Comment by sammularczyk
1 day ago
Might be true in some countries but EVs are rapidly becoming the highest sellers in many others. My experience is that once people experience an EV for the first time they prefer it over a hybrid/ICE car, unless there's a practical reason for needing hybrid range (which most people will argue but don't need day to day).
That was the case for me. We had one EV and one fossil fuel car for road trips. After driving the EV day to day it was so painful to use the other car that we decided to replace it with a second EV. A longer stop to recharge on a road trip once or twice a year is a small price to pay for the benefits of EV driving day to day.
I rented an EV (Ioniq) 2 years ago, to drive from Chicago to Detroit, and my experience was abysmal. I had to setup 3 different charging accounts on my phone, each with a min deposit of like $20 that I cannot get back. I got routed to empty truck stops where there was nowhere to eat within several miles, and it had charged 5% after 30 minutes, so we got back in the car and drove 20 minutes to find another charger. I spent so much of the trip with anxiety about where we would find a charger, if I would have cell coverage to download yet another shitty app, why the AC was turning off when I dropped below 10% battery, etc. Until I can roll up and swipe a credit card (or tap my phone) without ridiculous proprietary bs, EVs are a no-go. This is equivalent to Chrysler having Chrysler gas stations with Chrysler-only pumps that you must use the Chrysler app to fill up, and you can only buy gas in $100 increments.
This is why people buy Teslas. My experience on much larger road trips (Montana to TX or CA) is I would never, ever want to do one again in a petrol vehicle.
In my area of the country there is one very simple modification manufacturers could make to ensure their vehicles are wildly more useful: add diesel heaters. Heat the batteries and the people during the winters rather than using onboard power to do it. It would sip diesel and contribute hugely to utility. I am in the process of building my own because nobody makes one
Why? A lot of EVs these days comes with a heatpump so heating doesn’t use that much power. I live in a cold country where 98% of new cars are EVs and I have never heard anyone asking for something like this. A quick search on popular EV forums shows a few threads from 2010-2014. That’s it. I know webasto has a product like this, but there’s practically zero cars on the road with it installed.
Heat pumps are mostly useless when it is minus -20 C. Diesel heater is the most practical solution. Sodium or LMFP batteries will help, but even with them the range reduction in winter due to the need for heating and increased drag from cold air is just too great.
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if you get into standstill traffic in the winter, it's actually life-threatening not to have alternative power source that can warm up the passengers (and the battery). One interstate road I'm driving sometimes, has many abandoned Teslas sitting on the side of the road after a sleepless night of staying in traffic during some snow blizzard...
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Every ev already has this today, 10 years ago it was in some leading cars like teslas. Only the leaf and a few others didn't have battery heating and cooling, and the fact that so many think those problems are in all evs set back the whole market.
A 10 year old tesla can heat and cool the battery before leaving, you could set a daily time to heat it up, or just turn it on just before you go manually if you wished.
This feels like something that would be offered by US/Canada manufacturers as a niche option, and nowhere else. Norway seems to be coping just fine without it.
(China also has regions of extreme cold; it would be interesting to see how regional EV adoption/adaptation has happened there)
In high school, one of my friends had a VW (air cooled) with a torpedo heater installed that would heat the interior to 30 degrees C in a matter of minutes - no matter how cold it was outside.
Likewise, in university, my friend's army jeep had a gas heater that would melt snow off his canvas roof.
People are consuming 30% of their battery power to heat the vehicle and batteries - and that's with reduced battery range. It only makes sense to add a container for gas/diesel and a heater - really can't understand why manufacturers are against instant and very low cost heat as an option to protect range and increase safety (in case you're stranded in the winter with a depleted battery).
Best of luck adapting one to your vehicle.
It spends some battery, but my electric car heats much faster than my diesel cars ever did. Why on earth would I use a diesel heater that’s more expensive to run and slower?
Certainly it uses some battery energy to do that battery heating. If you have a plugin at. home, even a 120v one, you can just use your home power.
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Manufacturers don't do torpedo heaters outside of campers because they are a PITA. You need to find a place for the fuel tank and the fuel receptacle, for the heater itself, and you need an exhaust that requires clearance. And for a heater integrated into regular airflow routing it gets even more complex.
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Volvo's first electric car had this, I always thought it was neat (I rented one a few times through a car sharing service that had them) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_C30#C30_DRIVe_Electric_(...
EVs should always be plugged in. There is electricity wherever it is parked. Heating or cooling can be done using grid, instead of onboard battery.
EVs play a role in the energy ecosystem. They absorb excess production during the day and can supply power back to the grid by participating in a virtual power plant (VPP).
Webasto. They make a really decent little unit, easy to integrate too.
I have been waiting for a manufacturer to finally embrace this tech. I know electric buses already do it. I think people just have a mental barrier about this because EVs are supposed to be eco friendly.
I really hope you succeed
You mean wood pellet heaters. Then you can pretend it is CO2 neutral.
Yeah in a country like Norway, a country that became filthy rich from selling...oil.
I always have the feeling they're buying atonement for their sins.