To be fair, this data doesn’t adjust for the age of the vehicles. Older gas-powered cars fail at a higher rate than the new ones and electric vehicles are obviously much more recent on average.
Duh.
We have GM to thank for that.
#stillbitteraboutEV1
Imagine a world where EV1 kicked off the EV revolution in the 90s and 2000s, and we were living 15 years in the future.
In For All Mankind the EV1s were released in the 1980s.
Huh, had no idea about the EV1. I’m bitter that the Volt was cancelled.
For 90% of driving, EVs are great in the winter. Even if it only had 100mi range, and it’s so cold that it loses 40% of that, it’s still better. You can get to work, do errands, and make it home to charge just fine.
Its going to warm up the cabin faster than an ICE. Not only that, but if you know when you’re going to leave, you can set them to warm up ahead of time while still attached to the charger. You’ll pop right in to a toasty warm cabin. Once you have that, you don’t want to go back.
If the positions were swapped and ICE was a new thing, people would be writing op-eds about how cold they are for most of the drive to work.
TBF you can turn on an ICE car and let it warm up a bit before you drive it. Some ICE cars also allow you to remotely pre-start or there are after market options so you can use an app to do exactly that. Hell, Russian far east they simply leave the car on for the cold months.
It’s just that it’s incredibly wasteful/polluting.
Some ICE cars also allow you to remotely pre-start
But you cannot do that in the garage (unless you like huffing exhaust fumes).
And if you spend a couple hundred bucks on insulation, you don’t need to preheat anything in your garage either.
Only goes so far. The interface between the garage door and the frame of the house is difficult to seal perfectly. Always going to be drafty. Also, you can’t put particularly thick insulation on the garage door.
I live in a cold climate. I have a 2 stall garage and the north facing insulated doors seal very well to hold in the heat. In fact the whole garage is insulated and I even heat it. Holding the building a 45F it takes 2 years between refills with a 200 gallon LP tank. And this is with temperatures than hit -40F over night with highs still well below 0F for several days or weeks at a time. And even unheated, that garage will never drop below freezing over an entire winter.
If you a drafty doors, you are doing something wrong. Fix them.
You can’t open a garage door remotely? I can.
Exhaust fans are not new or unapproachable tech.
They are also not a common fixture of garages.
But they are a life and death safety device in the scenario you describe. Hvac equipment.
The majority of garages I’ve seen have a garage door so the fumes don’t just build up in the garage.
Which means that your home then has increased heat loss because the garage door is open.
Would you have a large impact on your home from having your garage open for 15 minutes or so every day?
Even if the garage is attached, there will be an exterior door between the garage and the house proper that will be as heat loss resistant as your front door. So I don’t know how you get anymore heat loss than you would from any exterior door in the house. In fact, that door will have LESS heat loss than your front door because it’s shielded from the elements that your front door isn’t.
Eh, I don’t even have a garage, and my place stays warm just fine. It’s just a few minutes
What the hell are you talking about? Listen to yourself
Honestly I was half joking, but seriously don’t most homes have extra insulation between the garage and the rest of the house? Are you guys heating your garages?
What’s special about the door or do you mean just opening it? If the latter, that still won’t prevent it from collecting at the ceiling and you’d better hope you remembered to open the door.
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Is illegal in my city. You’d never know it by walking around in the morning.
Welcome to my morning walk with the dogs every morning where its colder then 35F. Every fucking car in my neighborhood does this bullshit and when there’s little to no wind, all that exhaust doesn’t go anywhere and just sits at ground level where I get to breathe it in for an hour. It stick at the back of my throat for the rest of the day. Add to that snowblowers after even less than an inch of snow.
I can’t fucking wait for EVs to gain market share. Its fucking disgusting what my neighbors find acceptable.
The only enjoyment I find in this situation is people that back into their garages then warm up their car while still parked in their garage, spewing that exhaust into there instead of outside. I’ll never understand what brain logic leads them to that solution but it’s the same people doing it every morning.
