Neither the article nor the post are worth anything: They don’t tell any of the interresting parts. What are the temperatures? How long have the temperatures been like that? Why are all the cars at 0%? Why won’t they charge?
Every halfway decent EV has an electric heater for the batteries. As long as there is juice in the batteries it will stop them from falling below a certain temperature to prevent permanent damages. Even if the heating drained all that was left, if you plug it in - the heating can start again. Why is this suddenly a problem in Chicago while many European countries regularly have -20°C and no dead Teslas or other EVs?
So I have a Tesla and my roommate has a Nissan leaf. Both of us were somewhat affected by this. The real issue is EVs charge very slowly when the battery is cold and the public charging network is just large enough to support the current number of EV owners. Generally my car uses 200wh per mile with no climate control, 250 with AC running, and 300-350 with the heater running. Temperature here has been highs of -15C with lows hitting -25C. The past few days I’ve been averaging 500-600wh per mile. This alone almost triples demand for public charging stations, mostly from people who live in apartments and don’t have home charging
To compound this, trips that normally don’t require public charging are now out of range. I drove about 150 miles to ski over the weekend. Normally this is totally fine on a single charge but with the excessive power use I decided to top up on the way home. Normally I super charge for about 3-5 minutes for an extra 30-40 miles of range and plug in when I get home. I sat at a supercharger for 15 minutes before it was warm enough to accept the charge, then took an additional 20+ minutes to get 30 miles of extra charge. It builds up like a domino effect. Cars waiting to charge delay other cars that get there after.
My roommates Leaf had a similar experience at a CCS charging station. This is all in a city that prioritizes EVs. Chicago is a much larger city with a less robust charging network and had even colder temperatures.
Honestly I’m not super surprised they had charging issues during this freeze.
Edit: To clarify, if I had set the car to heat up 45 minutes before going to charge it would have charged at nearly full rate. It just takes a long time to get the battery up to temp from -20C. When it’s over 5C outside everything performs normally, -5 to 5C I have reduced regenerative braking but everything is mostly normal. Acceleration is reduced once it hits -15C. Still better than my old Honda Accord but noticeably reduced.
Thanks for providing some actual numbers and context.
Sometimes I am really surprised by the absolute laziness of ‘journalists’. Your comment contains more information than the so called article.
Wait, Nissan Leaf is CHAdeMO not CSS no?
OT: Don’t you guys have loads of slow chargers at shopping centers and offices? Only rapi charging available publicly?
Yeah you’re right it’s chademo. I almost never use his car so I wasn’t thinking.
Slow charging is publicly available and pretty common but it’s usually more expensive or less convenient than charging at home. Charge+ is everywhere but they want triple what I usually pay.
Free public charging is slowly going away. Usually an apartment complex or office is for residents/employees only, e.g. in a private parking garage or at an office parking lot miles from anything fun. Or they just have a sign saying "Residents only. You will be towed.
You’d be surprised how many new charging stations have at least one chademo port. It’s nowhere near as ubiquitous as NACS or CCS, but it’s enough that I’m generally okay charging my leaf.
My guess is: they queued up waiting for a free charger while the batteries burned up trying to keep themselves warm. But now they can’t move the csars close to the chargers. I think it’s a matter of lack of planning. When there’s suddenly a lack of fuel for some reason, you also get a “graveyard of petrol cars”.
It was also because the chargers themselves stopped working due to the extreme cold. So the queue was quite a bit longer than usual.
Reminds when the first iphone came out and people were complaining that their phone cracked from the cold. Apple issued a warning that the phone was to not be operated under 0C° (as usual, “you’re using it wrong”).
Even if the heating drained all that was left, if you plug it in
Well, I mean, that can be a pretty big problem if you don’t have a charger within cable-distance, or at the least, pushing distance. But yeah, it’s no more “dead” than a car with a gelled diesel tank.
Generally you are right. But the article was writing something about plugged in cars which are not charging. IMO noone should make weird statements like this without providing more details. Especially if the person who writes these statements calls themselves journalist.
Y’all acting like lake shore Ave didn’t become a gas powered graveyard during a blizzard a decade ago.
Ssssshhhh! We’re having a circlejerk here!
But it’s still a bad comparison.
Everyone got stuck because of 2’ of snow. Not because of powertrain issues with the vehicles.
