Brrrr: Cars Don’t Love the Cold
Have you noticed changes in how your electric vehicle is performing in cold weather? Perhaps you’ve noted that a fully-charged battery doesn’t take you as far as it did in July. Or maybe it takes a bit longer to charge that cold battery.
These cold-weather trends are well-known to those in the electric vehicle industry. But, an important perspective: gasoline-powered cars and trucks also suffer performance issues during the winter. The blend of gasoline available during the winter months helps to start a vehicle in cold weather, but the overall performance is lower due to less energy density. Also, cold weather thickens oil, which reduces mileage.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s FuelEconomy.gov reports: “Fuel economy tests show that, in short-trip city driving, a conventional gasoline car’s gas mileage is about 12% lower at 20°F than it would be at 77°F. It can drop as much as 22% for very short trips (3 to 4 miles). The effect on hybrids is worse. Their fuel economy can drop about 31% to 34% under these conditions.”
“We all have a harder time in cold weather,” says Rick Wallace, who specializes in transportation at the Oregon Department of Energy. “I don’t go as far in this weather either, and I’m just walking!”
Wallace says the biggest challenge EV owners face is reduced range: “The average gasoline-powered car range is 420 miles. If I lose 20 percent of that, I can live with that. But if I have an older-model EV that can only go 80 miles, and I lose 20 percent of that, that might require a little more planning and awareness.”
Wallace added that as an example, the first Nissan LEAF in 2010 got about 84 miles per charge. The 2020 base LEAF gets an EPA-estimated 150 miles a charge, on average, and the 2020 LEAF Plus model with a larger battery can go up to 215 miles. Other EV models are getting closer to 350-mile ranges.
Sales of EVs in 2019 were off the charts, in Oregon and across the nation, said Wallace. In fact, Oregon has reached the halfway mark to our goal of 50,000 registered EVs by the end of 2020. As EVs and their lithium-ion batteries continue to improve, and as Oregon’s network of charging stations continues to grow, he thinks range anxiety will begin to disappear.
The good news is there are some things you can do to improve your mileage in winter, whether you drive gas, hybrid, or electric. Fueleconomy.gov explains all of the factors that affect cold weather mileage and steps you can take to get more bang for the buck!