Edit: I should add that the other great thing about people doing this is the rise of car thefts since some of these people also just turn their car on, leave the keys in the car, leave it unlocked and go back indoors because it’s cold
IIRC you can fit an ICE vehicle with an electric engine block heater which will use mains electricity to heat the water and circulate it through the engine. So you run an extension cord out to your car, leave it plugged in and turn it on half an hour before you leave.
Yep it’s what people in northern Sweden have been doing for probably at least 40 years now.
It’s not good for the car, either. Cars aren’t meant to idle; cars are made to have all fluids moving & the car rolling down the road.
I treat my car to a gentle warm-up when it’s cold outside; I start the car & start driving, but only 20-30 mph for the first 5-8 minutes. All the components of the car are gently being used, are slowly warming up, together. I think my car runs better for it.
My grandpa would do that back in the sixties. Luckily some things do change.
The peak version of this that’s kind of sold me is you can pre-condition in the garage. Like, why wouldn’t anyone want to do that.
Even phevs have this availability. Loving our Mazda cx90 for this feature. Can program their app to have it start warming 15-20 mins before my wife leaves for work and it’s ready to go and comfortable.
In Sweden every vehicle has had this as standard since the 1980s.
Cars have had remote start for a long time. But you can’t just leave a gas car running in a closed garage. That’s a good way to accidentally take the forever nap.
Not talking about remote start but about heating the car before starting it. It’s powered by electricity not gasoline. The garage has an outlet that you plug the car into.
Yeah I have actually been kind of baffled no one else mentioned these, are conventional engine heaters not a thing outside scandinavia?
Are engine block heaters being confused for pre-heating the cabin? Because we have block heaters too.
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They are. It’s just most urban people don’t bother with them anymore because the electronic ignitions and fuel injectors make ICE engines very reliable starters even in quite cold weather. My, now eight year old vehicles, still start reliably at -40F even parked outside because I know I will be faced with those temperatures every year and I keep them well repaired to handle that.
Mostly you will see block heaters on diesels and older unreliable cars. And yes, they do work very well and are a cheap insurance policy for getting your car started.
Besides diesels, they’re almost unheard of in the US. At least in the continental states; they might have them in the nastier parts of Alaska. Even there, a lot of the places where people actually live don’t get that cold. Anchorage has an average low of -10C in January, which is cold, but not crazy cold.
Wouldn’t be that hard to do on ICE vehicles. Just need a heating element added somewhere that heats the antifreeze to 100ish F. Then a remote to activate the blower motor.
The 60s era vws were notorious for never managing to produce any cabin heat.
That’s because of the design of the heater the heater actually blew air across the exhaust manifolds and then into the cabin it was frequent for that plumbing to end up with holes in it letting all that heat Escape but also letting exhaust gases into your cabin So Not only would it freeze you out but it tried to kill you and asphyxiate you with carbon monoxide
Yeah, which made them just fabulous for our favorite use for them at the time: driving around drinking. Pack that bug full of teen agers smoking and drinking and freezing and basically getting CO poisoning until somebody got sick and we all had to do an emergency exit drill.
Only if you didn’t get the extra gasoline heater that mounted under trunk hood, I owned a 1965 Beetle in my youth. Those would cook you well done in minutes in the coldest temperatures. Turns out it’s hard to get good heat from an air cooled engine.
That ain’t getting me to town for groceries at that rate.
I wanted to buy an EV, but after doing a serious evaluation of where I live and what I need to drive for distances and road conditions plus the temperatures I need it to work in, a pure EV is a no go for me. I could get by with a hybrid most of the time. But winter time road conditions can make it pretty iffy for winter and spring and uncomfortable number of times to make even that choice dicey.
Then you are truly a margin case and need to stop shoveling your irrelevant opinion into a greater conversation.
