NOT TOO BADLY: How Did EVs Handle America’s Arctic Blast?

1. EVs are not ready for frigid road trips. I warned about this in August: Driving an EV on the highway in extreme cold will produce a range loss of 40% or more. EV owners of various brands traveling for the holidays shared numerous stories verifying this annoying (and potentially dangerous) reality. Drivers traveling in temperatures at or around zero with a headwind could go only 100 to 150 miles before needing to stop and recharge, depending upon the car, significantly increasing travel time. When they did charge, they had to deal with another disconcerting problem with EVs and winter…

2. EV fast-chargers operate much more slowly in extreme cold, if they work at all. The colder the EV battery, the slower the rate of charge that it will accept, making “fast-charging” in subzero temperatures a potentially miserable and plodding experience. Think a 45 to 60 minute charge instead of a 25 to 35 minute one. To top it off, users reported that fast-charging equipment, particularly from Electrify America, often just didn’t work in temperatures below -10 °F. Tesla’s proprietary Superchargers didn’t seem to have the same reliability issues.

The upshot is that EVs performed tolerably well for most drivers, although most would probably rather not spend 30 minutes at a charging station in sub-zero weather.