How to drive an electric car in cold weather?
Expect a reduced range for winter electric vehicles. It’s a fact all the vehicle would have reduced winter efficiency. IC engine vehicles would have limited range due to indoor heating energy usage.
How to address reduced EV range problem? The following are a few activities that help the TSLA (TSLA stock) electric cars get the full during cold weather.
# 1 Keep the vehicle plugged wherever possible
Try charging the vehicle whenever possible to keep the battery charged and get full range. Winter’s probability of range anxiety will be more. Be mindful of the battery charge and try plug-in as far as possible. During cold weather, the vehicle range can decrease around 40%.
# 2 Use car preconditioning feature
This preconditioning features electric vehicle inside and battery pack heat before starting the vehicle. The vehicle then uses the charging station’s energy instead of the energy contained in the battery.
Since EVs can use the power from the charging station itself to warm up, not much will affect the vehicle range.
# 3 Try vehicle in hot places
If your garage is hot, keep the electric vehicle there. The effect of cold weather must be prevented and the temperature of the battery, interior, etc. can be maintained at a safe level by keeping the car hot during winter.
If necessary, park the vehicle at sunlight. Sunlight heat will also help get a little warm inside and outside the electric car.
# 4 Try ‘Eco’ mode
If the car has an Eco operating mode that increases the range, consider using winter mode. Ultimately, eco-mode seeks to minimise vehicle energy consumption. In the eco mode, the energy used in the air conditioner, the driver’s torque request, etc. would be reduced.
# 5 Ensure regenerative braking
The regenerative braking feature stores back energy to the battery when braking the vehicle. It’s always safer to use regenerative braking at its full potential during winter.
# 6 Reduce car heater use
A research by the American Automotive Association reveals that the car heater decreases the electric vehicle range by up to 41%.
They had analyzed the car’s output during winter (climate control on and off) and the reduction in range for climate-controlled cars was about 12%. Try to use the car’s winter clothes and minimize heater use to improve the range of electric cars.
High-efficiency Electric vehicles
What is efficiency? Considering the power transfer from the battery to the EV wheels, performance will be much higher than IC engine vehicles.
IC engines have around 26% thermal efficiency. In certain highly modified engines, such as race engines, the efficiency is 34%.
However, the performance range of electric motors, which is about 70-95 percent, could not beat. If all losses are taken care of, we might assume that Electric Cars converts 60% of energy from grid to wheel of a vehicle, while traditional gasoline vehicles convert just 17-21% of energy from fuel to wheels. You can get more information of Tesla from TSLA news.
Conclusion
Now you know about the ways to deal with reduced range of EV in winter. Why an EV is better in winter was addressed while driving an electric vehicle, etc.