It’s actually most likely just because the superchargers didn’t get enough power. Source
The difference is gas cars can be started and driven away after warming up. Electric cars like Tesla need to have their batteries charged, if they fully discharge their batteries it can cause major damage to them essentially bricking the car.
All them gas cars had to be towed the fuck away.
But those gassers didn’t require a $20,000 battery replacement.
I mean these people aren’t going to have to replace their batteries. They will just have to wait until warmer weather.
Because gas cans don’t exist?
Because the owners were evacuated and unavailable when the snow plows were trying to come through.
And you can deliver fuel easily, by hand, to a car that’s out of gas.
This does make me feel like a portable generator, some jumper cables, and a pallet jack could be a viable business for these events.
Who the fuck downvoted you? You’re literally stating a fact.
Probably some crybaby who thinks I don’t like their tesla because it’s electric, when in reality I don’t like it because it’s a poorly made car.
I’ve been downvoted for asking what happens to Teslas during extreme cold before.
People insist it’s fine because it can be heated while charging, but what happens when you go to work or the store, or get stuck like this.
Tesla fans are mooks.
Design problem of the Tesla, it allows one to discharge to a point where battery damage can occur. My volt, and my 500e will not allow such. They did this to be able to claim more range without having to increase battery capacity.
And even gasoline vehicles can be damaged by running the tank too low/out. Fuel pump overheat and strainer clogging is a very real thing when the tank is too low. Diesels can damage their lift and high pressure pumps when run empty.
My point stands, a gasoline car that is sitting outside in the cold turned off will not damage the car. A Tesla that allows itself to discharge the battery to the point of damaging major components is not suitable for the city with limited charging stations and extremely cold weather.
I disagree about them being “not suitable”, there are plenty of people who don’t have problems with them.
Electric cars are still in their early stages, where it’s not common knowledge how they work and what one needs to do to prevent the worst issues.
I’d bet there’s plenty of instances where similar issues happened with gas cars in their infancy. People didn’t change the oil, or didn’t maintain properly and the car was essentially junk because of it.
I think that most of the people who got stuck at the charging stations was because they didn’t actually turn off the car, they ran it dead with the cabin heat, then left it with sentry mode and cabin temp protection on. Along with the fact that they didn’t know or didn’t have a level 2 station to go to instead of insisting on level 3.
Is this a problem? Of course it is, but it’s not a problem for other manufacturers who have safeties in their software, or people who own Tesla’s who understand how the Tesla operates.
Do we need more charging stations? Yes, though we also need people either be taught, or learn, more about their vehicle and it’s operation. This goes for any vehicle, not just EV.
You’re acting as if it’s a normal problem to have.
My diesel van struggles to start when temperatures get around freezing. That’s just a thing that happens to all vehicles. -23C (-10F) is pretty cold
Diesel will gel but my gas cars haven’t really had problems down into -30s.
Also the battery that turns the starter motor gets drained. But I take your point, diesel is more susceptible than petrol / gas.
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My gas car never has issues, and your diesel wouldn’t either if you plugged in the block heater. I’m a big fan of “tech” and like innovative and new stuff and all that, but I also think all electrics are a huge waste right now. Small inner city all electrics with like a 75 mile range is not bad, but the 200+ mile ones are just asking for problems. Batteries are too heavy, too big, and just don’t last long enough. Needing a new $20,000 battery to make a 15 year old car work again is never a good idea. Here in the next 5 years (now that electrics are about to age out) people are really going to start seeing the issue.
I’m sticking to gas or hybrids for now. Cheaper to keep the older ones on the roads. Current lithium batts just aren’t high enough on their cycle count.
This moron, again with the false claims. Hey! Stop being a clown!
- your local not-afraid-of-your-bullshit electrical engineer
I like how I take up enough head space in your mind that you always recognize my name and comments. I’ve never remembered yours and you aren’t even an afterthought to me. Lol
I recognize you out of pity and contempt. At least one of us has a working memory, and perhaps that’s why I tend to be living in reality 🤷
The 15 years to dead battery figure you mention is wildly out of proportion.
Everything points to current batteries degrading less than 5% over 10 years… So even at 15 or 20 years there would still be plenty of battery health left.
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I find it funny you didn’t point out that if you can plug in a block heater, you can plug in the ev.