These people that come along and go “EV’s are no good cos I live 50 + miles from the nearest shop and I’m not willing to pause and let my vehicle charge for 20 mins when I am there.” They are taking the piss out of everyone by butting into conversation and making their demands.
There is a noticeable non-zero number of people who fall into that category. And you cannot simply handwave them away or the fact that for many the cost of purchase an EV simply isn’t possible yet or the infrastructure isn’t there to support such a purchase.
And YOU willfully choose to ignore those people and situations. You are no better than the clowns that state “EVs are stupid”.
First: It’s a site dedicated to electric vehicle promotion. So it might be a tiny bit biased.
Second: Their criteria was for their claim was, “13 percent of the cases with starting difficulties are electric cars”. Well, golly gosh gee, how surprising that an electric car would be easier to start in cold weather, since as long as you have any juice left in your battery, it’s gonna go. You don’t have problems like diesel fuel gelling, or oil turning into molasses. (If it gets cold enough, your battery might freeze solid, and then you have real problems.)
Finally: “[…] electric vehicles are involved in roughly 21% of all its cases so far in 2024” Given that Norway is roughly 25% electric vehicles–they don’t give the exact percentage in the article–that’s… Pretty much in line with overall percentages. It might even be high, given that EVs are more likely to be new than ICE vehicles.
If we’re going to do cars–and I don’t think that there’s a reasonable alternative that can be brought to bear in a reasonable time–then I’m all for electric. But this isn’t a great way to promote them.
Your second point is basically agreeing that electric cars are better at starting in the cold, where all you’re doing is explaining why. Maybe I missed what your second point of disagreement was.
Because the problem with ev is that the battery drains charge faster in the cold, charges slower in the cold, and struggles to charge at all if its too cold.
So if you have juice, starting is fine. But the cold problems for ev is that the cold is functionally drinking your gas for you, not that the engine cant turn over.
not that the engine cant turn over.
Funny you use this phrase, when the actual action of “turning over” isn’t something electric vehicles can even do :D
Windows dont roll down either, phones dont ring, and that weird square for my save icon means nothing to me.
Linguistic artifacts are weird
I think your second point is the point of the article, as much hate as electric cars are getting from some hick mechanics - they have a shit load less moving parts and so will generally be more reliable
The problem–aside from the god-awful build quality of Tesla in particular–has usually been software. Too much shit being done by a single central system. Yes, they should be much simpler. But instead they’ve been made much more complex.
Oh god yeah idek if a cooperation could ever properly build a car in this day, bit the raw concept should be better (Tesla’s don’t even have lidar cause elon doesnt believe in it lmao)
That, and it’s hard to record customers with LIDAR.
People seem to forget that gas cars have a battery in them too and that fails in cold weather.
Lead-acid batteries aren’t lithium ion? And the car starter battery isn’t equivalent to that of an EV?
You might as well say that I have trouble starting my gas weed wacker, therefore cars are hard to start.
There’s a 12volt battery in every EV for starting and accessories like heat and a/C.
You can buy a lithium car battery these days. Expensive as all get out, but you can get one.
You shouldn’t replace a different type of battery with another. The vehicle will be set up with a different charging profile and you’d need to change that as well.
And I’m not too certain what hardware is in cars but if its not setup to charge the li-ions just how they like, they tend to explode
I’m guessing the batteries advertised as drop-in replacements have BMSs built in.
Yeah, that’s a fantastic way to start a fire. Lithium really doesn’t like being treated like lead acid…
I’ve been told there are addon charge controllers available for such situations. But as I said, it’s stupidly expensive.
All chemical reactions slow down in cold weather, including lead-acid cells. In extreme cold, everything is going to have issues. At least EVs have internal heaters that let you warm them up.
And unless you keep that EV plugged in and charging during frigid temperatures, that warming will cost you in usable mileage. And you might need a better charging system than a simple 110/120V circuit. Because that might not be enough to prevent some loss of charge.
