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?
In most cases yes, but it depends on the car for both EV and ICE. The few areas where ICE wins is when you’re running a super efficient hybrid, but those are few and far between, usually missing some nice luxury features like heated seats and automatically warming up your car before you get in. Things that are very nice for up north.
My sister who lives in Michigan can lose up to 50 miles of range when the weather drops, so she goes from 110 MPGe to around 70 MPGe when the temperature is below 0 (-18c). That’s still more efficient than most ICE but possible to beat.