But yes, ev usually have better heaters, though they use the battery for that unless they’re plugged into a large enough charger to offset that energy drain.
This is what we get when people buy things they barely understand, and refuse to learn about. Bluntly, I don’t understand how someone can buy, own, and use something that they continually rely on with nearly zero knowledge of how it works, how it fails and what pitfalls you may experience in extreme operating conditions. Additionally, how to recognize when things are going sideways and what to do about it.
It reminds me of the last time I had a car overheat on me. It was just as cold as this (around -25C or -30C), and I was driving to work. The vehicle was a beater, so it was in some state of disrepair. As you can imagine, it was an ICE vehicle. It started just fine, or at least as fine as I can expect from the conditions, and I hit the highway. I was headed to work and didn’t have enough time to just let it warm up before heading out. I’m driving down the highway, waiting for the heater to start working. It didn’t. The temperature gauge on the dash stayed pinned to “cold”, and no heat from the heater core… After a few minutes on the highway, I knew something was very very wrong. I pulled off the highway and to the first gas station I saw. I turned off the car as quickly as I could. I checked and there was no coolant in the engine I went in to the station and picked up some premixed coolant, refilled the vehicle with coolant, and the first few short pours vaporized as soon as they went in. Once it stopped vaporizing coolant, I filled it up. I made it to work, a little late, but with a working car.
You don’t need to know every fucking detail about how the vehicle does what it does, just the broad strokes about the basic systems that keep the vehicle working and how they fail and how they’re maintained. If you don’t, well… Just look at the OP.
Speaking of knowing the pitfalls, how did you manage to run out of coolant my friend? That’s day one of owning a beater.
The coolant situation was fine until the deep freeze. My theory is that the coolant that was in it was not capable of being liquid at -20C, and when the vehicle was started, the heat couldn’t move because the coolant in the rad was frozen. Causing it to exceed the maximum temperature and vaporize. As the hot vapor penetrated the system, the rad slowly melted, causing the now liquid coolant to flow into the engine. But the engine was so hot that the coolant vaporized on contact.
This process continued until all the coolant was vapor and that vapor exceeded the pressure limits of the system and that caused it all to escape the system through the pressure cap on the rad.
I believe that the continual vaporization of the coolant was the only thing that kept the engine from overheating to the point of a complete failure.
I swear, it had coolant in it before the deep freeze.
Yeah, that happens. That’s why they make block heaters. The moral of the story is don’t be a dick about people not knowing everything about their vehicle. I still argue with some of the smartest people I know about filling their tank before severe weather hits. We’re not all on the same level, most people just expect it to work.
Oh, I’m not trying to be a dick about anything. I’m just saying I don’t understand the mindset of being okay knowing next to nothing about the things they own and rely on every day.
That’s it.
Sorry if that was not clear.
Would you learn things that can go wrong with your washing machine, and how fix them? Probably not, you would either send it in for warranty, repair or buy a new one.
The people do not care about their car on a fundamental level. Cars are just another appliance to them. That’s why Prius drivers are so notorious. They do not give a fuck about anything but getting from point a to b, and doing so as cheaply as possible.
EV’s seem to share a similar fate. I’d even go as far as to say these people might have bought the vehicle BECAUSE it requires less maintenance. It’s just another dollar number in a spreadsheet for them.
I would and have actually. I have the basics of how a washing machine works and even how to properly clean it and the broad strokes of various components in the machine and what those components do. It goes the same for everything. This is my mantra. If I use it, and rely on it, I want to know how it works and how to fix it when it stops working. I go to vendor support only when I know I’m still covered by support (it hasn’t expired), and it’s a clear warranty issue. If not, I’ll usually make the attempt to fix it myself, failing that, I will call a support person, and if they can’t fix it, I’ll buy a replacement. In the case of a washing machine it’s not urgent enough to push for calling someone right away, who can fix it faster than I have time to. I’m somewhat unique in that, since my home has two washing machines (only one is connected right now because I’m still working at getting power, ventilation, water, drain/downpipe, and everything set up for the second set), so in a pinch, I can simply swap to the working one and move on, getting to repairing the broken one when I have the time. In this case, not a good example, but I gather your point.
