Another journalist’ish: For maximum winter EV driving range, you want a car with this feature
(Odd – same story but with different author listed: Saves miles: Your EV loses range in winter—but this one feature fixes it)
Says because of the cold weather EV range problem, you need a heat pump and implies this solves the cold weather range problem.
It does not.
Driving 200 miles in an EV at 25 degrees F, the heat pump might consume 5-10% of the battery – but that is not sufficient to overcome the -25% to -40% range loss due to the battery capacity collapsing when cold.
The -25% to -40% range loss was measured by me in a Tesla Model 3 Long Range with the NCM battery chemistry, driving at highways speeds in Idaho at 18-21 degrees F.
The article uses cold weather EV ratings from Best EV for Winter & Cold Weather Range » 30,000 Car Study – which, for the Model 3, is, if you click through, evaluating the standard model with the LFP battery and not the long-range version with the NCM battery. NCM batteries have slightly longer range than LFP – but in cold weather, suffer worse range degradation – plus, the LFP battery can be routinely charged to 100% whereas the NCM batteries should generally be charged to 80%. The effect is that in cold temperatures, the Model 3 “long range” can have worse range (-25 to -40%) than the standard edition (-10 to 20% range loss in cold temperatures).
But your range is probably going to be less – since in the NCM battery, you’ll not be charging to 100%, and you probably won’t drop below 20%, particularly if the charging infrastructure is sparse. That leaves you with 80-20 or 60% of capacity – that’s 60% of the cold reduced capacity.
Start with 334 mile estimated “max” range, but take out say 30% (85% – 15%) for use at 21 degrees F – so your max battery capacity is 231 miles (not 334). Now, take 70% of that (a 30% range loss due to the cold) – and you get real life usable range (staying within roughly 15%-85% charging range) of 162 miles.
This is a problem for EVs in very cold temperatures – especially when the chargers are located 120 miles apart as they are in the intermountain west and inland PNW.
