Electric Cars Winter Range Test

[Hayzee]

Worth a look at this Whatcar electric winter range test.....pretty consistent with what we see with the plug in

 

[YarisHybrid2016]

All European cars. No bZ4X? Would have been interesting to see.

[philip42h]

The same test for those who prefer to read than watch: https://www.whatcar.com/news/range-test-how-far-can-electric-cars-go-in-winter/n24274

It seems to be a reasonable test, conducted at around freezing, on a test track, simulating a 'combined' driving scenario. Importantly they run the cars in 'normal' mode with the heating on at a reasonable level. And then they run the cars until they stop!

Worst performing - in terms of pure range - was the electric Mini (113 miles) and best was the Tesla Model Y Long Range (272 miles). And in this tests the cars delivered around 70% - 80% of their WLTP range - which is what we might hope / expect.

The PHEV would have run out of EV range at around 40 miles - so easily beaten by the Mini - but would then have switched to ICE power for the next 500 miles or so - easily beating the Tesla Model Y Long Range ... if simple 'range' is the critical measure. I suspect this is one of the reasons we drive hybrids ... 😉

[TonyHSD]

One question here.
 if you get stuck on the motorway for days as a result of unexpected blizzard conditions and a pileup accident during freezing cold weather in which vehicle you have highest chance of survival?
Heating set at 22C° and you need the car been kept on all the time. 

a. Ice car 

b. Battery electric car 

c. Hybrid 

d. Plug in hybrid 

 

[philip42h]

12 minutes ago, TonyHSD said:

One question here.
 if you get stuck on the motorway for days as a result of unexpected blizzard conditions and a pileup accident during freezing cold weather in which vehicle you have highest chance of survival?
Heating set at 22C° and you need the car been kept on all the time. 

a. Ice car 

b. Battery electric car 

c. Hybrid 

d. Plug in hybrid 

Well, it isn't going to be the BEV. Of the cars tested, the Nissan Ariya has the biggest Battery at 87 kWh. A hybrid or ICE with a 55L fuel tank would be carrying around 484 kWh of warming energy.

Then it is simply a question of which system converts that 484 kWh most efficiently into warmth in the cabin. The ICE will probably waste too much energy warming the engine bay, while a RAV4 PHEV, complete with heat pump for efficiency, should win hands down ...

But you'll forgive me if I don't volunteer to conduct the test ... 😉

[TonyHSD]

28 minutes ago, philip42h said:

Well, it isn't going to be the BEV. Of the cars tested, the Nissan Ariya has the biggest battery at 87 kWh. A hybrid or ICE with a 55L fuel tank would be carrying around 484 kWh of warming energy.

Then it is simply a question of which system converts that 484 kWh most efficiently into warmth in the cabin. The ICE will probably waste too much energy warming the engine bay, while a RAV4 PHEV, complete with heat pump for efficiency, should win hands down ...

But you'll forgive me if I don't volunteer to conduct the test ... 😉

I think you are right about it. The second place I put the hev cars. 

[Hybrid21]

51 minutes ago, TonyHSD said:

One question here.
 if you get stuck on the motorway for days as a result of unexpected blizzard conditions and a pileup accident during freezing cold weather in which vehicle you have highest chance of survival?
Heating set at 22C° and you need the car been kept on all the time. 

a. Ice car 

b. Battery electric car 

c. Hybrid 

d. Plug in hybrid 

 

I would go for c or d, reason being you have the ICE and the electric motor, always better to have two systems than one 👍

[Cyker]

This is why Battery energy density is the make or break for EVs - If winter cold cost say, 100 miles of range, in current vehicles that's catastrophic, but if packs could do 400-500miles easy then nobody would care.

For the abcd, it depends a LOT on the cars - If the hybrid option was my Mk4, it'd be last place - My Mk4 is absolutely terrible at generating heat from the engine unless I'm giving it serious beans.

