Maybe EVs should come with a small propane heater for your trip. If Shiny Pony has his way, a winter car ride is going to become a race to arrive at your destination before hypothermia sets in.
But it wasn’t just the duration of the journey that was appalling – the temperature during the journey was anything but funny: the heating stayed off for almost the entire return journey in freezing temperatures: Because the colder it is, the more the operation of the heating systems puts a strain on the electric car battery.
For the trip, Brack covered herself with a hat, scarf, gloves and generally warm clothing, because after the first full charge, the VW e-Up shows a range of just 216 kilometers. And even this information is not guaranteed, which is why Brack opts for the so-called Eco-Plus mode and, of course, for the heating to be switched off. When the windscreen is frosty, heating wires ensure a clear view, so the reporter driving the test can do without the power-guzzling fan heater completely.
I’m thinking more along the lines of a wood stove.
Of course. Aren’t electric cars all about eliminating fossil fuels altogether?
BAD
they may not eliminate all fossil fuels, butt lets hope they eliminate a lot of fossil fools!
+++GYM. It takes real fool not to realize that EVs cannot be built without fossil fuels. The disconnect is disturbing and goes to show the intellectual ability of the average proponent of EVs.
That be true, but if we really wanna please the Eco Freaks maybe we should all drive a Gilligan’s Island car.
A VW with no heat … imagine that.
Actually, my 1977 VW Rabbit was quite good in that respect. I sometimes drove in weather well below -30 C and it was often warm enough that I could drive in my shirtsleeves.
My ’91 Golf isn’t as warm, but, I could still drive it without freezing inside.
I’m sure VW’s liquid-cooled cars are just fine for heat. But the company will forever live down the frosty reputation of the original beetle. Seems like it’s striving for that old standard with the electric stuff. Some folks actually did install propane heaters in the old beetles.
I used to have rellies in the Edmonton area and one of their vehicles in the mid-’60s was a VW Beetle. And, yes, it was cold as the dickens. One Christmas they visited my parents and me and, during the return trip, someone’s aftershave lotion froze.
Don’t forget that the original VWs not only had the engines in the rear, but they were air-cooled. Re-circulating waste heat would have required some interesting design, but, then, the original VWs weren’t meant for Canadian winters.
Bingo. And neither are electric cars meant for Canadian winters.
The heat in them came from air circulating over the exhaust headers. If there was any leaks in that shroud and or ducting to the front you had very little heat. If you had an exhaust leak you got a bit of poisoning.
Brilliant
Haha! I was thinking the same thing! I nearly froze to death in my friends 74 van!
I remember those VW days.
But worse yet was being stuck in a snow drift in minus 40 weather.
One could run the van but there really wasn’t any point to doing so.
Never bought another VW after that.
Yeah, electric cars are going to sooooooo good, won’t they?
Right after New Year’s Day, I made another trip to my house in B. C. One night, it was near -40 C in the alley behind my back yard. My truck, being a diesel, took a lot of prodding to get it started, even though I plugged in the block heater several hours earlier.
During the drive back, the warmest temperature I encountered (according to my truck) was -25.
Of course, it had been electric, I wouldn’t have had to deal with all that, right?
If it had been electric you probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere, have EVs ever been tested at -40 C? My old 62 VW beetle had forced air heat from its air cooled 1200 cc engine, until the air channels rusted out in Ontario. The newer models had a gas fired heater under the “Frunk” next to the gas tank, probably a bad design feature but never heard of one exploding. Maybe the EVs should have an ethanol fired heater, fueled by corn, under the Frunk – all very green. That doesn’t solve the range problem, just the comfort level. Being trapped in one of these in a blizzard or whiteout in Northern Ontario would not be fun, maybe they all need to carry a small Honda generator and 5 gallons of gas for emergencies!
That’s assuming that the occupants stay with the vehicle if it breaks down during the cold.
Many years ago, while I was looking for my first engineering job, someone at a certain oil company talked about driving out to its production facilities in winter. He told me that he always had a sleeping bag in the back, just in case of a breakdown.
I followed that advice ever since, as well as the rule: never leave your vehicle.
I imagine they could utilize an interior heating system similar to what is currently used by Tesla – a massive lithium fire.
We keep a couple of old blankets in our car for emergency use. If not us in an extraordinary winter shut down of a road they could be of use by a run over pedestrian until official help arrives. It’s known that the heat from one candle inside a car helps tremendously. Why not have a candle or two in your EV for those really cold days.
May I recommend always carrying a Hibachi in your ecar? It seems as though every year I read a story about a Southeast Asian immigrant family dying of CO poisoning … or dying in an apartment fire … because they were burning wood and coal in a Hibachi in the middle of the living room. If it’s good enough for the immigrants … it should be good enough for a 1st world ecar driver.
Electric vehicles in Canadian climates are a suckers bet. The grid that would support 20% of the personal vehicles on the road now, is nonexistent. The money required to replace the grid we have now is nonexistent. The technology that is needed to store energy that oil and gas produce in demand periods, is nonexistent. Trudeau government’s plan to solve any of the above electric vehicle transition shortfalls, is nonexistent. All that Trudeau and Minister of Climate Change Propaganda, Steven Guiloebbels, have is a plan to eliminate oil and gas and that is it. Period. They want us all dirt poor and then they will confiscate all possessions. It’s the WEF mission. You will have nothing, and you will be happy!
