine. Running a gigantic engine at a constant RPM is always going to be more efficient than running a lot of small ones at variable RPMs. You’d have to lose a lot of energy over the wire to cause this to stop being true.
Your range will suffer due to heating the cabin though
Tuning for specific rpms is why the notoriously inefficient Mazda rotary engine is making a comeback in the hybrid as a generator.