To speak to the point: I’ll likely go through the same process above, and depending on how important it is for me to get up and working again quickly, will factor in to how quickly I progress from trying to fix it myself, to paying someone to do it, to replacement. Another factor is the cost involved with the item or a replacement, if it’s very cheap and readily available, I may simply replace it and move on because it’s not worth the time/effort to try. With appliances like washing machines, oven/ranges, even the furnace and air conditioning, I’ll usually give it a try. Last year over summer, the air conditioning at my home failed and I performed diagnostics and found the issue to be related to the electrical systems in the outdoor unit, it needed a new contactor and capacitor, which I replaced and we enjoyed air conditioning all summer on about $50 of parts and a bit of effort.
This is simply my own personal philosophy. The fact is, very few people tend to subscribe to this, sticking to a fairly old philosophy of, you earn money doing the thing you’re specialized at, and pay people who are specialized at other things (like mechanics, appliance repair people, HVAC technicians) to do whatever else you need.
Simply put, I’ve never made enough money as a working adult to indulge myself in this manner of thinking. I’ve reaped so many benefits from it that even though I’m making more money as time goes on, I continue to return to this philosophy.
The thing I don’t get is why people continue to accept the older know-nothing philosophy that seems to common. The only explanation I can imagine for this is that my philosophy requires significant mental work to understand enough about the things you use, to be effective. As simply put as I can, most people are too mentally lazy to try. I don’t really hold this against anyone, especially considering it’s so common.
The risk, to me, is if you’re entirely reliant on others to maintain the things you use all the time, then you’re entirely at their mercy for what they tell you needs to be done and what they think that’s worth. You’re also working at whatever pace they choose, and on whatever timetable they want. Simply, it is much quicker to reach a solution if you have the ability to fix things yourself, and you can obtain the parts needed in a timely fashion. It’s generally a lot cheaper as a benefit.
I work IT by day and I’ve given people scripts with commands they don’t understand to fix common repeating problems that I can’t find a way to permanently repair. One such example is a client ended up in a situation where if a program didn’t exit correctly (a fault of the software that I have no way to fix), and they tried to use a plug in to view a specific file type as a preview, it would not work. The solution was to close all of the running instances of the program and the functionality would work again. The script, which I think was only a single line, basically just ran a command that would tell the OS, to close all running versions of that program. The client running that application didn’t need any specifics, just run this and it should fix the problem. It was really basic. They were able to fix their issue without waiting for me to remotely log in to their PC to do the same thing by hand, and it worked really well. I empowered them to fix it themselves. Of course, if that didn’t fix the problem, they could call, but I can’t recall them calling about it again after that.
With vehicles, there’s a basic knowledge set to know when performing the most basic maintenance on the motor. Does it have oil? Is the oil black or have a bad smell, indicating it may be burned or starting to break down. Does it have coolant? Brake fluid? Power steering fluid? Fuel? Are there any obvious leaks, or broken piping or parts that appear mangled and/or have holes where there shouldn’t be holes?
This is obviously regarding an ICE engine more than anything though diesel may also be applicable. Regarding diesel, when it gets too cold, the knowledge of what temperature the fuel starts to gel up and become unusable… That sort of thing. Just the basics.
The same basics can be applied to EVs, like charge level, the correct process to start and warm up the car in extreme cold (keeping it plugged in and getting the battery system heaters working), how much the cold will affect expected range. How the features of the vehicle affect range and power use. Also, importantly, how to recover the vehicle from a complete power loss (dead main battery). Most of this is surely in the owners manual, which people neither read, nor look to when things go wrong.
It’s a compounding problem of willful ignorance and my disconnect is how people are okay with being willfully ignorant in a golden age of information. The knowledge is at your fingertips, accessible from any device that can show you this text, and yet, there’s not only no desire for that information, but there also seems to be an active effort to reject it.
I am a child of the digital age. Cellphones, marketed as “PCS” phones became available when I was partway through highschool. The internet has existed since before I was a teen. I want the information. I actively seek it out. I work in technology and I use that technology in every way I can to improve my life and the lives of those around me. I can’t imagine not wanting to help yourself and the people you care for by using that technology and vast information to your advantage. Yet, that’s exactly what people are doing. I just don’t get it.
I’m not sure, but if you draw the ven diagram of people that can recognize an issue with their cars heater core (and know what that is) stop and fill the radiator with coolant and the ven diagram of people that would understand what’s wrong with their washing machine and attempt a repair themselves is just a circle.