The point is, there ain’t no free lunch here. Batteries, at the current tech, just tend to suck at low and high temps outside of their intended operating range.
I’d rather a vehicle that can actually move, but has a lower range vs one that wont start to move at all.
Uhh, yes. You generally have it plugged in when it’s in the garage. And there are lots of programs for getting a 240V circuit to your garage by either manufacutuers or your local power utility.
What happens if you aren’t at home? How much extra planning is needed to check possible hotels along a long distance route to see if they offer overnight chargers? And knowing the lack of commercial charge points outside of metro areas, or even in metro areas that might not even be working when you get there, what do you do then? People don’t just never travel long distances. And traveling by plane, train, or bus is not always an option.
And yes, I know about the charging programs, I would love to buy an EV, but the sad hard facts are they will not work for me. Even a Hybrid is kind of iffy. And I will probably be well dead before they will be viable choices for where I live.
Thank god your day to day presumably isn’t filled with driving to hotels in the cold eh?
Realistically if this tiny pint actually matters you could probably just rent a car with all the money saved on gas
I try very hard to not need to make those types of trips. But I have often have a need to several times of the year whether I like it or not. But this fall I made two 1000 mile round trips to go pheasant hunting with my one Son in Law’s family and friends. It was a kind of bucket list thing. More often, I need to make 300 mile round trips to see a medical specialist every 3 months. And it’s below freezing here 6+ months a year where I live.
The nearest airport that I could fly from is an easy 50 miles away. But, transporting 2 dogs, a shotgun, cooler, and a 5 gallon buck of wild rice as gifts plus clothes wasn’t going to work. There is no bus or train service to be had either. And I’m pretty sure Hertz wouldn’t be real happy about dirty, wet, and muddy dogs being transported, (and yes, I own travel kennels), in their rentals nor would they be very impressed by the variety of grasses, weeds and mud hanging from the underside of the car either.
The point of the story is, lots of people make these kinds of trips to go camping and hiking, boating, fishing, skiing, hunting, or Christmas trips to Grandma’s house loaded with food and gifts. And the places they are going to are often pretty much barren of support for EVs. And renting a car to get there and back would be prohibitively expensive. And people do these types of travel regularly.
I hope more and more people switch to EVs. They DO make a lot of sense in a metropolitan area. Personally, I think electric bikes would even better for most urbaine urbanites. But not everyone lives in such places. And there is a noticeable number of people who can’t afford to buy an EV either - even if they wanted to.
I really, really wanted to buy a Chevy Bolt because I thought it would work for me. But, my one Daughter, (who has a PhD in engineering and is a research engineer doing long term studies on HVac systems and EV charging in real world installations), talked me out of it because of lack of infrastructure support. local conditions, the logistics, and total costs of ownership, (it still costs money to not use an asset also). Even buying a Hybrid really doesn’t make a lot of sense where I live since it would be simply running the ICE engine 95%+ of the time anyway. And again, the total cost of ownership is pretty break even at best. Sadly, it’s going to take decades longer to get EVs affordably usable for everyone. (That does NOT mean we should to stop all development and traveling that path).
TL:DR - There is a non-zero number of people for whom EVs just don’t work out, whether from lack of access to them, non-existent infrastructure, or lack of financial ability to even afford ownership or use case. And it seems a very large number of EV enthusiasts I have interacted with simply ignore those issues when making the flat statement “EVs good. ICE bad” and imply that “No one should ever need to own an ICE powered car”. Which is just as poor of logic as those who keep saying EVs are stupid and should go away. So go buy your EV if you can. Or at least buy an electric bike if you can’t. But for me, they just don’t work yet.
"But sometimes . . . "
90% of what 90% of people do can be served fine with an EV with everything as it exists right now. In fact, I find it’s better. Maybe it can’t be your only car. Your personal issues with the technology for your case is no reason to hold back the rest of society.
