Comment by maxerickson
12 hours ago
Most of the US Midwest sees -20 C for at least a brief period each winter. Having reduced functionality at those temps would be pretty inconvenient for the many car dependent people that live in the region.
12 hours ago
Most of the US Midwest sees -20 C for at least a brief period each winter. Having reduced functionality at those temps would be pretty inconvenient for the many car dependent people that live in the region.
-20C is feasible. Charging will take a bit longer because the heater will need to work a bit longer, but as long as the batteries can reach about freezing temperature, you're good.
Charging being a couple minutes slower a few weeks a year is a minor convenience. If you have a house with a garage, like many people in the US Midwest, I doubt it even poses a problem even on the worst days. It's more in the winter-long -35C areas that (purpose-built) combustion engines have obvious benefits.
Cold climates suffer more from cold batteries having reduced range, but with modern battery ranges the problem isn't even that extreme anymore.
Inconvenient for those people. About 8 billion other people don’t live in that type of weather.
They also mostly can't afford $25,000 cars.
About half of the world is within 3,300 km of a village in Burma, close to the Chinese border and not too far from Laos and Thailand.
China and India both have EVs much cheaper than we get in the EU. Like, "<€10k new" cheap.
What I do wonder about is how much of Africa can get EVs; I've only been once, to Nairobi over a decade ago, so take it with a pinch of anecdote-flavoured salt when I say that what I saw there was a lot of 20-30 year old vehicles.
Most of the people that can afford $25k cars do not live in places that go below -20C.
It entirely depends on the original range of the car.
Realistically you are looking at trimming 20->30% of the range. If you drive 20 miles a day but have a total range of 200 miles, then it's really not inconvenient. It only becomes inconvenient if you need to travel long distances.