Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t gringojay – An ice storm and accident stranded drivers in freezing conditions on the Virginia I-95 overnight on Monday. My question – what would have happened if they were all driving electric vehicles?
27-hour commute: Virginia officials pelted with questions after hundreds of drivers were stuck on I-95 overnight
Ryan W. MillerDoyle Rice USA TODAY
The winter storm blanketed several states in the mid-Atlantic and South on Monday, closing schools and causing power outages.
In Virginia, drivers were stranded in a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 95 near Fredericksburg overnight. Five deaths across three states were caused by the weather.
Ice and snow stranded hundreds of drivers on Interstate 95 in Virginia into Tuesday after a winter storm pounded several Eastern states and dumped more than a foot of snow in some places.
The storm brought havoc to roadways, left more than 300,000 without power in Virginia and Maryland and caused at least five deaths across three states.
No injuries or fatalities from the storm or the traffic backup were reported in Virginia.
Problems began Monday morning when a truck jackknifed on Interstate 95, the main north-south highway along the East Coast, triggering a swift chain reaction as other vehicles lost control, state police said.
On a roughly 50-mile stretch of I-95 near Fredericksburg, drivers were stuck in their cars overnight while ice blanketed the freeway. The Virginia Department of Transportation tweeted Tuesday that the stretch of the interstate remained closed.
…
Josh Lederman, a reporter with NBC News, tweeted that he was stuck in his car overnight and many motorists turned off their cars to conserve gas.
“People (myself included) are taking exercise breaks outside their cars, walking their dogs on the interstate. I’ve been putting snow in his bowl and letting it melt into water,” he tweeted, detailing the ordeal.
Sen. Kaine finally arrived in Washington Tuesday afternoon, some 27 hours after his journey began.
…
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/01/04/winter-storm-power-outages-interstate-95-virginia/9087146002/
Drivers survived the Monday traffic jam by periodically running their engines to stay warm. When the traffic finally started moving again, most vehicles had enough gasoline to finish their journeys.
President Biden is pushing everyone to switch to electric vehicles, as part of his Net Zero plan. But EV batteries suffer severe performance drops in freezing conditions, and are more likely than gasoline engines to fail completely in severe conditions. Even if the EV batteries don’t freeze, an EV battery contains nowhere near as much energy as a tank of gas, so the safety margin is a lot thinner, for people stranded in severe weather who are using the stored energy of their vehicle to stay warm.
In my opinion, if everyone stuck on the I-95 had been driving an EV, the I-95 ice storm traffic jam could have become a mass casualty event.
No problem for Huawei Aito M5
Why is that? Does it pull a diesel generator?
It’s a hybrid. Hybrid automobiles have internal-combustion engines.
Ahh I don’t know my vehicles
Nope, you do know your cars.
“The AITO M5 is Huawei’s first range-extender (EREV) EV using its HarmonyOS operating system. Range extender means it is a PHEV (Plug-in hybrid cars) the petrol engine’s only purpose is to charge the battery. The maximum range is 1200km according to Huawei. There will be three versions available and sold via Huawei stores.”
In other words the ICE is only used to ‘top up’ the battery, the main power comes from plugging it into a power source and, in the case of a car stranded on a highway for several hours, that would mean, as you say, a diesel generator.
It might get 1200km under ideal conditions (warm, but not too warm, with windows wound up, on an uninterrupted cruise along a perfect tarmacadam road surface), but stationary, in freezing conditions, with heaters on it will fare little better than any other EV.
When the battery is depleted to a certain level, not fully, the car will demand to be plugged in as the ICE can’t ‘charge’ it as such, only extend its range slightly by trickle charge.
Hybrid ‘lite’ cars, in other words conventional engined cars with a 48v battery, make sense. They provide perhaps 20 miles of urban electric running before the engine kicks in to run the car and charge the battery. They retain, largely, conventional fuel loads.
Communist Car for the masses…
An old idea. Diesel electric locomotives on railways date back to the 1930s. Although development start a couple of decades before that.
Diesel electric locomotives have no batteries in the driveline. The “electric” nomenclature refers to the electric transmission. The Diesel engine runs a generator (alternator recently) that feeds an electric motor that lies beside an axle and drives the wheels through a fixed ratio gearset. Some locomotives have electric motors on each axle and others drive some of the axles with some axles undriven. This configuration wins over mechanical or hydraulic transmissions when pulling a 10,000 ton train at speeds from zero. (careful letting that clutch out!)
Electric locomotives started to become popular around the year 1900, especially after steam locomotives were banned in Manhattan in 1908.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaufman_Act
To my knowledge, the Green Goat was the only truly hybrid locomotive and it was a market failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railpower_GG20B
PLEASE to NOT point to the failures, for these HIGHLY (LACK OF COMMON) educated ones will call you a liar.
Diesel Electric submarines have been around for a very long time. Modern air independent diesel electric submarine equipped with hydrogen fuel cells extend the submarines dived endurance..
120kw is a pretty tiny supply for a submarine.
Power required is measured in megawatts.
Diesel generators for submarines are rated in megawatts.
Air Independent Propulsion – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
For example:
The USS Shark (SS-314) produced ~4MW on the surface and ~2MW submerged.
And diesel-electric powered submarines.
Those diesel electric trains are still in operation.
But, the battery isn’t the sole power source.
The diesel generator supplies the motive energy levels for the engine. Looking at the electric box is like looking at a major substation distribution control box.
Why?
It’s easier to supply energy to sub-motors located along the length of the train. So, all of the train’s motion isn’t dependent upon a few wheels located under the engine.
EVERYONE please buy these vehicle’s. WE NEED natural selection to work its magic. I believe the hybrids would run out of fuel…WE NEED you to use these. Please rely on windmills & solar.
For most countries EV recharging is from fossil fuelled power station generators which highlights the old saying about a perfect solution for a problem that didn’t exist.
Toyota appear to be world leaders in Hybrid technology, others catching up, and for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Hybrid technology.
They already produce a sedan car with fuel cell energy driving electric motors, but refuelling stations are few and far between.
The Federal Government of Australia’s “Future Fuels” policy includes provision of infrastructure to supply drivers with recharging for batteries and refuelling with Hydrogen stations around the nation, but relying on the private sector to complete the supply chain as the above vehicles increase as a percentage of the transport fleet.
Unlike ice, the only power they would use would be the radio 4 ways possibly, and cabin heat, maybe just the seat warmers. Very little draw.
That was completely content-free advertisement.
SPAM, please delete, moderators.
But wait, Al Gore said there will be no snow with CAGW! No snow, no ice, no problem!
The children won’t know what snow is…yet heavier snowfalls are ‘consistent with’ global warming.
The hypothesis that “predicts” everything, including diametrically opposed outcomes, is bullshit, not science.
No problem for Uber….
Uber rider gets $600 bill after interstate shutdown – Washington Times
Consumer response to the above advertisement by Alex:
*********************************************
“I’m not doing that to my family.“
*********************************************
(Andy Mansell on this thread)
Unless they get market share by fiat, electric vehicles are DEAD.
If China desires they could easily soak up all the lithium production for years building these things, mainly for use internally in China.
That would be a real finger to the global warming fanatics.
Specious claims!
Seres, is the manufacture.
The alleged engine is solely to charge the battery.
Meaning there will be energy losses charging a cold battery. Energy losses for the battery to heat the car.
The weather dropped to 10°F, or 12.2°C with wind chill temperatures at 0°F or -17.8°C.
Your Seres passengers, depending on their attire, many regular vehicle passengers were in business attire without heavy coats, would be dead.
I usually like your commentary but here you’re wrong unfortunately. An idling standard EV with heater, lights etc on would need 1-2 kWh per hour. So in most models available today you can easily run it for a day or two, which is not very different than a petrol/diesel vehicle idling non-stop.
1 to 2 kWh wouldn’t be enough to warm up a car by more than about 10 degrees or so, assuming there is no wind.
Your numbers are off by at least an order of magnitude.
It does help when most EV’s use heat pumps for heating/cooling, power use is less than the rated energy moved. But these don’t perform as well in freezing conditions & with no heat to scavenge from motors/battery/electronics they would normally have when highway driving or stop & start through the side roads. How many would be running with about 25% spare battery capacity not knowing how long the delay will be.
A Canadian tested it parked outside overnight and sleeping in it. With the car at 68°F.
At 1.4°F or a 66.6°F difference, the Model 3, averaged 2.4 kWh per hour.
At -7.6°F or a 75.6°F temperature difference, the Model Y averaged 3.8 kWh used per hour
Another guy tested it in his driveway for hours with the car set at 70 degrees
At 37.4°F or a 32.6°F difference, the car averaged 0.735 kWh per hour
They have very good heat pumps in them nowadays and not just resistive heating.
Actually, driving the car will use much less energy because it uses the waste heat from the motors/computer/inverter. At highway speeds, there is like 1 kW to 2 kW of wast heat for it to use.
https://driveteslacanada.ca/model-y/tesla-model-y-camping-cold-weather-efficiency-test/
https://youtu.be/GRubEJh_5gs
I have a nissan leaf. 300W through the heat pump easily keeps a 40 degree temp differential between cabin and outside. I agree with Art, the EV might be more efficient since you are not keeping a big block metal under the hood at ~220F radiating away your stored energy.
Fantasy claims.
What you get while driving down the road during warm weather is immaterial when the battery temperature is less than 15°F.
Plus, without the car in motion your heat exchanger is trying to dump cold without significant air flow.
It is common for heat exchanger condensers to freeze solid and shut down when their energy exchange during cold weather is blocked.
Batteries are most uncooperative during cold conditions as they charge poorly and are quickly drained.
ICE engines are using fuel with a very high energy density. Something, at which batteries are very poor.
The batteries have very low thermal mass and in a Tesla they have a very good heating/cooling system.
A Canadian tested it parked outside overnight and sleeping in it. With the car at 68°F.
At 1.4°F or a 66.6°F difference, the Model 3, averaged 2.4 kWh per hour.
At -7.6°F or a 75.6°F temperature difference, the Model Y averaged 3.8 kWh used per hour
Another guy tested it in his driveway for hours with the car set at 70 degrees
At 37.4°F or a 32.6°F difference, the car averaged 0.735 kWh per hour
They have very good heat pumps in them nowadays and not just resistive heating.
Actually, driving the car will use much less energy because it uses the waste heat from the motors/computer/inverter. At highway speeds, there is like 1 kW to 2 kW of wast heat for it to use.
https://driveteslacanada.ca/model-y/tesla-model-y-camping-cold-weather-efficiency-test/
https://youtu.be/GRubEJh_5gs
Does the EV driver dare turn on the radio – for information?
Or look for the nonexistent heater
That question should be asked to the gas drivers. Not to the evs which start their day fully charged
https://youtu.be/i3E0t0kGeug
No!
If you read some of the interviews with people stuck on I95, there are many whose trip on I95 was just one errand in a day of many errands.
Anyone who drove to work in DC that day likely drove their between 5AM and 7AM.
Then on their return trip home, they got caught in the I95 morass, where every North/South route was either blocked by accidents or blocked by non-working lights as power was out and the lights dead or blocked by fallen trees.
The real storm was between 4AM and 1PM. Most drivers heading to work in DC made it easily.
When the tractor trailers crashed or jackknived was later in the day.
