<\/p>\n
A publication that shall not be named (merely linked to) published an opinion piece that is the latest in a string of false narratives around EVs. This opinion (I mean act of subterfuge<\/em>) couches EVs as a luxury item in cold-weather countries because the batteries don\u2019t work as well as on the balmy shores of California. Please join me on this debunking tour. Sure, many EVs are, in fact, luxury vehicles; you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find an EV that\u2019s under $40,000. But the state of luxury is not down to their ability to operate in a dusting of snow and with a nip of frost in the air.<\/p>\n Put simply, all mechanical objects with liquids in them hate cold weather. Metals contract, liquids get goopy or freeze up altogether, and none of that is convenient. That includes cars. I grew up in Norway, and in cold weather, cars need to be plugged into a block heater. Yes, that includes diesel cars in particular (because they don\u2019t have a spark plug, only a glow plug to get the cycle started), and gasoline cars. So, humans live in places where machines are unhappy, but we\u2019ve been finding workarounds for as long as we\u2019ve had machines to drive around in.<\/p>\n Indeed, batteries don\u2019t love the cold either; their range can drop by 10% to 15% due to the temperature, and if you\u2019re driving around with your heater on full blast so you don\u2019t turn into an icicle yourself, that range drop can be significantly more significant. Not ideal, for sure, but in a universe where average commutes are a lot less than the average range of a modern electric vehicle, this isn\u2019t nearly as big of a deal as you would think.<\/p>\n Besides, a lot of modern EVs (including Teslas) have the option to precondition the battery before you drive off. This effectively means that the car warms up the batteries before you drive off. Yes, that takes power, but guess watt, a lot of the time, your car is going to be plugged in and charging when the scheduled preconditioning happens. It uses a bit of power (much like that block heater I mentioned), but your car can charge while it\u2019s doing that, so it\u2019s taking the power from the grid rather than from the car\u2019s batteries.<\/p>\n The main point I have an issue with in the original article is whether EVs are a luxury in cold climates. We are in a nascent but rapidly evolving world of electric vehicles. Like all emergent technology, there will be people whose use cases are compatible with the limitations of the new technology and there will be people who can\u2019t live with the cons. Yes, it takes longer to charge an EV than it does to fill a gas tank. You can probably do a longer road trip in a gas car than in an EV. For hauling heavy loads, diesel is probably an easier-to-deal-with source of fuel than a truck full of batteries. For most drivers, though, now is the time to seriously consider an electric vehicle.<\/p>\n The biggest challenge is charging infrastructure, and the U.S. is lagging behind on that front; available chargers aren\u2019t increasing as quickly as the number of EVs on the road. At-home chargers are tricky in areas where people don\u2019t have dedicated parking spots, but that\u2019s changing, too. London\u2019s plan to put on-street infrastructure in place, for example, is looking promising. There are even companies that are using excess power from streetlights to enable load-balanced charging infrastructure, which dramatically reduces the need for new cabling. Work places are, more and more, putting EV charging infrastructure in place as well, which cuts the range anxiety in half; if you can get yourself to work, you can get yourself home again.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But here\u2019s an important stat: When you think \u201ccold weather country,\u201d you\u2019re probably thinking Scandinavia. Take Norway. The most recent numbers available suggest that more than 91% of all cars sold are electric vehicles. In Oslo (where most people live, and which isn\u2019t even that far north, given the overall geography of the country), in December, January, and February, it freezes most nights, but people get by just fine with their electric cars.<\/p>\n Of course, Norway is not the same (economically or infrastructure-wise) as the U.S., but electrification of our personal transportation options will be a crucial part of ensuring that we stand a chance at battling climate change. Let\u2019s be aware of the shortcomings and limitations of electric cars, but most of the arguments against them in cold weather are entirely surmountable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A publication that shall not be named (merely linked to) published an opinion piece that is the latest in a string of false narratives around EVs. This opinion (I mean act of subterfuge) couches EVs as a luxury item in cold-weather countries because the batteries don\u2019t work as well as on the balmy shores of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1199822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}