If the EV had a massive Battery pack and a heat pump and could do the same motor trick the newer Teslas do, that would be a strong contender, but then an ICE or PHEV with a big fuel tank would also work, although I'd start worrying about CO2 poisoning if this went on for too long and e.g. happened at the bottom of a hill and it was snowing heavily!

I feel like a PHEV with a heat pump like that super complex Toyota system would probably the winner tho'.

[NASY]

22C too hot, 19C perfectly comfortable. PHEV wins that battle but what about the bigger battle of combatting global warming? Maybe that just got too expensive and so inconvenient having to stop and charge so much. Incredible how principles are so closely aligned to comfort.

[Sealiedog]

According to my calculations in my HEV I'm paying just under 13p per mile which is not far off most of these, and better than the worst of them. I'm not likely to be persuaded into a BEV anytime soon if that's the case.

[TonyHSD]

Indeed.
Electric cars are toys, where hybrids are tools 👌👍

[Cyker]

21 hours ago, NASY said:

22C too hot, 19C perfectly comfortable. PHEV wins that battle but what about the bigger battle of combatting global warming? Maybe that just got too expensive and so inconvenient having to stop and charge so much. Incredible how principles are so closely aligned to comfort.

The thing is I have a suggestion that could solve climate change within a few months, but it turns out there are things that are much more important than solving that quickly.

Anyway, the whole Buy a new EV! Save the planet! rhetoric is a load of fetid fish faeces - The mere act of building a car has a significant environmental footprint, far in excess of what it produces while running, even EVs. The optimal thing would be to reduce new car production to just what we actually need, and nobody would be allowed to buy a new car without a strong reason (e.g. if we ran out of suitable used cars), but that would have a very detrimental economic impact and I think we've already had too many of those recently!

 

[ernieb]

Agreed, electric cars are not zero emissions vehicles. Although they do not emit CO2 while being driven, they do it in 3 other stages: during manufacturing, energy production and at the end of their life cycle. In the first case, the need for mining activities to extract the rare earth metals that are used in batteries is very energy consuming and polluting.

As for the energy production, if the car is being powered with energy from burning fossil fuels, it is still releasing CO2 in the atmosphere, not from the tailpipe but from some distant power plant. When it comes to batteries being recycled, it is still an expensive and ongoing process and most batteries are not being recycled yet.

[Eddiefh]

On 3/9/2023 at 9:09 AM, TonyHSD said:

One question here.
 if you get stuck on the motorway for days as a result of unexpected blizzard conditions and a pileup accident during freezing cold weather in which vehicle you have highest chance of survival?
Heating set at 22C° and you need the car been kept on all the time. 

a. Ice car 

b. Battery electric car 

c. Hybrid 

d. Plug in hybrid 

 

Motorists got stuck near where I live overnight yesterday for reported 10 hours on the 62 on windy hill it’s one of my fears in life to be stuck like this and I pack my car for these conditions 

[IanML]

 

On 3/11/2023 at 7:24 AM, ernieb said:

Agreed, electric cars are not zero emissions vehicles. Although they do not emit CO2 while being driven, they do it in 3 other stages: during manufacturing, energy production and at the end of their life cycle. In the first case, the need for mining activities to extract the rare earth metals that are used in batteries is very energy consuming and polluting.

As for the energy production, if the car is being powered with energy from burning fossil fuels, it is still releasing CO2 in the atmosphere, not from the tailpipe but from some distant power plant. When it comes to batteries being recycled, it is still an expensive and ongoing process and most batteries are not being recycled yet.

EVs are in their infancy, and further developments are addressing most of those downsides.

New Battery technologies are coming on stream, which will eclipse Li-ion in due course.  Battery recycling plants are being commissioned, but many retired batteries are being re-used as stationary storage, and the number available for scrap is still quite low.

In energy production, renewables are beginning to predominate over fossil fuels, and carbon capture is getting off the ground.  There's a way to go yet, but its moving ever faster in the right direction.

Irrespective of the above, the role of EV's in removing harmful emissions from densely populated environments is valuable.  if you doubt that, consider respiratory problems in urban-dwelling children.