We lost power at 10:30AM. Many of the power losses occurred between 9AM and 1PM.
Virtually no-one had a fully charged EV before they got caught in the I95 morass.
The problem in the I95 debacle is that people assume that traffic is moving, so they can just keep going, until they can’t keep going. In moderate climates, people don’t know when to call it good and get off the road, even if it means you’re stuck in a Walmart parking lot over night.
There are traffic information signs every couple of miles just south of the DC beltway so people should have been warned. However the signs were warning people to wear masks.
I am not sure whether to laugh or cry…remember masks save lives 😉
“…masks save lives”, do you mean like you can burn the paper ones to stay warm?
JUST S.Y.HEAD & wait.
Fox Report on this – Joseph Catalano added. “We had absolutely no idea what we were going into,” “You had all these fancy signs on the highway [saying], ‘Mask up, mask up’, ‘Save lives, mask up.’ Turn the signs on and say, ‘Turn around,’, ‘50-mile backup,’ you know something.”
The only thing funnier would have been if the signs were dead because they were powered by ice covered solar panels.
The problem is, when you do end up in a traffic jam in the miles between exits on a road like I-95, getting off the road and into a Walmart parking lot often isn’t an option. You can’t go forward to the next exit because of the accident blocking the high way somewhere in front of you and you can’t go backwards to the previous exit because of the miles of cars stopped behind you. You are just stuck where you are. literally.
Most electronically equipped vehicles have thermocouple temperature indicators. The instant you see 33 deg. F that the time to exit the highway.
That’s insane! The country would shut down even further than it is if people did that!
Obviously someone from a place that never has Winter! The Northern USA would shut down for months in some years if they followed that logic.
My temperature indicator displayed -3 F during a recent deep freeze here in the American Midwest. I kept driving. Because I had a gasoline-powered truck that was already warm, both the interior and the engine. And there was no reason to stop. The wonderful thing about a heat engine like an ICE is… it generates heat. Apart from otherworldly deepfreeze temperatures, nothing will stop an ICE engine from continuing to run. An electric truck, though, would be dead immediately. And shortly thereafter, it’s occupants.
Not as bad here in the UK, but this problem occurred to me recently when I was sat on a Motorway for a couple of hours due to an accident. It was a pain for sure, but we had a nice comfy car, food and drink which we’d taken for the journey, media and a tank full of gas so we sat with the engine running and kept warm if nothing else. If we’d succumbed to the demands of the local ‘Climate Action Group’ and bought an EV we would have struggled to stay warm and likely not been able to make it to our destination once things got moving normally again. I’m not doing that to my family.
NATURAL SELECTION
Usable battery capacity is reduced while the battery is cold but returns to normal when it warms back up. So there are some limits but you can easily discharge at C/10 when 0C (32F). Some battery power wasted to heat battery to safe temp. Some reduced life if charged or high rate discharged below -10C.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40565-015-0115-1
Even the otherworldly deep freeze temperatures are often manageable. The American Midwest is “south” to me. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks with our high temperatures not cresting -20C (-18C =0F) and our lows in the -30s with no consideration of wind. My ICE car starts no problem.
Were I to take Carbon Bigfoot’s advice, I wouldn’t drive for a stretch of time about 4-5 months long.
clearly CBF does not live the real world of 4 season weather. Most of interior Canada would be shut down from December to March with that advice, much of Montana, the Dakotas, Great Lakes to New England can go many weeks with continuous below freezing weather.
So now you are saying that EVs are only usable from June to August in large parts of the US? Sort of like solar panels are only good about 4 hours a day in the north.
Even in sunny Australia rooftop solar performs best on cooler clear days between 10 am and 2 pm, so 4 hours in every 24 hours for best energy result, minimal from sun up to sun down.
And on very hot days minimal performance.
When I visited an Australian who was living and working in Minneapolis-St Paul USA city roads were often closed in winter and radio broadcast warnings for motorists to avoid them. Cars parked outside or in a garage were connected to electricity for warming plugs into engines and even start-stop engine equipment to avoid non-starts.
To the 31 negative responses you can’t see your nose in front of your face. This applies when the freezing rain is in process. At 33 deg F and dropping, exit the highway because the road surface is about to freeze. The rest of you deserve to sit on 95 overnight for being terminally stupid, that includes rah, Spetzer86 I live in NE PA, leowaj, Will Ford get your collective heads out of your asses and do some thinking—I forgot you are terminally stupid–my bad.
You don’t understand how freezing rain works. You can have freezing rain at 35 plus degrees if the ground is cold enough. You can have regular rain at 30 that doesn’t freeze because the ground is warm. The air temp doesn’t solely determine what a road surface is going to do.
LMAOOOOOOOOOOfffffff
And when your indicator drops to 33 deg. F seconds after you pass one exit with the next exit being many miles away you’ll still end up in the traffic jam that happens inbetween those two exits regardless of how many people you project your own terminal stupidity onto.
Alternatively, get an NiMH battery equipped Hybrid and you’ll have even more fuel to spare, both to keep warm, plus more range available. You can even go to sleep in a hybrid and the engine will automatically self-start from time to time to keep the car and engine warm and the battery fully charged, and warm also.
I think the point being made is that the greenies are demanding an end to use of all fossil fuels. How well would a hybrid do if you can’t have an ICE with gas in the tank?
Save the planet
Burn a Green!
And you believed that will occur?
High efficiency ICE will not idle to warm, and will not charge the battery while idling.
My 50+ MPG 2003 VW TDI would cool from Normal Operating Temperature to COLD while idling at a stop light.
My current vehicle, that replaced the VW, an 6,000# Efficient Dynamics BMW X5 DIESEL charges the battery ONLY on overrun – trailing throttle or alternator spin down on its one way clutch. ALL other times the alternator only maintains accessory loads, maintains battery current ZERO, It also has a 1,000 Watt electric heater on until NOT and over which the operator has no direct control.
Then it’s not as good in that aspect as a Prius. Upgrade the Prius with a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery (there are DIY kits for the 2nd and 3rd gen models and some Lexus hybrids using the same NiMH modules) and it’ll do even better.
Yea, I do that all the time when I buy a new car, put a new engine in it……..
It’s a dealer level option, and also an internet ordering option.
Why won’t Toyota do it?
They do.
Well, I have a Honda Accord hybrid, and it most certainly does charge the battery while sitting still. The ICE is autonomously controlled by the car’s computer, and it runs if it’s cold, or if the battery needs to be charged above the minimum limit. It also is the most fuel efficient car I’ve ever owned.
I assume it’s not a plug in hybrid, therefore it has a conventional engine with a (probably) 48v battery that can run it for 20 miles or so.
A plug in hybrid is basically an EV with a small engine dedicated to providing a small trickle charge to extend the range.
It is not a plug-in. The battery will run the car for ~1.5 miles at 55mph. Basically, the battery exists to recover kinetic energy. The ICE is 2L Atkinson Cycle rated ~150 HP and always runs at it’s most efficient load, whatever that is at the moment. The electric motor is always engaged with the road (no clutch). The ICE has a single over-running clutch that can engage with the road above ~45 MPH.
Yep, so as I described, a conventional car with a big battery. Nothing wrong with them in my opinion.
Just one of my problem with EV’s and plug in hybrids is that 45% of UK houses don’t have off street parking, including me. I have no idea how I would charge an EV.
The greens blather on about charging points using lamp posts, but these run at something like 40 amps on a 240v main. But I’m not the only one needing a charge, so the whole main back to the sub station has to be upgraded, including the sub station.
Then we have the problem of clusters of cars around lamp posts. How is that managed? The roads and pavements in the UK are narrow so not much chance of building dedicated charging areas and how much expense would be involved in building those every few hundred yards?
I don’t have much against EV’s (other than dragging half a ton of battery around) but there are problems that simply can’t be overcome.
Someone near us has an EV and charges it by trailing the cable across the pavement in a hi-vis metal case that looks like a mini speed hump. It has yellow stripes so can be seem, but it’s still in the way- no chance of a wheelchair getting over one without assistance and you’d struggle with a pram. Imagine that every twenty-thirty feet? Still, as long as we can virtue signal…
And in houses in cities that have front gardens how many are going to be paved over to provide a charging space for one or more cars and thereby contributing to water run off and urban flooding?
Yes, the Honda system is like an electric train with a lock-up function for cruising and a battery to recover/add extra torque.
The Toyota system ‘fights’ two motors (with a similar battery assist) through a set of differential gears.
They are both rather technically interesting and very efficient.
The 48V ‘strap on’ (belt-drive) systems seem to me to add a lot of mass/complexity for minimal gain. Plus they retain the complexity/mass of a regular transmission system.
No, plug-in hybrids typically have a fuel-efficient IC engine that completely takes over when the 15 to 50 mile battery runs out of juice. The IC engine is powerful enough to get along fine without the battery and motor. Some early plug-ins did have a small engine that only charged the battery (like the BMW i3) but they were unpopular and have been, for the most part, discontinued.
There are very few plug-in hybrids in the US that operate as you describe. The BMW i3 was one and is being discontinued.
The Prius plug-in (Prius Prime), for example, is most certainly not “an EV with a small engine dedicated to providing a small trickle charge to extend the range.” It is a standard Prius hybrid with a larger battery capacity that can run on battery-only upon start-up for limited distances and near highway speeds.
Prius does highway speeds just as well as any other registered 4 cylinder. I’v used one long-distance at highway speed routinely. No effort at all. What the engine does bears little relationship to the speed you’re going.
The ICE engine and battery ensure you have sufficient extra power to get past slower traffic quickly because the battery is regularly topped up, plus the ice engine can provide generator power directly to the wheels, for overtaking, and the battery can discharge its power at the same time. You get the power from both, not just from the battery. The power and torque levels to get past quickly is good. The presumption highway performance is feeble is simply BS.
In addition to not knowing the difference between an EV battery and a hybrid battery, you obviously don’t know how a Prius works. At highway speeds, the IC engine (not ICE engine, that’s repetitive) is coupled mechanically to the driven wheels. At highway speeds Prii don’t get motive power from the ICE driving the generator which drives the electric motor – the wheels are driven directly by the ICE. The engine RPM is decoupled from the highway speed because the Prius uses a unique type of continuously variable transmission – it keeps the ICE RPM either at its most efficient speed or revs it up to produce more power when needed.
For someone who knows so little about cars, you certainly post a lot of stuff that indicates that you think you do.
“A plug in hybrid is basically an EV with a small engine dedicated to providing a small trickle charge to extend the range.”
Not necessarily.
I have a 2012 Prius plug-in, and the only difference between that and the non-plug-in is a larger battery pack. Once you’ve run through the extra battery (~12 miles), it acts as a normal hybrid in all aspects. Meaning the ICE engine kicks in on faster acceleration, or if sitting idle, to keep the heater warm and charge the battery up a bit.
Mine does.
A quick interweb search gives absolutely zero results for such a product
My wife and I own two hybrids from two different manufacturers that do this. In fact, it’s a hazard. My wife parked her car in our attached garage, forgot to shut it off (as the engine wasn’t running when she parked it), so it started up a bit later to keep the engine warm during the night. Despite the garage being sealed, our Carbon Monoxide detector in the house went off in the middle of the night. My car is designed to start the engine immediately and rev it up if you get out of the car without shutting it off. You are alerted to what you’ve done but can still do it if that’s what you want. Hers doesn’t do that.