Just to give a vision of the scale of electricity needed to go electric, every time you go for a drive in the city or in the country, just imagine that every vehicle you see is electric. The thought is mind boggling as to how much electricity would be required to charge every vehicle or even 50% of them every day.
You mainly charge electric cars at night, you know when demand for power drops significantly, no washers, dryers etc. In BC it’s hydro power, those rivers keep falling at night as well as in the day.
okay, BC hydro’s nameplate capacity is 11,000 MW
BC has 3.9 million vehicles
so making the assumption that BC is running it’s power system at 100% of rated nameplate capacity, and there is no losses at any point in the system
and that each vehicle would be charged between the hours of 10pm and 6am (representing 8 hours of charging)
and no other power was used for anything else (including pumping water back into the reservoirs as pumped storage)
each vehicle would have a ration of 2820 W, which over 8 hours works out to 22.6kW/h of power stored into their on average 60 kW/h batteries..
has the government proposed increasing the amount of generated power and building new power facilities so that you can fully charge your electric vehicle in less than 2.5 days?
/yes this is a simplification, but illustrates that the government doesn’t care when they claim they want everyone driving electric vehicles
Do you think the existing switching and transmission line infrastructure would support the -additional- load of charging every car in BC on top of all the other stuff that gets done every night, Stephen Ottridge?
Don’t you think that the charging demand might be larger than the existing peak daytime load? Because every car and truck in BC plugging in at ~11pm, that’s going to draw down some juice.
Now imagine Toronto, which has half-again the number of people in it, and runs mostly off the elderly Pickering nuclear station and gas turbines.
Your supercilious comment assumes nobody here can add and subtract. Yes, we know power usage is lower at night. Which makes no difference to the conversation, because the proposed charging load is more than the total generating power of the grid, day or night. Just take the total gallons of fuel sold in a year, convert that energy to watts, and there’s your generation demand. Close enough for government work, anyway. It’s a big number.
For entertainment, why not calculate the number of windmills needed to generate that wattage? The answer is more windmills than we have, or will ever have.
“You mainly charge electric cars at night, ”
Says who? How about I fuel my car whenever the f*ck I want not during the government allowed fueling hours? F*cking watermelons.
The goal of the Trudeau Liberals is not to have every vehicle driver today switch to electric. They know that is impossible for many reasons including an insufficient grid. No, their actual goal is to greatly reduce the number of people who own vehicles period. The carbon tax is meant to price most people out of affording fossil fuels and if people in the lower and middle income classes can’t afford a new EV then it’s just too bad for them. They will be forced to be urban and everything they do will be by public transit or Uber. A major drop in the standard of living for millions of Canadians. And all for nothing as the Liberal’s fanciful climate targets are unreachable and will have zero effect on the climate regardless.
Precisely. It is meant to reduce mobility of citizens. Only those elites with well rated social credit scores will be permitted on officially sanctioned travel.
Mobility consumes resources. Mobility allows undesirables to gather to plot against the all knowing government. / sarc
Here’s the answer…..they come in diesel, gas and electric (various manufacturers)
https://gajitz.com/little-generator-trailer-lets-electric-cars-go-the-distance/
I was going to make a joke about towing a generator, and here somebody built one already and is selling it unironically. FFS.
This is why lampooning the Left is impossible. They take the joke as a challenge and top you every time.
The moment Tesla truck was announced I waited for someone to put a diesel generator on the bed.
It is not only cold weather.
You are not supposed to leave your EV in the hot sun.
The hot sun of California or Florida can make the battery overheat and this reduces its life.
I am not making this up, EV owner’s manuals recommend not lleaving the car all day in the sun and not charging it in the sun.
EV’s , perfect for the climate of dreary Ol’England.
Not only that, Canadian Friend. In warmer climates and seasons, folks are going to want to be cool. Recall “Ice Cold Air” signs on cars in the dealers used car lots? Well, air conditioning requires power, too, which will further drain the battery.
Back to the days of “4-60” air conditioning?
For the young folk, that’s 4 windows down @ 60 mph…
…uh oh! Open window air turbulence. Streamline reduction. Range/charge reduction.
Sounds like the ’66 VW Bug I brought with me to Nebraska. You, HTG, slid little levers on the transmission tunnel to let heat in from the motor. Unforgivably primitive. Imagine trying to get to work in -75F degree wind chill driving that POS. It was the first and last import I’ve ever owned (not counting the Lincoln and Avalanche). Parking in SF had gotten to $200 a month (this was the ’70s) so my soon-to-be ex-husband made me use the VW and park on outside lots. I took the VW hoping to trade for my ’72 Monte Carlo during the divorce. Didn’t happen. I got a new car but not what I wanted.
Right on cue: https://www.wsj.com/articles/electricity-shortage-warnings-grow-across-u-s-11652002380