[Cyker]

TBH I'm starting to believe that claim is overblown - Children in the countryside seem just as prone to things like childhood asthma and hayfever, and where children do get it in cities a lot of them grow out of it by their teenaged years.

The ULEZ should have had a massive drop in emissions from what KHAAAAAN claimed, but both times the decline has been negligible from the studies I've seen in media etc. which is why a lot of us are now questioning the benefit of it and all these other 'environmental projects' vs the amount of stress, disruption and cost to both car users and tax payers things like the ULEZ, LTNs, 20mph zones etc. are causing.

It seems the skepticism was right as it's increasingly looking like it was just a pretext to get in the infrastructure for per-mile charging, i.e. a giant money generator for TFL, and not really anything to do with health or the environment at all. Else, why would all the diesel busses still the same which, as I've said many times, are now by far the most polluting vehicles I contend with on my journeys, and why the particulate levels in the tube - well known for giving people black snot - not been addressed despite their insistence that particulates are so bad all particulate generating cars need to be banned to stop people and The Children!! getting lung cancer - Are tube users somehow immune to this??

 

The worst thing in all of this is we have absolutely no say in what happens to us. I've lost faith in government - Not just to conservatives, but labour, lib dems, all of them. I don't think there is a single party I would trust to lead the country and do what's right for us instead of following their own agenda.

Given the level of communications tech we have nowadays, I feel like we as a country should be able to make these decisions ourselves instead of being forced to go along with the decisions of a minority.

 

re. energy production, what the recent cold snaps have shown is we are nowhere near prepared for a change to EVs - Do you know they had to re-start a couple of decommissioned coal plants to keep the grid operational? I'm hoping we get a lot more grid-storage and renewables out, and also these modular nuclear reactors as people don't realize how much energy load petrol and diesel vehicles are protecting the grid from - I just don't see how the grid can support that right now, despite their claims that everything is fine and there is enough capacity.

They don't need to lie about EV's 'green' credentials to market them anyway - Aside from the loss of engine noise, they are much nicer to drive than a normal car; All the advantages of a manual and an automatic (Instant response, control, care-free handling) without any of the disadvantages (Stalling, maintenance, delayed response, stupid ECU decisions). Just driving one makes you see that electric motors are just better.

The only disadvantages are the range and the obnoxiousness of public charging (Which is why I always say the best use-case for an EV is if you can charge at home and your 99% journey is within its range), and these will be innovated away in time. I just hope they do it while I can still drive and before the government all but bans personal vehicles!

 

[Dippy]

A load of self justification on this thread using the usual arguments.  I suspect many people who bought hybrids sold a perfectly good 6 year old car to do so. 
I’d love a BEV but my 14YO diesel keeps going. 

[TonyHSD]

Well, for the bev and cities there is no argument.
These has always been the best and most environmental solution.  
Why they had not been used and promoted in the past it’s definitely wrong. As parent of a young children I remember not long ago when I was dropping them to the school in the morning and often in the afternoon there were so many old diesel cars and many of those definitely not in their best condition the smell and smoke coming out of their exhaust was unbelievable.
On top of that the drivers never were never turning off their engines and they were keeping them running for the entire time waiting for their children to come out. This was the case not only during winter when cold but also during the summer because those parents were not willing to open their windows but were  using AC to make the things even worse. It seemed like they don’t care of their children health but just about their b..ms. 
Seriously this alone it’s enough reason all ice cars to be banned in big cities and that plus full ulez should had have come early, like 2018 or even earlier. 
Bev are the solution for towns and cities. 
Hybrids and hydrogen ev easily replace the diesels and phev easily can share space in towns, simply as is. 
Now what happens with these restrictions and a huge hole London and probably most other big cities are filling up with old classic cars exempted from all restrictions but polluting like crazy. 

[Cyker]

Yes but who's fault was that? The same party that KHAAAAAN is part of - They were the ones that encouraged ALL of us to get diesels in the first place! This is another of many reasons why the change to EV has slowed; Once bitten twice shy, and people are waiting to see what bait and switch they'll pull with EVs like they did with diesels.