You’d have to leave the key fob in the car for it to keep automatically running.
It probably depends on the car. My 2012 Prius doesn’t require that. But it does let out a series of beeps when you close the door with the system on.
No you don’t. My car does NOT shut off if you leave the car with your key in your pocket. If it did, the car could shut off while driving if the key fob battery happens to run out of juice.
You seem to make stuff up a lot.
It’s true. I do Doordash and Uber Eats in my Prius, and that’s exactly how it works.
Or you can just leave your ICE running, set the climate control to keep you comfortable and go to sleep.
Which is what I was trying to say. I’ve slept in mine a couple of times waiting for people. Very comfortable recline seats for that. The aircon or a heater is continuous either way, and the engine pops on to top up the battery, then turns itself off again. No human intervention or monitoring. Plus the battery is in the same passenger compartment with you, so how the hell is it going to get cold, if you never do?
So yes, the Toyota is implicitly designed to keep the battery as warm as you are.
And I would feel a lot better about being in a hybrid, if stuck in snow, as with an ice vehicle, if you do fall asleep, which is going to happen, and forget to run the engine, then your battery and water jacket can freeze solid, so the ice engine will not start, then you’re in a life-threatening situation. Forget that, I’ll have a Hybrid thanks.
Not sure what you searched for, but you could–you know–ask a human being who owns a hybrid. We would tell you it’s true.
That is just your lack of knowledge of the topic, which is not preventing you from making more misleading remarks though.
I would agree that hybrid is the way to go. But it must be designed so the ICE engine is a primary driver, not just an adjunct to run auxiliary equipment and be used as the driver only in extremis.
If hybrids are so great, then why do they need to be susidized? Let the market decide.
You’re running two propulsion systems hence they are more expensive. With Trump gas prices you never make up the extra capital cost of a hybrid.
Mine wasn’t.
I bought mine used, so it wasn’t either 😉
Hybrid lite.
Plug in hybrids are EV’s with a trickle charge ICE not used for motive power.
No they aren’t. See my response to you above.
Again, not true for plug-in hybrids, at least not the one I own. The plug-in part just gives you a small range (~12 miles) for short commutes. Beyond that, it’s a full hybrid.
Exactly, the plugin aspect is just a fairly useless ADD-ON to a standard hybrid, but it does provide enough electrons in the battery to get to work in a small city without using the ICE engine at all. About 15 km range from it without needing the engine.
Other than that, there’s no difference at all with the regular hybrid. And frankly, almost no one but a hard core greenie will bother to plug it in after the first month of ownership.
Yes. I’ve plugged mine in a few times just to see what it was like. And in cold weather, it’s especially not worth while.
That is not correct.
Someone gave you at least one downvote. Apparently they have no clue about the vast majority of plug-in hybrids. I bumped you back up to zero.
No worries, mate, that’s how they’re designed (with the exception of the BMW i3, mentioned in a thread above).
The hybrid ice engine is the primary drive! It just doesn’t use a clutch, or a gearbox, or a driveshaft and uni joint into a differential. This tech is 23 years old now and people still comment about it, but don’t know how they work.
The ice engine drives a generator, and onl’y a generator only, and that generator drives the wheels directly.
The generator can also use its excess electrons to charge the battery simultaneously. And despite the constant lies, the battery is not small. When the battery is full the engine can go to idle, or just turn off.
If you then put the foot-down to pass at highway speed, both the engine turns on instantly and revs to max revs, and the generator maxes its output to the wheels.
Plus the battery discharges simultaneously into the same electric drive motors, to provide more power than you’ll need to pass a car quickly, at highway speed.
There’s no lag in the power delivery, the torque is strong, so it accelerates quickly without the lag you get waiting for the ICE-only car to make power and torque, or use a gear box kick down to get it sooner.
It is a motor/generator not a “only a generator only” (hah “They mostly come out at night mostly” – Aliens).
It drives the wheels when accelerating (operating as a motor) and it reverses energy flow and charges the battery when decelerating (operating as a generator).
The ICE can kick on to feed power into the M/G to recharge the battery when necessary (operating in generator mode) or to add power to the wheels when more power than the M/G (operating in motor mode) can generate is needed.
I’ve been told that the ICE AND the electric motor can drive the wheels at the same time. Or one or the other as needed.
I have stop start technology in my VW Tiguan diesel (and every other car I have had over the last 10 – 15 years) which restarts automatically when necessary. On a full tank of diesel it would probably last for a week when stationary.
What kind of hybrid vehicle do you propose, a plug in or a hybrid (lite)?
Get a plug in and it’s an EV with a small ICE to provide a trickle charge to extend the range slightly. The ICE isn’t designed to charge the battery (pointless it being plug in if it could) and it won’t provide much of a trickle, stationary, in freezing weather with heaters on full blast.
The battery will deplete and before it’s fully exhausted it will demand to be plugged in. Doesn’t matter how much fuel you have for the ICE, the car will shut down.
You’re years out of date. What you’re claiming is no longer true. See my response to you above.
With the Prius it never was true. The plug-in portion is only for short-range drives. After that, it’s a full hybrid.
Agreed. There were some cars (the BMW i3, for example) that worked like HotScot claimed, but those cars have either been discontinued or are about to be discontinued. It’s just too big of an efficiency hit to charge the battery with the engine running a generator and then run the car 100% off the battery at all times vs. using the engine to drive the car directly by coupling the engine to the wheels mechanically like the Prius does (and almost all other plug-ins and hybrids) when the car is cruising at a relatively steady speed.
Correct the plugin option was an addition, on top of the regular version, from about 2011 forward. For god’s sake they even had a model with a solar panel on the roof that kept the car cool, when you were away shopping on a sunny day. These were just expensive add-ons to the standard model.
2012 but who’s counting?
There must have been some or quite a few Ev’s in the jam?
Only 7% of adults surveyed in 2020 said they currently own a EV or Hybrid and outside of a few major metropolitan areas, electric vehicles (EVs) aren’t all that common in the U.S (and most of those are in California). Electric vehicles represent less than 1% of vehicles on American roads today. At the end of 2021, just over 10 million vehicles on the road worldwide were battery electric vehicles. There are about 289 million vehicles in total on the road in just the US,
In short, EVs are a very small niche of the market. So while there may have been a very small number of EVs in the jam, there likely was not as many as you seem to image there was.
There was a time when the same division existed between horses and gasoline-powered automobiles. I haven’t seen a horse at the grocery store for years.
Which has F-all to do with how many (if any) EVs were caught up in this particular event. So your “point” is rather pointless to the conversation that you jumped into.
Perhaps they have people to do their shopping for them?
HAHA
I do, all the time. Get out of your little bubble more.
Check the meat aisle in a number of EU grocery stores…
You will see the horses when the middle class and the poor are priced out of the new and used car market and work trucks don’t work as promised. Maybe that is the unrevealed third stage of the planning document from the advocacy groups.
Have you priced a horse recently. Plus the upkeep. Not a solution for the poor.
We are not yet at the stage of horse subsidies but they will be needed.
There was never a division between horses and cars. The motor car was demanded by numerous cities to dispense with the piles of horse sh!t contaminating the streets and causing considerable health hazards.
Early gasoline powered cars had a man walking in front of them with a red flag and they were still more acceptable than horses.
Then you haven’t been around Amish country.
true but i have seen many horses asses lately.
That’s because ICE vehicles are a much better transportation product than horses so people actually WANTED them. Popular demand led the transition, not government coersion with subsidies. With EV’s being only 3 or 4 % of vehicles on the road after 20 years of subsidies and agressive marketing by ecoloonies it’s reasonable to say that there is no popular demand for them. They are still only toys for rich people.
Remember that the complete transition from film to digital photography happened very quickly over the course of about 4-5 years….without any government or activist intervention. It was truly a better, more convenient product that everyone really wanted.
It was also deadly for Kodak who refused to acknowledge the consumer demand for digital cameras. They went from a multi-billion dollar company to almost zero in that short time. All because they didn’t monitor/acknowledge true consumer demand.
Someone commented further down in this thread about a car company(s) going to all electric vehicles in a few years. Good luck to them. They will fail because there is no true consumer demand; only artificial demand driven by subsidies. Savvy investors will short the hell out them and make a boatload of money.
Don’t believe the auto company managers who say they are converting to all EVs. Most of them really mean hybrids and if governments stop pushing EVs the ICE will be the preferred engine.
Admittedly it’s been a few years since I read this news release, but GM at one time said that they were going to have an electric version of all of their models.
Some wishful thinkers took this to mean that GM was going all electric.
EV sales in the US are 3% of total sales of new vehicles but EVs represent only about 1% of the vehicles on the road. There are a lot of older ICE vehicles as the average age of a vehicle is about 12 years old. The numbers vary from country to country but EVs are still a very small percentage of cars sold almost everywhere except Norway.
EVs are not very popular because they’re expensive, they have poor range (except the ones that are stunningly expensive), they take a long time to charge, they perform badly in cold weather, some are fire hazards, and their batteries degrade over time. This isn’t going to change without a revolution in battery technology.
There performance drops off as the battery gets hotter as well.
I buy transportation in an automobile. I’d be perfectly happy to buy a hybrid vehicle if it suited my needs and desires. The price also has to be right. I’ve been called a skin flint and only bought a new vehicle twice- because it was right and a usable investment.
So far no hybrid or EV has come close.
I haven’t seen many Stanley Steamers or Traction Engines around neck of the woods other than at vintage and veteran vehicle events.
ICE cars worked better than horses. The same can’t be said of EV over ICE.
Just because in one case a new technology replaced an older one, is not evidence that this is bound to happen in every case.
Pretty sure the government didn’t force everyone to shoot their horses and buy (then) unaffordable cars back then- it was left to the market and people to decide when to switch.
Using your logic gogo mobil should be the dominate car by now 🙂
Tip for free it takes a lot more than some car idea to exist for it to become dominate and your horse analogy is pure horseshit.
The difference being that automobiles were far superior as a mode of transport to horses. EVs are lousy compared with ICE cars in many extremely important ways.
I don’t see any real application of EV except in fair weather climates and that would be a limited niche They seem to be a novelty for the rich and famous. I truly would have no interest whatsoever in an EV. Too expensive, limited utility and an unpredictable ability to catch fire for those brands and models susceptible to these occurrences. Hybrids would be a better bridge, but seems to be ignored in favor of these EV’s. The greenies will have to overcome and reconcile the increased mining activities that come with EV increased usage. So far, they seem to have ignored and looked the other way on the destruction of birds, bats etc… to these wind and solar farms. Will they do the same for EV’s?
In warm climates in the US, one would have to consider possible hurricane evacuation scenarios. Getting stuck in traffic in an EV sucks.
Could you dive at EV through a flood?
It’s something I’ve never thought about until this minute.
For th ICE as long as you keep the air intake above the water level, with the engine running I understand you don’t need to keep the ehaust above waterlelvel, although I’ve never tested it.
A number of off road vehicles have a snorkel that runs to near the top of the roof line.
One thing to be careful of, unless your car is built for it, if you drop an engine that is at it’s operating temperature into cold water, there is a danger of cracking the block.
That’s utter bollox, a whole load of people worldwide do serious off roading which ends up in bogs, while rally cars regularly drive through fords and other water hazards.
