Current cold snap and total election cars. Questions?

Just wondering if anyone had any experiences with this last nationwide cold snap, and total election cars?

How did the cold impact the battery life, and recharging?

How does heating work?

Does running the heater In subzero freezing impact battery / drive duration / range?

originally posted by: neutronflux
Just wondering if anyone had any experiences with this last nationwide cold snap, and total election cars?

How did the cold impact the battery life, and recharging?

How does heating work?

Does running the heater In subzero freezing impact battery / drive duration / range?

Spell check got you. I think you mean electric cars...

Cold weather is hard on batteries and will reduce range some. In most cases, it isn't an issue as the vast majority of people are not driving anywhere the range of the car, however, if you were pushing range for some reason, cold weather would be an issue that needs consideration.

In other words, if the range is 300 miles, most people only drive about 10-20 miles per day commuting. Cold weather might drop range to 250 miles. It has no effect whatsoever on daily use. however, if you were doing a road trip and planned to pull over at say 250 miles to recharge, cold weather could be a significant variable to account for as you migth not make it.

a reply to: Edumakated

I’ve never looked too deep into weather conditions effects on electric cars.
If it’s hot then an air conditioner would need to have a compressor running and in the cold I imagine an electric heater would need to be ran. Either way the batteries would be drained to regulate cabin temperatures.

Those conditions have to greatly effect driving range.

You will have one charge. When you use that up, you freeze. If it is a hybrid and you have a full tank then you will have a chance to find a gas station. If you can’t find a gas station with power on, look for the oldest pumps you can find, the ones without a credit card reader. They still have backup hand pumps in the bottom.

a reply to: Edumakated

I tried to research it a bit. And found figures of driving range only impacted by 9 or 10 percent?

Oh

This is a better article

Why Electric Cars Struggle in the Cold—and How to Help Them

www.google.com...

The Tesla Model S owners manual warns: “In cold weather, some of the stored energy in the Battery may not be available on your drive because the battery is too cold.” Tesla adds a snowflake icon next to the range indicator to show it might be impacted. Typically, an EV will cover around 20 percent fewer miles in cold weather versus beach weather.

I was also wondering if you could not protect the batteries for a few days from 20 degrees F from loss of power, how that would impact the longevity of the batteries life? Or worse, a few days of single digit temperatures? And would it be measured in battery life in years? Or charging capacity and charging / discharge cycles? And if the way a way to charge the battery to restore some of its lost life?

Wonder if this is covered by insurance at all?

I guess the worst case scenario would be. Forced to drive the car until the car has to shutdown on low battery. Then there is no way to charge the car while leaving it out in below freezing temperatures.

a reply to: neutronflux

That article is exactly what I was talking about.
They talk about the reduced capacity of a cold battery and that’s to be expected but there is no mention of using a defrost feature to thaw the windshield or a heater to keep the passenger from freezing.

originally posted by: neutronflux
I guess the worst case scenario would be. Forced to drive the car until the car has to shutdown on low battery. Then there is no way to charge the car while leaving it out in below freezing temperatures.

Unless you drive to a place where there is still power and charge up there.

a reply to: neutronflux

Battery's CAN potentially lose there charge faster in cold weather but generally it makes many electrical items more efficient as cold often equates to increased conductivity and lower resistance in many materials.

This can mean the battery will also charge faster in from a mains source as a consequence.

For a mobile phone the temperature variance is partially negated by it being closer to your body and so kept closer to body temperature.

Some PC circuits and other electrical items have minimum operating temperatures.

Often if you have the a specifications page in your items manual it will contain information on recommended operating temperature ranges and if not quickly checking online with the part number and manufacturer may allow you to find technical specifications there.

As for those Electric Cars, well that is something the manufacturers have probably taken into account, they probably are less vulnerable than older electronic items and also likely many modern mobile phone and laptop battery's are also probably not so vulnerable.

It is worth taking into account also that there were trick's used for some electronic items and volatile memory were cooling them could actually fix them, sometimes in older electronic battery's also cooling or heating some of them (I would not recommend heating as that can make them explode) can actually cause them to bleed of electrical blockages, NPN - PNP blockages that could sometimes build up in there solid state components but that is older electronic item's and older USB memory sticks (Definitely not heating in those cases).

Car battery's - the old Lead Acid kind - are also vulnerable to cold weather for the same reason, superconductivity due to cold can lead electrical blead off leading them to lose there charge and go flat faster.

As I say I do not know how it affects newer battery's but depending on there chemistry and design they may also be affected though of course for electrical car application they are probably more robust.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
a reply to: neutronflux

That article is exactly what I was talking about.
They talk about the reduced capacity of a cold battery and that’s to be expected but there is no mention of using a defrost feature to thaw the windshield or a heater to keep the passenger from freezing.