I know the people outside that circle exist, but they really should spend a few minutes learning how things they depend on work, to save a few dollars in their spreadsheet.
You seriously can’t even fix your washing machine?
I’d give it a shot, but 90% of the time it’s “broken electronics, buy a new circuitboard for 90% of the cost of a new machine”.
It was more than just teslas, but they’re the most plentiful so that’s what grabs the headlines
Uneducated drivers is a large part of it. Also too small of infrastructure.
Yo OP. If you’re going to post people’s Noots, try through something other than Bluesky. Here’s the same Noot via her Masatodon account.
Why?
What is a noot?
What’s a noot? I thought mastodons microblogs were toots cuz elephant.
I’m shocked. Shocked I say.
All cars struggle in extreme cold. Not just electric cars. That’s literally why people use engine heaters in cold climates.
Sure, but it is not “engine heater” cold, just normal cold. (-20 air temp, not wind chill)
But that is “battery heater” cold. If you plug in at home most cars will eat some power to keep the battery functional. So many Tesla owners have been spoiled by abundant charger availability they never bothered adding chargers at home, or couldn’t add one.
Once the battery gets cold enough there’s nothing to do without warming it up first. I wonder if we’ll see some portable battery warmers soon to make sure this doesn’t happen again next year.
Teslas have built in heaters. One would think the chargers provided enough power to hear the battery.
Reread what they said.
I lived in Anchorage for three years. I parked my Tundra outside uncovered the entire time. I never had an engine heater, and never needed one. Your point is not invalid at all, but maybe these are not the arctic temperatures that should be causing this issue?
I was thinking about getting one of those when my car struggled to start Monday morning in the sub zero temps.
I don’t think they could shock you since the batteries are dead.
And the chargers!
“dead” Li-ion cells are still around 3 V each
You would be shovked, but the charging stations don’t work.
It’s not really-really cold here, but do you know the main problem with my Leaf this winter? The 12V battery broke, and having a full charge doesn’t do shit without the 12V battery to turn things on.
Isn’t that just… a normal car battery? As in, you could get it from any auto parts store.
Exactly the point. The regular battery that every car has, died from the weather, the rest is fine.
Dude they bought a leaf. They’re not the smartest.
…why?
My wife’s best friend has a Leaf and she’s very happy with it.
Tesla owner here. The cold weather bothers me not at all. I can charge at home. Battery is at 80% right now.
Saw a Model S being delivered on the back of a flatbed truck to the Rt 59 supercharger station in Aurora this weekend. Every stall was occupied too.
Billions of robots require fossil fuel
The main downside to an electric vehicle. The battery cannot handle cold (or extreme heat).
We do need a cold weather capable, green option.
Hydrogen fuel cells might just be the answer, but hydrogen is extremely hard to handle and store. Unless it’s not stored as raw hydrogen…
Anhydrous Ammonia is liquid while under pressure, and is extremely energy dense, we have a shitload of infrastructure around making and transporting it, and it only kills people who are exposed to it.
Which would never be a problem in a personal vehicle.
It is an amazing option for container ships.
Now, making ammonia is still somewhat carbon intensive, but there are ways to control that and capture at the source…
Cannot handle cold is a bit extreme. My EV averages around 232 miles of range now (7 years old) charging to 80% is about 185-190 miles of range. When the temperatures dip to into the negatives, I can get about 110-120 miles comfortably (heat on/heated seats, heated wheel). Am I road tripping in that temperature range, no. But a daily commute and cold soaking in the office parking lot is still easily accomplished.
A while back we had a prolonged power outage and our supercharger was pretty backed up with people that couldn’t charge at home. My guess is the picture above is a similar situation. People running their cars down and then getting stuck in a supercharger line while their heater sucks down what little power they have left.
I agree, hydrogen technology and anything else that can bring sustainability to transportation is great, but saying one option we currently have available can’t work in heat or cold is a stretch.
This isn’t a battery problem per se as others have pointed out, these are temperatures where ICE vehicles would struggle to start.
The main reason why ICE vehicles struggle to start in the cold, is tied fairly closely to the battery.
There are some other parts that don’t like the cold, but the battery is by far the most sensitive.
The engine oil having the consistency of molasses isnt doing anyone any favors either.
Yep. C’mon people, think!