I never heard of anyone cracking a block except by forgetting antifreeze in the far north in-20C WINTER temps.
I’ve done it with a motorcycle while crossing a stream on an enduro (timed off-road race). You want to make sure to keep the engine running. If it stops mid-stream it will suck water up almost everywhere. Time to stop and drain everything.
A novelty for the rich and famous that gets paid for by the average taxpayer. I know a billionaire who got a new Tesla along with $20,000 in incentives from the rest of us (garage fast charger was subsidized to the tune of $12,000).
I just spent a week and a half in San Mateo, CA for the holiday season and did notice a few more tesla and other ev on the streets and roads. However, even in ultra-high-tech SF Bay area it seemed to me that the ratio of ev:ice was around 1:100 so there isn’t even a great demand in the region it ought to be the most popular.
Here in Central Orange County (California), we see a higher percentage of EVs. We also have repair shops devoted to EVs. And I sometimes see the Tesla service truck (an ICE Ford Transit). Plus, lines at the electric car charging points. So, a mixed bag.
People who can afford EVs usually also have an ICE vehicle which they will use on the interstate for trips. They don’t take EVs on the interstate, except maybe in California. These folks were not commuting from one part of DC to another.
This is Northern Virginia. Definitely a major metropolitan area and the home of more than their fair share of virtue signalers.
I-95 isn’t limited to local metro traffic (the I in I-95 is a hint, as it stands for “interstate”) many of the vehicles on I-95 that morning (and every other morning) were from out of state. Lots of long distance travelers (which EVs are not well suited for) traverse I-95 every day.
Also, remember, only 20k Electric Vehicles are registered in Virginia (IE 0.6% of the Virginia total), even if you assume a higher concentration of them in the Northern Virginia area, you’re still looking a an extremely small niche of the total vehicles registered there.
That was my question as well, sid. How many EVs were caught up in the jam?
I’m certain there were a number of hybrids there and as WXcycles points out just above, they shouldn’t have had any problems to speak of.
No-one froze to death, so even if there were a dozen EVs, I’d guess that other ICV motorists would have invited the EV drivers in for a warmup.
So… were there any EV bricks that needed to be hauled off after the mess was cleared? I dunno.
Well, considering that out of roughly 3.2 million cars/trucks registered in Virginia, only 20k are Electric Vehicles (so 0.6% of the total), I doubt there was that many. Particularly when you consider many (most?) EV owners, also own an ICEV, I’m sure many of those who could have been in an EV, wisely chose their other car instead based on the day’s forecasted conditions
Like you, I would certainly like to see the details regarding how any EVs that may have been there fared, but don’t expect to ever hear it reported in the MSM as I suspect the details wouldn’t fit the narrative they want to push.
I think you hit the nail on the head – the EV owners left their “fair weather” cars at home that day! I also bet there weren’t any motorcycles in that jam either….
if there were some ev bricks hauled off, it will not be reported.
My wife pointed to one story of a truck driver who loaned a blanket and some food to a guy and his son in a Tesla. I might make fun of people driving a car with an IUD as a brand logo, but I would do the same as the truck driver.
I have actually pushed a couple of Teslas out of the snow here in Canada. You need to program them to switch off the anti-skid system or you get nowhere with an electronic drive control that cuts power once a wheel is spinning. Not sure how big a deal it is, but the guy we pushed twice clearly hadn’t done this and even the small ones are HEAVY to push!
Yes, it will be interesting to hear of their experiences.
Experience is a good teacher. A bad experience is a better teacher (or should be).
Unless the bad experience is a deadly one.
Then it’s the ultimate teacher as it’ll guarantee you’ll never make that mistake again! 😉
If at first you don’t succeed – sky-diving is not a hobby you should take up!
If it had been Donner Pass, then a few EV drivers might have eaten each other.
Lessons of the Donner Party go deeper than that and contrary to commonsensical wisdom. The obese were more likely to survive. It is worth some study reading.
Donner, party of 40, your table is ready.,,
Donner, party of 34, your table is ready…
Took you long enough, it’s now a party of 25
There are a lot of EV’s in Norway (which has some serious winter driving conditions), but most are owned as second cars so never get out of the city. In fact, EV’s are forbidden when convoy driving over mountain passes (with ploughs front and back) and you have to have at least half a tank of gas before you start.
On a long trip, use your real car!
I see a handful (maybe a half dozen) of Teslas (once in a blue moon I’ll see a Leaf or Volt) running around the town I live in (in central Maryland) ever so often. But I also notice I see a lot fewer of them when the weather is cold…this seems to be a pattern not unlike seeing/not seeing motorcycles and convertible top cars. In other words, they seem to be fair weather vehicles. So perhaps of the people who were stuck in that jam who own EVs, they chose not to drive the EV that day…almost no one has an EV as their man set of wheels.
“as their main set of wheels” – sorry, typo.
There are many Tesla currently in Paris. Once (and only once) I saw 8 in a two hours walk. Not huge but significant for a 40000+ € car!
Some taxis are Tesla (saw one today); most are Toyota.
Hybrids: The only hybrid type you see at nearly every corner is the Toyota hybrid; many big Peugeot hybrids, Lexus.
Electric cars: quite a few Renault Zoe; many Smart, but not as much as before; other than Tesla, Smart was the only pure electric I saw a few years ago, except those for car sharing (Boloré Bluecar)
Note: almost all charging ports in Paris are household plug power range, Type 2 format in mono, only 3 kW.
Eric, I’ve been in similar circumstances going over the Sierra Nevada Mountains returning to Reno from San Francisco. Even though all vehicles were traditional liquid energy, some started to run out of gas trying to keep warm. These were pushed to the side of the freeway and everyone moved up one place. Not to worry about Virginia anymore, the outgoing Democrat Governor, Ralph Northam, says they won’t let this happen again. So it turns out Democrats, not CO2, have the control knob for climate/weather. Go figure.
Wow. Hard to believe this was the only mention of Northam with none of Youngkin. Perhaps everyone missed the Facebook rants blaming Youngkin for this – 10 days before he’s sworn in – some by “investigative journalists”?
CAGW Doomsday Death Cult acolytes are celebrating with champagne paid for with Green Taxes increasing the cost of heating fuel
I think the climate extinction types would welcome such a deadly event. They know the media would spin it as:
A) Climate change brings on more and more extreme storms, because, of course, if anything bad happens outdoors naturally, it was because of fossil fuels and cow flatulence. Until 1980, there were no recorded tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts, wildfires or sharknadoes.
B) Fossil fuels are also racist. I think there was a chapter on this in the 1619 project. Did you know that when you look at a gas pump from certain angles with the fuel hose partially extended, it resembles the OK sign which is known be among the worst indicators of white supremacism?
C) The real goal is to eliminate cars entirely and turn the interstate highway system into a wind-powered conveyor belt for their Amazon delivery vehicles and electric Ubers. Under Build Back Better, special Uber charging stations will be attached to the conveyor belt so that the cars need never detach. This will extend battery life indefinitely, so this will all pay for itself.
“Did you know that when you look at a gas pump from certain angles with the fuel hose partially extended, it resembles the OK sign which is known be among the worst indicators of white supremacism?”
Breaking news: SCUBA DIVERS ARE RACIST!
That’s one of the dumber things I have seen lately, making the “OK” sign out to be racist.
According to most activists, everything is racist. All you have to do is research it enough.
I was reading that a Virginia school district has banned the singing of Jingle Bells. Apparently a single researcher wrote a paper in which she claimed that minstrel shows might have performed that song a few times.
That was enough for them to declare the song to be divisive.
An EV convertible makes sense. Wonderful acceleration; a device can be installed to simulate the desired vroom-vroom noise; with the lid down you can go scorching through summer days with the wind in your hair. (Or over your bald spot, more likely.)
Come winter you lock it away in your garage until Spring. Of course that would require you to be rather rich but then that seems to be an EV requirement anyway.
Yeah … I don’t think some of those reading here understand the issue with “road treatments”either, that is, the practice of municipalities and state road departments of putting (literally) salt on the roadways to enhance the melting of ice and snow, BUT which ultimately also leads to ‘rusted out’ cars after 3 or 4 winter ‘cycles’. NOW imagine an EV in the same environment!
My brother maintained what is called “an old beater” bought cheaply to run during the winter months, leaving his ICE-powered sports car ‘good’ for use the other 9 months of the year.
I use the same practice for my bicycles, an old beater “winter tyres” extra lights mudguards etc. Weighs a lot more than summer bike.
I need to get a bicycle with fenders/mudguards. At present the trail bike is open-tired, no good for rain!!
Why would an EV be different from any other car when it comes to salt on the roads?
Many EV’s have the battery pack on the underside of the carriage. Road salt would not be kind to an EV battery if it manages to work it’s way in there.
Shush, that’s on the list of things not to talk about with consumers in the headlong rush of the govt/industry sales job.
BMW has offered Active Sound Design since 2009
My knowledge of auto design is decades old.
But “back in the day” convertibles (including so called “hard top convertibles”) had to be built on much heavier X frames in the chassis to make up for no top framing (or they would fold up in the middle on impact).
The extreme weight of the EV battery probably explains why we don’t see very many (any?) EV convertibles.
The “unibody” Chrysler Corporation cars come to mind …
In 1960, most Chrysler Corporation cars moved from body-on-frame construction to a unit-body design
https://www.allpar.com/threads/chrysler-moves-to-unibody-unit-body-construction-1960.236659/
I carry a minimum of five days of food and drink in my big truck. Lots of other truckers do the same. I also carry spare clothing and bedding. So if you happen to be stuck like that and are in need, look for a big truck with a sleeper to see if the driver can help. They may also be better informed because many have TVs in their rigs.
Big trucks for OTR use generally have a minimum of 200 gal useable fuel capacity. Idling they use about 1 gallon per hour of fuel. Some, like mine, have idle management. I have a whole extra battery bank under the utility deck of the tractor for environmental control. It runs the Webasto heater. That heater is like a little electrically fired furnace burning diesel fuel and will only use about 1 gallon of fuel in 10 hours even in very cold conditions. When the battery bank drops below a certain voltage the engine automatically fires up and idles until it’s recharged.
Other big trucks have APUs that are single piston diesels that provide all the power and heat they need.
So like I said. You get stuck and are in dire straits, then look for the big trucks with sleepers.
Thank you for your trucking service. You are the people that truly make the world work.
Just a guy doing a job and getting paid pretty darn well for it too!
My son drives for Paddock and he has been driving throughout the entire pandemic as well, Covid19 or not. The only reason there is anything in the stores is because there are a bunch of people just doing a job and not worrying about their own safety. My hat is off to you 👍😎
LOL. A new application of “gas, grass or ‘p’ass!”
Leftists never learn “nobody rides free.”
Seems like you haven’t been commenting as much lately, rah. Everything OK, been busy?
I try to only comment on threads to which I may have something to add and/or which interest me.
Every winter must bring a new dawn, for disillusioned EV owners faced with a frost/ice-covered car in the morning. Don’t put it in a garage, due to the fire risk.
It is not obvious at all that electric vehicles would be at a disadvantage in this situation. They are able to run a cabin heater with 100% efficiency, much more than using an idling engine and getting only a small fraction of the heat inside. Some vehicles may even have reversible AC/heat pump for heating, which could give more than 100% efficiency.