You have use of all functions. Range is just less. Obviously if you are trying to extend range you would not want to use anything unnecessary that is being powered by battery.

This is a bit off topic, but what happens if we really are heading back into an ice age as the historic data suggests? What if cold snaps like this slowly become more common, and what if by achieving "zero CO2 emissions" we speed it up instead of holding it off?

I think these are questions that we need to seriously consider, especially future generations who have a real ability to achieve zero emissions. The planet can clearly sustain some level of CO2 emissions, and in fact a certain amount of CO2 emissions is a great thing because it feeds the plants and trees and causes the Earth to become greener.

Obviously too much CO2 emissions can be bad, but there is really no logical reason to eliminate all emissions. It's one of those ideas that sounds nice and makes people feel good about themselves, but is actually one of the worst possible ideas, with far more negative consequences and virtually no positive ones. But many nations are now seriously trying to achieve it.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

The carbon points model is a scam used to sell carbon points and use carbon points to create an artificial economy for the elite based on selling and buying those carbon points.

Carbon Dioxide is NOT the problem in the atmosphere it is being made out to be, it is indeed a greenhouse gas but it is one that is absorbed by nature and NO carbon dioxide, too little carbon dioxide would be even more disastrous to life on earth than too much carbon dioxide.

The danger of too much is things such as Algal blooms on body's of water including the ocean as the algae absorb the extra carbon available and this can then cause too little oxygen in the water, too little light getting to other species that are dependent upon it and cause area die off's as a result, in a lake it can kill the the majority of resident species such as fish life entirely.

But it absorbed so one knock on affect is more tree growth - as long as there is also sufficient solar radiation to fuel the plants photosynthesis.

The Danger which has been mostly addressed was the presence of NON absorbent gases, artificial greenhouse gases and other noxious industrial chemicals, too much sulphur causing acid rain etc.

The real dangers are not CO2 but plastics in the water and this is not because of people but because of corporate greed, it is cheap to make plastic wrappers for sweets and even right now company's in the west are moving away from biodegradable materials to plastic wrappers when they should be moving the other way, usually this is argued as more eco friendly when in fact it is most definitely not by then using the argument that is costs less energy to produce but they are ignoring the fact that it costs more energy to break down naturally and pollutes far longer.

Also the Sun has cycles that we do not fully understand, solar maximum's and solar minimums as well as other cycles we have not yet catalogued that will undoubtedly have influence upon our planetary atmosphere and global temperature.

We are currently in an ice age, that ice age is millions of years old and is called the Quaternary Glaciation, for millions of years before it we did not have ice at the poles and our global temperature was more even and warmer than it is today.

What we erroneously called Ice ages are actually merely cyclic glacial maximums during this geological age of the earth's history and we are currently in a period called a glacial minimum, before the last glacial maximum or if you prefer ice age though that is the wrong name for it the earth was much warmer than it is today.

Fifty thousand years ago - not that long at all - England for example which is today temporate was actually much more like the African Savanah in terms of Flora, Temperature and Fauna, so it was much warmer than it is today, winters were much milder then the glacial maximum began and the winters turned bitter, ice built up on the hills and mountains and turned into glaciers that eventually consumed much of the northern hemisphere, burying lands that had formerly been warm beneath miles of ice.

We NEED to recycle and get rid of our over use of plastics, we will never get rid of plastic entirely but using it to wrap chocolate bars and for other applications were fully degradable natural products are at least just as good if not better is simply down to greedy corporate practice.

We do not need to worry about CO2 anywhere near as much as we have been conditions to believe, the planet warms up naturally and cool's naturally and in fact we are OVER DUE for the beginning of the next glacial maximum which is actually far more treacherous to much life on the planet.

Another thing we need to be careful of is corporations and politicians that are scamming society for there own ends as well as brainwashing used on society to control and manipulate us, look for the hand in the glove that is trying to make puppets of us and eventually bring those criminals to justice.

a reply to: LABTECH767

We NEED to recycle and get rid of our over use of plastics, we will never get rid of plastic entirely but using it to wrap chocolate bars and for other applications were fully degradable natural products are at least just as good if not better is simply down to greedy corporate practice.

I agree that we need to recycle as much as possible, but I don't really see the issue with making some things from plastic if we recycle. It makes sense to ban things which commonly harm animals like the plastic ring things they used on cans. They just recently replaced plastic straws with a paper-type straw in McDonald's around Australia, but the lid of the cup still contains more plastic than the straw ever did, so I assume the straws were harming some animals, otherwise it's just more illogical reasoning.