Anyway cars, or in fact any vehicle, are not even allowed near most schools in the morning or hometime now - You'll be fined, even in an EV. Been another nice little earner that, as they just put up cameras and an impossible to read sign and let the fine money roll in!

 

25 minutes ago, Dippy said:

A load of self justification on this thread using the usual arguments.  I suspect many people who bought hybrids sold a perfectly good 6 year old car to do so. 
I’d love a BEV but my 14YO diesel keeps going. 

Well people shouldn't have to feel they need to justify a purchase but we just live in that sort of finger-pointy one-upmanship sort of world.

Keeping that diesel RAV going is probably better for the environment generally than getting a BEV right now, and frankly the longer you can wait the better the BEV will be. As someone said, they're really still at the experimental stage and nowhere near as general purpose as a normal car.

I would have preferred to keep my diesel too and wait for a suitable BEV, but since the government all but forced me to get rid of a perfectly good 2005 Mk1 diesel Yaris for no good reason, this is a pretty good alternative.

 

[IanML]

I have yet to see any statistics on whether the ULEZ scheme has resulted in lower numbers of ICE vehicles in the affected areas.  If there is not much reduction, that could be the reason that the pollution data has not shown much improvement.  If the daily receipts from ULEZ begin to drop, that will show the scheme is beginning to work.

[lightboxcar]

On 3/9/2023 at 2:42 AM, YarisHybrid2016 said:

No bZ4X? Would have been interesting to see

Yes, completely agree.  Given Toyota is the largest car manufacturer in the word, it's rahter strange the bZ4X was not in the test.

Wonder of Toyota were reluctant to supply ........

[Cyker]

On 3/11/2023 at 4:34 PM, IanML said:

I have yet to see any statistics on whether the ULEZ scheme has resulted in lower numbers of ICE vehicles in the affected areas.  If there is not much reduction, that could be the reason that the pollution data has not shown much improvement.  If the daily receipts from ULEZ begin to drop, that will show the scheme is beginning to work.

It hasn't as people still need their cars; The number of cars hasn't really changed much. They don't seem to understand that people aren't going to suddenly magically not have to drive just because there is a sign saying ULEZ. I don't think they understand how jobs work in the real world.

What happened was word of mouth spread about the scheme so people were able to change to cars which were ULEZ compliant before it came into force. (The signs only started going up 1 month before it went live - No other formal advertisement of the zone was published in the years beforehand aside from the mandatory consultations. The more cynical of us feel this was their attempt to try and catch out as many unsuspecting motorists as possible). Those that didn't just avoid the zone (There has been a marked and disruptive rise of traffic on the A406 because of this, all predicted and all ignored.)

This is why there has been so much more backlash with this second extension - He should have been happy that people were switching to compliant cars as that would have help his 'war' on toxic air, but instead he is freaking out because he'd spent all that money implementing it (Instead of, say, upgrading the tube and bus systems), but the projected income from fines and such never materialized because most of the vehicles entering the zone are compliant, so now he's blaming motorists for this shortfall and saying it's our 'fault' that he's e.g. being 'forced' to close down bus routes.

It was never really about 'toxic' air to begin with, more like toxic greed.

 

[ernieb]

Whilst I do not use the London Underground my son does and says that during some parts the temperatures can climb into the 40oC, they estimate that there are some 500,000 mice living and breading which are unique to the underground and a species of mosquito that is only found in the underground. The steel ground off the wheels causes lung problems - as @Cyker suggest perhaps the money could well have been spent of better things.

I don't disagree that we need to reduce pollution but sometimes it seems that positions become very selective as to which bits of the science they will choose to act on.

[Roger_N]

On 3/11/2023 at 9:41 PM, lightboxcar said:

Yes, completely agree.  Given Toyota is the largest car manufacturer in the word, it's rahter strange the bZ4X was not in the test.

Wonder of Toyota were reluctant to supply ........

They had already done a summer test on the cars they used, the bZ4X was probably not available then

[FROSTYBALLS]

Moved to General Discussions.