“more than 100% efficiency”?
A perpetual motion machine? I’m amazed that hasn’t been publicized more.
The only problem with heat pumps is that they don’t work well when it gets cold outside.
Com’on, if we all drove EV there wouldn’t be any extreme weather
do I i need to \sarc
send in the multi-purposes tracked nuclear fast charge crawler.
Read Neal Stephenson Anathem. Late in the journey they take a humongous sledge train to the north sea, powered by fuel-trees growing along the way.
People on this blog like making fun of EV’s, and I’ll admit that a lot of people who support the concept are credulous environmentalists, but Wall Street and automobile companies do not share in this pessimism. Two of the top five auto companies by market cap are all EV. Chrysler kicks off plans to go all-electric by 2028 with Airflow concept (cnbc.com)
I remember a time when diesel was the future, not so long ago. Somehow no manufacturer quite gave up making petrol cars.
Well, there is the Mazda “SKYACTIV-X” engine technology, the description begins thusly:
Featuring Spark-Controlled Compression Ignition, a never-before-seen combustion method, Mazda’s SKYACTIV-X engine represents the second step in Mazda’s quest to develop a gasoline engine with the ideal internal combustion mechanism.
Developing compression ignition for gasoline engines has long been a goal of engineers. In the SKYACTIV-X, spark plug ignition is used to control compression ignition, resulting in dramatic improvements across a range of important performance indicators.
https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/technology/skyactiv/
I don’t know where they are, how far along to production they are with this tech though …
How many petrol engines power ships, diesel-electric locomotives, heavy road transport tractors/prime movers, military vehicles, farm machinery and more?
Well there are currently around 1.4 – 1.5 billion ICEVs in the world at the moment and they are still far outselling EVs and are projected to rise to around 2 billion by 2050. According to the International Energy Agency there were almost 10.2m EVs at the end of 2020 ( 6.8m BEVs and 3.3 PHEVs)
In a report in May 2021 the IEA also expected, on their best scenario, that EVs would grow to c.72m by 2040.
Even if the IEA forecast for EVs is wrong and their growth is quicker it is still obvious that ICEVs will predominate for many years into the future. For example in 2020 in Europe, China and US alone there were sales of 59.4m ICEVs. The idea that everybody is soon going to go electric is a pipe-dream.
Are you familiar with the term “Lemming”?
Have you ever read the book titled “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness Of Crowds”?
Written/published about the year 1841 by a man named Charles Mackay.
Even discounting future unknowns, Chrysler is a subsidiary of Stellantis, a Netherlands corporation. Stellantis produces at present 18 brands of automobiles:
https://www.stellantis.com/en/group/about-us
What you interpret as a lack of pessimism for EV’s is in reality an attempt to run a business on a SJW philosophical platform. This has nothing to do with business. The company is producing automobiles not for their customers, but for the United Nations, thus the business concept is already suspect.
“We take the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for our actions in the transition to a more sustainable future.”
https://www.stellantis.com/en/responsibility/csr-vision
How long will Chrysler remain a “top five” company by market cap? Who can know? As long as participating governments continue to subsidize the market, EV’s will surely have inroads they wouldn’t otherwise have had:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/electric-vehicle-tax-credit-build-back-better-plan
Get woke, go broke. 3…2…1…
So government mandates are the same as customer demand?
The car manufacturers and Wall Street are counting on government coercive mandates for x% cars that must be EV by year y at the state and federal level. The EPA has just greatly increased its fleet mpg requirements to such a great extent that in effect it is a mandate to make more EVs to meet the mpg edict.
The economic car crash will come when much fewer people willingly buy EVs than expected, and the organic demand is far less than mandated supply.
Not so much willing, as able – the cars are too expensive, and the battery-pack replacement cost ridiculous.
“People on this blog like making fun of EV’s…”
Depends by what you mean by EVs:
If you mean an economical, light weight, no frills and unsubsidized vehicle that can be used for short commutes and local errands, I don’t think most folks would have a problem and might actually consider purchasing one. With a top end of about 50 mph and limited range, it wouldn’t be quick and it certainly wouldn’t be allowed on major highways, because, quite frankly, to be economic it would have to be so light that it would not be crashworthy. China actually produces such cars.
If, on the other hand, you mean an expensive, heavy, luxurious and subsidized vehicle that has muscle car speed / acceleration and longer range, I think a lot of folks can see through the virtue signaling to see a p___y troller favored by certain middle-aged men with “issues”. Tesla actually produces such cars.
EV’s are like any other tool, they have their uses. EV’s may be fine for a daily urban commute. They are not fine out in fly-over country where it is not unusual to make a 250 mile trip one-way for a meeting or to service a something like a combine out in a field with no charging station followed by a 250 mile return just a few hours later. And some of these trips will be made in sub-freezing temperatures.
What some people think of as “making fun of EVs” is actually trying to get across the fact that an EV hammer doesn’t work well for installing lag screws.
Unaffordable for most people on the average income or most common income.
Tesla’s cheapest Model 3 in Australia is 2.5 times the retail price of an equivalent ICEV.
After the EPA has their way, and only EV cars are available, two things will happen:
What made America Great, and other developed world nations, and via foreign aid benefited the developing world?
Free enterprise, free markets in which consumers choose winners and losers on merit with little or no government involvement apart from consumer laws and similar. The Marxist mind calls it “capitalism”.
The truth is that EV would continue to be at best a niche market, golf buggies for example, without climate hoax agendas and government interference, of course motor vehicle manufacturers are developing EV because they have been put on notice, no future for IC EV, by order, a government of woke politicians.
It’s like Green excitement about coal and gas fired power station closures and unreliable intermittent so called renewable energy wind turbines and solar installations, and expensive back up required. In a sane governance world with engineers consulted power stations would continue to be favoured to generate essential baseload electricity supply and peak demand.
Same goes for EV, one day maybe they will be competitive on a level playing field.
They were starting to gain strength until Henry released his Ford Model T ICEV.
Silly to offer an opinion without examining the facts: “In my opinion, if everyone stuck on the I-95 had been driving an EV, the I-95 ice storm traffic jam could have become a mass casualty event.”
EV’s draw 3-6 kW for the cabin heater. A Tesla can hold 65 to 85 Kwhrs of energy. Let’s assume it’s half that. So 30 kWhr available in the traffic jam. You fire up the cabin heat for 5 minutes at a time, say 3 times per hour or 0.25 hrs x 6 Kw or consuming 1.5 kWhr for every hour stuck on the highway. So you have 20 hours of comfortable heat from the batteries before they are drained. (and you would throttle your heat use as the energy meter drops lower)
Most engines at idle consume on average a gallon of gasoline per hour. And average tank size is say 18 gallons, assume half again like the battery case for an EV. So you have 9 hours of idling before you’re empty. (engine running half the time and you only have 18 hours before empty, etc)
The difference in “survival mode” is not that different between an EV and an ICE powered car in a freezing traffic Jam.
Now I think EV’s are stupid and cannot replace ICE (Internal Combustion Engines) – but your comment about mass casualties is without merit on the numbers. (in a proportionality fashion – yes you could have a tiny toy car with a 1.2 liter engine, but then your gas tank is only 10 gallons when full)
More likely is stupid people who embark on a car trip in winter, without enough warm clothes in case they break down – are likely to suffer injury or death no matter the kind of car they drive!
On top off all that, read an ev warranty fine print.
If you let the battery freeze, you are buying a new battery on your dime
Quite certain this is false, so unless you can cite something…
Screw up an ICE engine by abusing it and you have to pay for it.
Why wouldn’t you expect to pay for a new battery if you abused it by allowing it to freeze?
re: “Why wouldn’t you expect to pay for a new battery if you abused it by allowing it to freeze?”
What battery chemistry are _you_ thinking of?
Most regular battery warrantees do not cover the battery freezing. I can not find anything that suggests the warranty for EV batteries are any different in that regard.
re: “… battery freezing. I can not find anything that suggests the warranty for EV batteries are any different in that regard.”
What, in your mind are you thinking is the harm caused?
I’m not sure what your are meaning to ask. The question at hand is do: EV battery warrantees cover battery freezing? Devil’s Tower suggested they don’t. Tom thinks that’s false. I pointed out that regular battery warrantees usually don’t cover them in that situation and I could find nothing to indicate that EV battery warrantees are any different in that regard (though if anyone can cite the relevant wording from an EV battery warrantee that would be greatly appreciated). At no point in the discussion was “harm” a factor other than the “harm” to one’s wallet that Devil’s Tower posited of having to buy a new EV battery out of your own pocket.
re: :I’m not sure what your are meaning to ask.”
Well, firstly, I’m being DOWNVOTED just for asking questions, which is a new low for somebody.
Secondly, I went and actually pulled the datasheet for Panasonic brand 18650 Li-Ion battery/cells, and I’ll leave a link in this post too, and it does not reference any level at which those cell ‘freeze’ … there is a range of temperatures as indicated for conditions below as “Ambient Temperature” in the datasheet for the following temperature ranges:
Charge… . .+10..+45 deg C
Discharge.. -20..+60 deg C
Storage.. . . -20..+50 deg C
Bearing mind that -20 deg C = -4 deg F
Datasheet:
https://www.imrbatteries.com/content/panasonic_ncr18650b-2.pdf
first: You still didn’t answer my question? Why did you ask *me* “What, in your mind are you thinking is the harm caused?” and what did you mean by that question when harm was not any part of the conversation that was going on (beyond the economic “harm” already articulated at the beginning of the sub-thread)?
Second: You do realize a datasheet for a battery that costs less than 5 dollars isn’t the same thing as a warrantee for a battery pack that costs 10s of thousands of dollars? If so, then you should know that your datasheet doesn’t come close to answering the question that was under discussion.
Quite a bit of the US sees temperatures drop below -4F more than once per year. I remember being below 0F for an entire week once in Iowa.
There are lots of youtube videos that demonstrate that the tesla system will not allow charging their battery below freezing for a start. All power when charging goes to heating the battery first. Charging below 32f/0c will damage a litium battery. But this is not my main point.
When the power goes out and and your tesla sits outside, add you trying to stay warm inside, the battery will drain. A discharged frozen battery ….
At the top improper charging voids the warranty, not going to search again, but anyone who buys one that lives in cold weather had dam well better understand the warranty fine print. You will have to search for it. It will be in the trunk under the tire warranty.
It is just like the newer low temp air source heat pumps. Everyone including the regulatory agencies give them glowing reviews. Then you read the warranty fine print, at minimum temp they are only guaranteed to put out 20% rated output. You dam well need a full backup system. If electric is used for back up, electric use skyrockets.
re: “A discharged frozen battery ….”
Where do you get the idea the battery is frozen? This seems to have attained ‘urban myth’ level at this point.
I did post a link a couple times to Panasonic’s datasheet for Li-Ion batteries, there are no mentions of freezing, although there is a recommended Ambient Temperature for storage, discharge and charge …
Have you ever been up Aiguille du midi?
The laff is, once people get up there (3000m+) with their smartphone the temps are so low -10C easily, they can take a few snaps, before their smart jacks it in and says – “recharge me”.
Li batteries are well known snares for the unwary when hit by a mountain avalanche.
A few minutes in freezing temps and goodbye battery, which can often mean goodbye life”.
