Comment by the_gastropod
4 days ago
These problems are (imo) vastly overblown for the way most people drive. The only time the cold temperature reduced range / reduced charge speed are relevant is for long road trips where you’re driving > ~200mi at once. Otherwise, you just charge up at home overnight and easily recoup any normal driving range you used during the day, regardless of the temperature.
Norwegians have apparently figured this out. Despite being pretty damn cold, they’re buying EV’s almost exclusively now (97%).
Norway is not damn cold. It sits next to a warm, Gulf-stream ocean. Rarely gets much (<-10 Celsius) below freezing.
Finland, that's another thing.
Around 38% of new cars sales in Finland in 2025 were EVs [1], so they apparently have figured out how to make them work. PHEVs were another 20%. Gas cars were around 39%, and diesel cars were about 4%.
[1] https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/general-i...
EVs work in cold weather, just the range is reduced.
If it is a second car in the family, used for short range commuting ... or if your lifestyle does not involve frequent long-distance trips, EV is perfectly suitable even in Finland.
In those countries most people own a house so they can plug in every night.
Where I live it's all apartments (without parking because they were built before cars existed) and there's maybe one charging station on the street per 300 spaces or so. A few more in parking garages but you pay hundreds a month to access those.
I don't think an EV will work here until every space has a charger.
Sounds like you might live in a sensible place where you probably don’t need a car at all. That’s the ideal! Unfortunately, much of, e.g., the U.S. (outside of ~4 cities), “cities” are built around individual car ownership. There, where a car is pretty much necessary, and you likely already have a dedicated spot to store it, it often makes sense to choose an EV version.
As others said, Norway isn't that cold - the ocean is pretty warm. That does mean, however, that the temperature varies greatly with how far you are from the sea. Go far enough inland and it can get cold. -30C or, even these days, some places much colder, though only for shorter periods now (global warming). Most places are barely as cold as -10C, which isn't much of a problem for batteries. And it's often a bit warmer.