So, you are fine doubling the cost of ownership for those people can’t use EVs all the time for everything? Nor did I say that my, and a noticeable number of other people, want to hold society back on EVs. Only that’s it NOT the clear cut solution for everyone 90% of the time. But you would seem to want to “force a square peg into the round hole solution”.
Oh, yeah.
If your point is that ICE car batteries have problems in the cold, so cold batteries is a problem for everyone and worse for ICE cars, that’s fair.
If your point is that ICE car batteries suck therefore EVs suck, that’s not really valid logic.
… battery heaters and block heaters are a thing for ICE too though?
How many cars have them? They come by default in EVs, and to use it, you’d plug it in like you do all the time.
I can pull my 12V out and bring it inside to warm up though
I think you missed the point. EVs also have a 12v, for the same basic reason of starting the vehicle. But the bigger factor is that EVs are often plugged in, which will automatically warm the battery.
I was under the impression that the 12v also runs all the standard car electronics
That is correct, and EV’s are equally dependant on the 12V battery as ICE vehicles
It does, but that’s because the 12v starter battery was already present. The electric starter predates any electronics. This just made an easy and available source of power for anything else that came later.
There’s actually a movement to switch to a higher voltage, such as 48v, but there is a ton of inertia to overcome with that.
have affected the chargers themselves rather than the vehicles, according to local sources.
I can’t find any news that confirm that?
It was partially a failure in the charging networks to plan, and also rideshares where people were unfamiliar with EVs not knowing how to plan.
Yeah when I saw the pictures with all the white 3s, I guessed they were hertz rentals used by ride share drivers (because hertz is renting them at really low rates) who either don’t know much about their cars or deliberately run them down to near zero to max their fares.
Everyone is arguing about how they should fuel their cars, but I just want to see more electric powered transit.
My mum’s 2019 Toyota Yaris has to have its engine run every few days or the battery dies from just sitting on the driveway. It could be a faulty car battery but considering this car isn’t even that old and has barely driven 30k miles, it’s not doing so great. I discovered yesterday that my EV charges better after I’ve driven it around and the battery’s warmed up a bit. The car goes a bit haywire when you cold start so it seems like it needs some prep time before a drive.
You probably have some parisitic power draw somewhere, my old Ford focus had the same issue. Was just a bad relay causing a fan to run when the car was off.
Some car batteries only last 3 - 5 years. It might be due for a replacement. They are fairly easy to change yourself too if you want to keep the costs down.
Also depends on the environment. Down here in central Texas you can’t expect the el cheapo batteries to last more than 2 or so years because the summer heat is brutal on them.
Yes it does. You car (almost all EVs) slowly precondition the battery while driving. Many newer cars optimize the battery temperature when you add a charger to your navigation to have the optimal temperature once you reach it. If you know you need to rapid charge and the drive is short, it’s usually a good idea to add it to your navigation as the car will then maximize the heating/cooling before you get there, whereas with normal driving it would do this slowly to minimize drain.
I had to rapid charge with a frozen battery once. Not a fun experience.
We own a Yaris. She needs a better battery.
From the replies I’ve been getting, I think so.
… If another one of your vehicles died constantly… What would you do…
Don’t know what the 2019 yaris is like but my 2006 yaris with 335.000 KMs on the odometer regularly sits in the drive for a week, sometimes two at a time without moving. I had a battery die on me after towing a caravan in 38°C weather with it for a whole day. This was in 2018, that battery lasted me until last year when the mechanic told me it was going down and needed replacing. All this to say that unless Toyota has gone to absolute shit over the years then I’m guessing something isn’t quite right with your mum’s yaris.
(okay yes, I also wanted to put my trooper of a yaris in the spotlight. My first car ever and the best deal I will ever make in my life).
Sounds like a great car! It does seem like something’s wrong with the battery so a replacement is in order.
Number eleven fail at lower rate that any car