I would never trust any battery system in any mission critical situation, living as I do in the kind of place that is not terribly warm in winter.
The general rules when you need it with batteries…it will never get you out of the sh…t when you need it, and that is equally relevant on a bleak mountain side in bad weather in Wales, as it is in the alps after skiing a couple of hours, or getting stranded outside in northern Russia in winter with frozen diesel lines.
Your Li ion stuff is crap, designed by chinese with fancy marketing and hype loads of hype.
A 5,000 mAh Li battery discharging a modern 5G phone with a bright high-res screen, creates a LOT of self-warmth, and a typical protective phone-case also acts as insulator plus a heat trap (leather wallet-style protectors do this too).
Plus any pocket close to a 37 degree C human body keeps the battery and phone well inside the normal operating temp range.
And use of a wifi ear-piece and mic means the phone can stay inside the pocket, and it will be like a summers day in there.
There’s way too much laughable pro/con negativity spread about Li batteries for no justifiable reason. The truth is far less doomy than popular fiction, and solutions exist in multiple forms. For instance, you could do a search in seconds for solutions to any of the alleged issues you describe.
That’s what normal people do.
Freezing may or may not be an urban myth, however the data you found did show that storing a battery below -20C or -4F is bad for it.
The datasheet that _Jim found above says charging has to be above +10C.
re: “If you let the battery freeze, you are buying a new battery on your dime”
What battery chemistry are you thinking of?
You can’t charge a frozen battery. I know people who leave their EVs out in the cold and haven’t had problems other than very low range.
Understand, that is the case when you can keep your battery charged with heater functioning.
And when you can not…??
I don’t think these guys understand Li-Ion battery technology; “freezing” isn’t what they think it means.
Panasonic lists under the Ambient Temperature the following temperature ranges:
Charge . . .+10..+45 deg C
Discharge.. -20..+60 deg C
Storage . . -20..+50 deg C
Bearing mind that -20 deg C = -4 deg F
https://www.imrbatteries.com/content/panasonic_ncr18650b-2.pdf
I understand as we head to -5f tonight and -15f tomorrow night.
I think last year we hit -20f for a week when Texas had no power.
If you notice they do not discuss electrolite….
The newest are a liquid gel of something that I do not recognize.
When the power goes out, storage tempature and the battery warrenty fine print matter.
I don’t know where you live, but we saw +1.4 deg F that Tuesday morning the 16th of Feb 2021. I have it written down right here in my weather data log book. Tesla’s batteries would have been okay in the Dallas – Ft. Worth area given that data.
Unless you can provide, that is substantiate your assertions, I’ll have to assume the ‘usual’ layman factor of inaccuracy of at least +- 50% applies, again, in lieu of actual cites, links, etc.
I live in central iowa. I consider texas warm climate. The prediction here for friday am is -14f if they are right.
Yes, EVs work in central Texas except for range loss when you need AC. Or can not charge when power goes out.
EVs in north, not a chance if you understand all the pit falls.
I would be interested in plug in hybred, they seem to have lost favor to EVs.
There are a lot of people who live well north of Dallas – Ft Worth.
Just because a car at your location wouldn’t have been destroyed is not evidence that this is not a problem.
OMG, have you considered putting the phone in your pocket, dumbass?
Here in the US, there is a sizeable fraction of the country that gets below -4F multiple times every winter. Some places get way below that point.
A -20C limit would make outdoor parking of EV’s impossible in most of Canada.
“More likely is stupid people who embark on a car trip in winter, without enough warm clothes in case they break down – are likely to suffer injury or death no matter the kind of car they drive!”
That would be the majority I figure. I bet not one vehicle in 50 has an emergency kit in the trunk that includes space blankets, candles, let alone spare clothing.
For your analysis, you only ran the EV heater 15 minutes per hour, yet you ran the ICE heater 30 minutes per hour. In the real situation, the times would be reversed. That’s because the ICE engine stores much of its thermal energy in the engine block which keeps you warm long after the engine is turned off. When you reverse these numbers, the ICE fuel keeps you warm for well over 18 hours, while the EV batteries go dead in 5 hours. You would be wise to shut the heat off long before that, or your car would still be there, blocking the plows (unless the plow driver shoved it into the ditch).
Hey Tom, one of us need to change names. I’ll do it.
That’s why I use “Tom in Florida”. Try something like that.
Yes, I did a quick and dirty analysis. I didn’t cover all the factors. My point was the difference between being stranded in an EV or an ICE in cold snowstorm is not all that different. You can be smart about your energy budget in either case.
And no the engine block of almost all modern cars is aluminum alloy, and cools off VERY fast! I am semi retired, but work part time as an automotive tech – keeps me active and keeps my mind active to troubleshoot, etc. In warm S Florida, a car with a hot engine needing to change the spark plugs will be cool enough to the touch in about an hour at ambient of 75F. In 30F that same engine will be cold in 15 minutes or less.
So no, the thermal storage of the engine isn’t really much “help” in the scenario we are discussing. The thermal storage of the cabin does play a role – but an equal role in either EV or ICE.
The biggest factor is dumb humans, driving into the first major snowstorm of the season, without adequate cold weather clothing – in case you break down, or slide off the road – etc. Doesn’t matter what is your power source for the car – your gonna have serious problems if you do not have clothing to withstand the harsh reality of mother nature.
A gas powered car can idle for 4 or 5 hours on one gallon of gas; you also have the advantage of carrying roughly 5x as much stored energy compared to an electric. The electric will also lose efficiency in the cold; it can easily be 30% loss. With both vehicles initially at 50% the gas powered car can easily keep you warm for 24 hours; the electric will struggle to last 8 hours.
Hmm … let me see … we can master using 1960s foam tech, and a ‘space blanket’, to keep beer cold for three days, but in 2022, we can’t figure out how to use the same tech, with the addition of a minor electrical heating element that uses almost not amps, to keep an EV’s battery in its operating range for two weeks? Some of the comments being offered are laughably dimwitted.
You are misinformed on both counts: My 5.7L Chevy Van burns between 0.95 and 1.1 gallons per hour at idle (measured directly from the OBDII engine info, injector flow rate), with ambient temps of 75 F. At 30 F it burns 1.3-1.5 gal per hour. Second, most cars or light trucks have a range of 250-450 miles on a tank of gas. Good EV’s get 120-150 miles per charge. So at best the ICE car has 3x more usable energy than the EV.
I have a diesel VW Tiguan with start stop technology. It most certainly doesn’t use anything like a gallon an hour when at idle, not even close. In fact I can do an 8 hour journey, fully loaded, averaging 60mph, covering around 450 miles on around 15 US Gallons. Much of that journey is at 90mph+ on the motorway (UK).
At idle the car would last, literally, days.
Well good for you! The diesel Tiguan burns about 0.8 Liters per hour at idle (at STP). The tank is 58 liters or 15.3 US gallons. I doubt you can burn 15 gallons, as the empty level still has 1-1.5 gallons below the pickup….
Anyway assuming your tank was full, you could idle for 62 hours. If it was half full, maybe 30 hours. But that is at STP (standard temperature and pressure) – at 30F it will burn more like 1.2 l/hr bringing full tank idle down to 40 hours and half tank to 20 hours.
But yours is not an average vehicle. Big (petrol) engines can burn closer to 1.5 or even 1.7 gallons per hour, while little ones closer to 0.3 to 0.6 gal/hr. I used a rough average of 1 gal/hr for my thumbnail analysis. EV’s are not drastically different as to how much cabin heat can be obtain on a tank/charge of energy storage.
You miss several factors. What if the temps are below freezing? You can’t recharge the battery to get the vehicle out of the way. You can refuel the ICE vehicle and it can clear the road under its own power. All the EV’s have to be towed. They would *still* be trying to clear I95 if it were 100% EV’s. If it were an EV only how would you recharge the stuck vehicles even if the temp went up? Pass around small generators? How long would *that* take?
So in an EV you run the heat for 15 minutes an hour but an ICE must be run continuously? Do EVs have some magical insulation nobody knows about?
D Boss. You may want to think through your analysis a bit more, especially the part about ‘comfortable heat’ for 20 hours on battery power. Running a car heater for 5 minutes and then shutting it off for15 minutes when outside temperatures are near freezing or below will not result in comfortable inside temps, unless you consider sitting in 40 degree temps comfortable. Whereas, in your example in an ICE vehicle running the heater 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off will result in considerably warmer temps and last 27 hours. I do however, agree with the rest rest of your comments.
If there is any wind the rate at which a car cools of will increase dramatically.
You can use the car’s electronics to set and maintain the temp. This has been around in Hybrids for decades, whether is aircon or heater, you set a temp in 3 seconds, and you forget about it. You won’t freeze in your sleep. The car will not get cold either and the battery is actually inside the passenger compartment, so the battery will not get cold, unless you already have frostbite. Not going to happen.
EV’s will be much the same, their engineers are not actually stupid. These aspects get R&D work and money directed at them continuously. No manufacturer is going to sit on their hand and just give up.
One other thing with Hybrid’s is mine has an “ECO Mode” (ECO = Economy mode). So if I was stuck in snow, the first thing I’d do is run the vehicle in ECO mode, and save every bit of fuel that I could that way, and eliminate all necessary electron uses. Hybrids at least are implicitly extremely safe cars, if you get stuck in snow in one.
Lol…turn the heat off..wait…then turn on…wait. I am sure my wife would go for that idea
How good is that battery when the outside air temperature is below freezing?
One factor you are leaving out is that as the battery gets colder, the less of that 65 to 85 kWh of power you are going to be able to get out of the battery, unless you use some of that power to keep the battery itself warm.
By the time the temperature gets down below freezing you might be able to get only half of the potential power out of the battery, so that cuts the time until the passengers freeze in half as well.
As it gets colder, the amount of power you can get from the battery gets even lower.
You’re just more ignorant than you are delusional. The only thing constant about you is you have no clue what you’re talking about on the topic.
Talking about yourself there WX? While lithium-ion batteries handle cold weather better than most battery chemistries, temperatures too high or too low still compromise their ability to store and release energy. Cold temperature increases the internal resistance and lowers the capacity. A battery that provides 100 percent capacity at 80°F will typically deliver only 50 percent at 0°F. That you don’t know that simply exposes your own ignorance on the issue. The one thing constant about you WX is you have no clue what you are talking about on this topic.
An average car does not idle with 1 gallon of gas per hour but 1/3 gallon per hour. 1 Gallon gives you a 3 hours of idling easy and if you do it start and stop the engine as recommending your EV, a gallon gasoline would last for 24 hours but nobody really cares when car is idling to stop and start it to manage heat as you suggests. Do you know that according to Tesla the range stated on a Tesla car is valid only for ideal conditions such as ambient temperature of 75 degrees, no acceleration etc? What you wrote shows ignorance about EVs.
Being stuck in an ice storm with an EV is a hypothetical moot point because we have computer models promising not another snowflake to be seen by 2018. Except maybe the ones driving EVs.
If they were all driving EVs, which by the way DO have heaters, they’d have stayed just as warm .. but without the risk of asphyxiation by carbon monoxide poisoning – a common occurrence with internal combustion engines.
While it can happen, it is not common, especially with modern cars.
Unless someone has removed the catalytic converter, it’s pretty much impossible.
Back when I still had to have the emissions system checked out, acceptable levels of CO were down around 1 or 2 parts per million.
It’s rare, but not impossible. Back in 2018 5 Canadians (in two separate incidences) died from Carbon Monoxide poising in their cars.
Carbon monoxide poisoning in cars rare but deadly, experts say | CBC News
“Carbon monoxide poisoning from cars has become extremely rare in modern cars,” said Raynald Marchand, general manager at the Canada Safety Council.
Marchand said ìf a leak occurs “ahead” of the catalytic converter, it couldn’t do its job properly and more carbon monoxide would be produced.
Randy Loyk, manager of technical services at the Alberta Motor Association, said many factors could affect a car’s carbon monoxide emissions.
“Has your vehicle been properly maintained? Is the exhaust system good on your vehicle? If you do have a leak on your exhaust system, the potential is there for you to get carbon monoxide into the vehicle, especially if you’re sitting there, in cold temperatures when no wind is blowing,” he told CBC’s Radio Active on Thursday.
No one suggested EV’s don’t have heaters. The problem is they gobble up battery power at a prodigious rate.
Why would you imagine carbon monoxide poisoning is a problem in the open?
I was told a few days ago by an EV activist that his home heater and air conditioner use much more electricity than his EV charger. He then went on to say that the EV’s heater and air conditioner don’t use a measurable amount of his EV battery. I’m still scratching my head on that one.
AAA tested several electric vehicles and found that efficiency/mileage dropped 17% on a 95F day and 41% on a 20F day. That’s a combination of the energy used for temperature control plus the decrease in battery efficiency with lower temperature.
Carbon monoxide has not been a problem with cars for 40 to 50 years. Between computer combustion control and catalytic converters the amount of CO being emitted is more or less unmeasurable.
EVs do have heaters, but the heaters reduce what little range the EVs had to begin with.
Not true. It’s still a problem, just a much rarer one than it was 40 to 50 years ago (see my other post about the 5 Canadians who dies in 2018 in their cars from Carbon Monoxide).
A common occurrence for idiots that run their car engines inside a closed garage. It’s almost impossible for this to happen while outside; you would have to have holes in both your exhaust system and the floor of your car, in just the wrong places, and for there to be no wind.
Of course your electric car could burn the whole house down just sitting in the garage charging overnight.
This hasn’t been true in at least 30 to 40 years.
With modern cars you will run out of oxygen long before there is measurable level of CO.
Even with modern cars, leaving them running in a garage can be deadly.
Running car caused couple’s accidental carbon monoxide poisoning: state police – pennlive.com
Any body stupid enough to go driving through a massive winter storm at all .. and then compounds their stupidity by failing to wear warm clothes and bring additional blankets in case they get stuck, deserves to die of the cold, and thus not continue to spread their defective genes to the human gene pool.
Typical human-hating leftist response.
I’ll bet *every one* of those individuals (let alone at least one occupant in each car) had a smart phone capable of running a ‘weather’ app or doing a web search for the UPCOMING weather that day … does no one address this aspect? Their was significant lack of planning in this event too. Suggestions are: leaving earlier, postponing a trip until better weather is forecast – these used to be the driver’s responsibility.
Edit: Here is but one of several Mesoscale Discussions about snow that morning too: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0030.html
Did the weather forecast accurately portray the conditions they would encounter?
Did you have a chance to review the associated MDs (Mesoscale Discussions) relevant to that time frame? The SPC (Storm Prediction Center) work is supposed to ‘roll down’ to other agencies who have more direct access to the public, like each regional weather bureau office, and the TV and radio stations after that and the various state agencies as well.
I understand that electronic public information signage exists along those roadways too – didn’t they (the state) have warnings up about imminent heavy snow fall?
Many questions remain…
“…electronic public information signage exists along those roadways too – didn’t they (the state) have warnings up about imminent heavy snow fall?”
Somebody already pointed out that those signs had warnings that people should wear a mask.
Predicting snow is one thing, predicting black ice is a whole lot tougher.
re: “Predicting snow is one thing, predicting black ice is a whole lot tougher.”
Introduction of a new topic, or a case of ‘assumption of facts not in evidence’?; they had rain transitioning to snow which is enough to hamper traffic. Do you not reside in a state or country which sees snow? Have you never seen light rain transition to snow with the road surfaces still above 32 F, but that changes as MORE snow falls? I’ve seen this in Dallas Tx (of all places) more than just a few times in dozens of years down here.
If you had read any of the articles, you would have known it was not snow that was the problem, it was development of ice that stranded those cars.
Since you seem to be ignorant of basic physics, I have some news for you. Water on roadways turns to ice when the ice when the temperature drops below freezing.
God forbid people have a need to get from A to B.
I’m guessing you live in a place where it never gets cold.
come on man, some cars turned off their engines because they were worried about running out of gas. Latest series of teslas have a heat pump for engine/battery/hvac. I’d prefer electric heat to a gas engine.1 to 2 % battery per hour leaves some time before running out, assuming high % before leaving, but then that works the same for any energy type
Didn’t I just read an article about heat pumps on WUWT that discussed their miserable performance in cold and humid conditions? I guess we climate change we now have warm, dry days for our blizzards.
Since all electricity is made by burning something no matter where you are, why bother burning it somewhere else when ICE engines can do it directly?
Eric:
You’re asking the wrong question.
The right question is why weren’t the roads plowed and salted?
I heard it was because it started as rain.
This was Virginia, with a Democratic governor (although many leftists blamed the incoming Republican who will be sworn in later this month). Things like this do happen in other states but most northern states are equipped to handle the weather they get.
Sand doesn’t wash off in a light rain.
In most northern states they send out the trucks before the rain turns to snow
Because the storm started as rain, which pretty much screws pre-storm prep (IE the rain would/did wash away the salt before the snow started, and you can’t plow rain water) Once the weather turned, the wet road from the rain turned to ice before any salt trucks could get there to treat it and the accident/jam resulted from the icy conditions, you can’t plow when there’s miles of cars sitting on the road blocking the way, so the snow piled up.
I remember an old (as in OLD) Mad Magazine showing them paving over an Interstate traffic jam, with the people still in the cars.
Having lived in Iowa, I can tell you that they send the trucks out well before the rain is expected to turn to snow, and they start salting, sanding and plowing as the rain ends.
You can’t plow rain, but you can plow slush, which is what the water turns into prior to it freezing completely.
I’ve been on the road when rain turned straight to black ice, so sorry, but there isn’t always the time to salt or plow slush when it turns fast enough.
That’s why you put down sand when it is *expected* to happen – like several hours before it actually happens.
And again, rain water has a nasty habit of washing that sand away.
That can only happen if the rain is falling onto a road surface that is already well below freezing.
The point remains that there isn’t always a “middle” period of “slush” and even when there is such a middle period, it isn’t always long enough to get the plows there in time. I-95 covers a lot of miles, you know.
Same here in Kansas.
Steve and John:
My point was that focusing on whether occupants of IC vehicles would fare better than those of EVs stuck for 20 hours on a ice/snowbound highway is a minor quibble. The focus should be on what can be done differently to prevent the backup in the first place. Saying the precipitation started as rain may explain why it would be more difficult to keep the roads clear, but it can’t be an excuse for a total failure. It simply means that known freezing conditions that start with rain require a different response and we have to be prepared for that. Otherwise we simply have to close the roads anytime those conditions arise.
Put it this way: if there were no EVs in the backup at all, would that make it OK to do nothing because all those stuck people could at least keep warm? There must be some way to do a better job of keeping critical roads passable and that’s where effort should be directed.
Alan, now you are asking different questions. You previously asked why the roads weren’t plowed and salted, you were given the answer as to why – and you were given it without reference to EVs being in the mix, so the appropriate response is to say “thank you, I learned something that I clearly didn’t know when I asked the question” rather than moving goal posts to different questions and shooting at strawmen both with the “minor quibble” about EVs and the claims of it being “ok to do nothing” if EVs weren’t in the mix – Just because something could be worse does not mean the current level of “bad” is ok.
These kinds of jam ups happen from time to time (winter conditions only makes them worse). 20+ hour jam ups, however, isn’t the usual result. Clearly things could have been handled better, but asking a question that show you didn’t know the facts of what happened and then shooting off at strawmen when the facts are given to you, however, isn’t the road to doing better. It is a road to annoying those who answered your question though, so congrats on that at least.
The only way to stop a future EV problem on motorways is to run a power cable alongside the road the cars can tap into- a plug every few yards.
In the future highways will contain a conductor which will allow for inductive charging while you drive;)
Will the conductor also induce a state of critical analysis inside the driver’s mind as to why the EV was ever bought in the first place?
How do you keep hot/cold highway heaving from breaking the conductor? It’s not like you can bury the cable below the freeze depth.
Just one more pipe dream.
Unless you are able to drop the EV’s clearance down to a small fraction of an inch, inductive charging will never be more than about 1% efficient.
How many EVs have heat pumps for heating up the cabin? The marketing/stock valuation race to tout range might not mention the lack of a heater, i.e. Rivian.
Hm, I drive also an EV car (VW Golf). My practical experiences are the following. At temperatures over 10 centigrades is more or less OK in a 50 km radius and not driving on a highway. Between 5-10 centigrades the first challenges could be observed: The cruising range goes back up by 25-30% (if you don´t use any extras like heating the seats or using the air conditioner). 0-5 centigrades: Range goes back again by additional 10-15% (without using extras). Using the heating of the windscreen (and/or of the rear window) the available range (depending on the actual battery load) will be reduced by additional 30%. Between -5 to 0 centigrades: The first challenges to start at all. Luckily, we had no temperatures until now under -5 centigrades. So it would be interesting to hear something about the practical experiences with Tesla cars in the Texas freezing last year. Here in Germany we remember, that at the beginning of December 1941 at Moscow (the start of the soviet counteroffensive) the German armoured vehicles (ICEs) could not start due to the very low temperatures. So it would be very interesting to learn about practical experiences with EVs under similar circumstances. I drive also a VW hybrid (Passat). If the battery is too low, the car switches automatically to a diesel ICE motor, however during the drive using the diesel engine also the battery will be loaded (the default value: The simultaneous loading of the battery, however, it could be switched off to gain some more HPs). As to the price/value ratio from the customer point of view the equation is relatively simple: EV costs at least 30% more, and the value/benefit for this higher price is at least 30% lower than the benefits delivered by an ICE. In a real market economy EV would not have any chance against ICEs, only maybe in the category “hobby cars” for rich people. But not for ordinary Joe and Jane (the overwhelming majority).
“But not for ordinary Joe and Jane (the overwhelming majority).”
Lots of Joes and Janes here in Massachusetts who will not be able to buy an ICE car as of 2035. I presume they’ll buy an ICE car in ’34 and be sure to do the maintenance to keep it going as long as possible- like American car owners in Cuba.
After 2035, will a Massachusetts resident be able to buy a new ICE car in another state and register it in Massachusetts?
Will a new resident in Massachusetts be able to register a pre-2035 ICE vehicle that was bought in another state before that person moved to Massachusetts?
What about the used car market in Massachusetts in the year 2036? Will a Massachusetts resident be able to buy a used ICE car and register it without penalty?
I’ve been asking those same questions- so far, no answer. It seems the brain dead MSM doesn’t ask these questions either. They should- and I read lots of media and do not see these questions even asked. I suspect Massachusetts is now the most fanatic climate “disaster” faith believing entity on the planet- so worth watching. The state legislature is something like 95% Democrat.
ICEVs are going to outnumber EVs by a considerable margin for many many years to come. Here in the UK EVs reached a record high of 11.6% in 2021 but that still meant that over 88% of cars sold were ICEVs.
In 2020 sales of ICEVs in just Europe, China and the US amounted to 59.9m whereas the total number of EVs in the whole world amounted to only 10.2m after many years of sales. (Interestingly sales of EVs fell by 25% in Japan during that year).
So the vast majority of cars are going to be EVs for some considerable time and sooner or later the politicians are going to have to face that reality and its consequences.
Sorry, should be the vast majority of cars are not going to be EVs for some considerable time
The inability of customers and business to plan in the face of governmental legal and regulatory uncertainty is going to (currently is) scramble markets and lower standards of living. We are living in a legal and regulatory “whim of the week” world where political “science” majors lurch from one Leftist scheme to another. Covid related unhinged autocratic fiats are just the tip of the iceberg.
Here in MA, the climatistas are now turning against industrial sized solar “farms” because some are proposed in THEIR areas- yet, they still insist the state must be net free by ’50. They of course also hate all fossil fuels, all nuclear, all biomass, pumped storage and most wind turbines on land- though they seem to like them at sea- not the rich on Martha’s Vineyard of course. They also (many of them) dislike the proposed hydro power coming down from Canada because trees would have to be cut to enhance existing power lines. Meanwhile, the politicians all smile that we have a net free law- but nobody knows how it can be implemented- of course they’ll be long gone by ’50.
Was this the result of not having winter-rated oil in the engine crankcases?
Maybe at that time this kind of oil was not known. I don´t know, I was not there. However, tha soviet T-34 tanks could be started using a very simple trick: The T-34 had a starter using pressed air stored in a small tank in the T-34. Using this solution the T-34 could be started even without battery. Exactly this feature has been used during a demonstration in Budapest (Hungary) some years ago. A veteran tank driver could start a T-34 used as a II. World War memorial because this kind of the starting mechanism was not disabled (simply was forgotten). The T-34 could drive first about 100 m against the riot police, after that it was a little bit refueled with diesel from cars on the street. So it could drive about 15 minutes long. Note also, that the T-34 had a diesel engine, the more advanced German tanks gas engines.
When driving in the more northern states, I’ve seen cars with electric plugs dangling from the engine block. This plug attaches to an electric oil pan heater. It’s needed to keep the oil warm enough that it will flow when you try to start the engine.
When a girl I knew in high school first moved to Alaska she had to keep her car running all night because it didn’t have a block or pan heater and there was no heated garage.
(post deleted by author)
There will have been cautious people like me who, for long journeys or in winter, either leaves home with a full tank or never goes less than half full. Once bitten twice shy as they say. So if some others caught in this situation runs out of fuel it wouldn’t be beyond man’s ingenuity to get some fuel from an full tank to an empty one. It would be impossible to get electrons from one battery to another.
With old style diesel engines, pre-HDI Peugeot XD2 for example, someone with some cooking oil in the boot could use that in an emergency.
Getting electrons from one battery to another isn’t technically impossible, however at present it is practically impossible as there are on EV’s on the road that have the circuitry needed to make this happen.
That is, all EVs have circuits that allow their batteries to be charged. There are no EVs on the road that have the circuitry needed to take the electrons in the battery and make them available to an outside load.
This also makes the claims that EV batteries can be used as grid support total nonsense.
cooking oil is totally useless at low temps.
Anyone who has ever used it would tell you that!
Run!! And call the fire department……
Chrysler aims to be all electric by 2028 – ABC News (go.com)
Yep, I really believe that Chrysler marketing managers thinks there will be no worldwide ICE auto demand after the next five years. Draw your own conclusions.
What the Chrysler marketing managers believe is that if they don’t pander to the current regime with these pronouncements, Chrysler won’t be eligible for the next auto industry bailout when the oncoming major recession hits hard in summer or fall 2022.
Bingo and the bailout might come ahead of the next recession.
If that’s the case, they didn’t learn anything after Xiden failed to deliver the promised goodies for their supporting government EV policies. The BBB failed in Congress and the future doesn’t look bright for additional Leftist spend-fests. While I’m not a Crony Capitalist, I wouldn’t bet on Let’s Go Brandon being able to spearhead any big new initiatives.
The BBB is being split into a series of smaller stimulus bills which the Dems will be introducing starting in February or March 2022. The current rumor is that Mitch McConnell has now come on board with this latest spending extravaganza.
Chrysler aims to be all electric by 2028
“The company said Wednesday that it will launch its first electric vehicle by 2025”.
And just 3 years later they will be all electric? I wonder what happens to those plans when their total sales of EVs in 2026 are just 3% of their total 2024 sales?
The average EV buyer today has an annual income of $100,000 and up. Can you run a major car company on that demographic? Yes sales will be good within 25 miles of DC. Sales figures for Minnesota will be in the 5 figures. Alaska a mere fraction of that 🙂
Then again, maybe “aims for” just means for publicity only, with no one really expecting it to happen.
Years ago, when I was assigned to the Washington DC area, I always took the DC Metro into town. The other option was to spend three hours a day stuck in a traffic jam on the Beltway.
Sure, the Metro may have been crowded. But after its own fashion, it worked. Sort of. Most of the time.
At what cost to taxpayers per mile?
If I may chime in from EV country nr 1 in the world Norway, we had a similar situation a few weeks ago on a motorway in the south of the country. Luckily nobody perished but several EV’s had to be towed away when the road opened up again. It was closed for only a couple og hours. When you are on the way home with a not fully loaded battery and incidents happen you are just f*cked. In all honesty, there were also ICE cars that ran out of fuel, but at least you are sitting warm and comfy for as long as the fuel reaches. Best to have thermo overalls on board in cold conditions, no matter what kind of engine.
100% agree. I had the same thought reading the story. When the road opened the majority of drivers could drive away. Presumably some who ran our of fuel could be topped up on the road side by service trucks or jerry cans off they go. Now imagine half or all of those vehicles are electric. There is nowhere near enough tow trucks and heavy haulers to open up that road in weeks.
You mean electric tow trucks, right?
Mercedes-Benz VISION EQXX: The new benchmark of efficiency.
Top of the range A$400,000 AWD or cheaper RWD A$300,000 approximately estimated retail price.
Almost 80 million Americans exposed to weather….
Millions of Americans under winter weather alerts for storms, arctic blast – ABC News (go.com)
Hmm. I was hoping for more content, so here is some: Remember that this event was in Virginia, and it wasn’t that cold, so remember to always keep blankets in your car. Back to the EV issue: if it was real cold (15 F and down), you have a problem because heating the car is in the KW range and will suck the battery down pretty fast. Some EV manufacturers recognize this (like Volvo) and supply a small (3 gallon) petrol/ethanol heater. I expect this will be adopted by other manufacturers. It does make one wonder if adding propane/butane for an assist to the power (such as power tools do) might be a useful type of hybrid?
A parked Tesla running heat and entertainment in 15deg temps use 2kw/hr so even the small 50kw model 3 would last a max 25 hours. This would easily be extended by shutting down all but heat, lowering cabin temp or only using seat heaters which would last much much longer. So no it would not be a mass casualty event, that’s ridiculous. I’d rather have the EV sipping electrons using seat heaters watching Netflix while everyone else shuts off their cars every 30 mins to save gas while freezing and bored.
Totally agree that the “mass casualty” statement is ridiculous, but your max 25 hours does assume a full charge and a new car (non-degraded battery). That’s ok, but an ICE car with a full 14 gallon tank could also idle for about 25 hours “sipping” gasoline and running an entertainment unit 🙂 My point is that we should compare EVs, Hybrids, and ICE dispassionately as each option has its place (though I realize you were responding to a rather inflammatory article)
Something like this I imagine
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/prairie-tesla-owners-battle-loss-of-heat-amid-extreme-cold-weather-after-software-update-1.5729102
Brad was upset and decided to end it all …..
Brad was sick of the World, of Covid-19, Chinese belligerence, global warming, species extinction, racial tension and all the rest of the disturbing stories that occupy the media headlines.
Brad drove his car into his garage at home, carefully sealed up around the windows and doorways of his garage, selected his favourite radio station and left his car at a slow idle.
Two days later, his neighbour realising she had seen no sign of Brad for a while, peered thru the garage window to see Brad at the wheel of his car.Immediately she phoned emergency services.Police, firies and the ambulance arrived promptly.
After pulling Brad from his car and giving him a sip of water, he seemed as good as gold.
Brad drives a Tesla. It now has a flat battery.
He also votes Green.
I read over 50 vehicles abandoned. I’m sure most were folks “running on fumes” (<1/8 tank).
I read it takes around 5 kW to heat a vehicle to a 40 deg F interior/exterior differential. With a 60kWh battery that would be 12 hrs if you had a full charge, 6 hrs at half charge. If you have appropriate clothing you could probably make do with 3kW of heating and 50 deg F interior. If you were caught at 25% charge then your fate would be similar to the ICE drivers running on fumes.
But it is rather easy for a cautious ICE vehicle driver with a low tank to pull off and take five to top off the tank when the weather starts looking dodgy, something that is not as convenient to do with an EV on low charge.
And here comes another one!!
Always handy to store some tea lights and a lighter in your glove box.
And if you run out of gas?
I started my neighbours car which would barely turn over at -16 with a li-on battery about the size of my hand on the first go. I had charged it sometime in October and stored it in my truck which sits outside. It showed 65% power at -16 still.
Liiving in a northern climate, ice or battery, I would have got my winter kit out of the back lit a candle or used the hand warmers,and after it thawed out put on the ski pants, felt paks etc.
My EV uses 1% charge to cool the cabin down on a 35C day over 30 minutes, during our heat wave, and less once cooled or warmed up. That means standing still I have 50+ hours of heating from a full battery. Should be enough time.
Who needs EVs or hybrids? Paddy Lowe’s product, https://www.gasworld.com/why-synthetic-petroleum-could-be-key-to-decarbonisation/2020988.article, removes as much CO2 from the air in production as it puts back in combustion – true cyclical, ‘zero-carbon’ stuff. An ex-colleague of mine, a RAF test pilot, flew a light aircraft fuelled by this AVGAS-equivalent in an unmodified light aircraft and could not find a difference to his morning flight, in the same aircraft, powered by nasty fossil-AVGAS. Scaled-up, this has to be the way ahead.
Question: Were none of the stranded people driving an EV?
If there were some, why not find a few and interview them about the experience?
If not, that’s just an indication of the mountain to be climbed to convince cold-climate drivers to switch to EV’s
I assume that the author has never used an EV on an extended basis. If I am having to wait in my car in cold weather I just leave it switched on with the heater on. The power required to keep the car warm is miniscule compared with the power to drive it down the road.
EVs may have their issues (charging if you live in a 3rd floor flat for example) but this isn’t one of them.
bjorn nyland did a video of a 2021 Tesla model 3 to see how long you could keep the heat in with a full battery in the middle of a Norwegian winter. I think it made it something like 60+ hours. So, no mass casualty event.
Ps, cars run out of gas faster than that.