28 ms·

Anecdotally last winter, had a Model Y up in maine for a trip home. I arrived at a backwoods house with ~60 miles left. It was around 10 farenheit the next day

• justahuman74 4y ago
  The 115v lines just arent enough, it may have been quite ok using a 240v though (from say a dryer plug)
  • simfree 4y ago
    OP should have gone by percentage of battery left, and just left the car plugged in. Not plugging in when arriving and letting the battery freeze (cold soak) overnight, unplugging after 30 minutes of 1.5kW level 1 charging and basing his entire decisions on what the car's guess-o-meter says for remaining milage is pretty crazy IMO. Seems like OP chose to do the worst thing possible at each juncture to ensure a bad charging experience. It is normal for cars to use 2 or 3 kilowatts (an hour or two of charging) heating the battery up to temperature in freezing conditions, but once the pack is up to temperature it charges close to normal speed.
    • nradov 4y ago
      It's hardly crazy to expect that the car should display an accurate range estimate based on the current temperature.
      • jtc331 4y ago
        Gas car range predictions are also regularly nonsensical. I thought this was well understood.
        • simfree 4y ago
          People have extremely high expectations of range estimates. These displays are known as Guess-O-Meters for good reason, they only account for past weather, driving conditions and style.
        • nradov 4y ago
          Perhaps that used to be a problem. The range estimates for gasoline cars that I've owned and rented in the past few years have been accurate to within a few percent, even in cold weather.
          • jtc331 4y ago
            I expect that’s true over a full tank of gas but not when e.g. only 20 miles are left.
        • eric_h 4y ago
          On my car (2013 mini) the range prediction is actually a more accurate indicator of how much fuel is in the tank than the (separate) fuel tank meter. Not sure why, you’d think they’d use the same input data for both, but it’s true.
          • simfree 4y ago
            By giving you a less precise fuel tank indicator (eg: 8 segment fuel display) versus xxx Miles of Range, your cajoled into trusting the estimator, and the range being so high on gas cars usually allows the estimator to end up closer to accurate thanks to bad and good economy driving and conditions averaging out.
    • vanous 4y ago
      I am all for EV, but if besides needing to take care that I plug my phone and my watch every night I must also not forget to plug in the car and if I forget, I must apologize at work for not coming in, or my kids cannot go to school... just because it easily can get to -15°C here... then it feels like a technology issue and not like me doing the worse thing possible...
      • saturn_vk 4y ago
        But that's a thing you learn. Just like you learn to check your oil level before starting in a conventional vehicle. Everything has its own set of things you have to know
        • rapind 4y ago
          > Just like you learn to check your oil level before starting in a conventional vehicle. Yeah, I (and everyone else) totally do that…
          • hn_go_brrrrr 4y ago
            Not even once.
        • fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
          I’d estimate I have driven cars 10,000 times and I have never done that. Just take it to a mechanic every 5k miles. And nothing that touches the oil has ever gone wrong.
      • simfree 4y ago
        If you plug in every night and miss a night you can almost certainly make it to work the next day, unless your a supercommuter with an older EV that had a small 24kWh pack.
      • marvin 4y ago
        Regular EV user here - plugging it in is something you do every time you park, the way you lock your doors. It takes five seconds. Press the «open charge port» button on the charging cable and stick it in the charging socket. Done.
    • PhasmaFelis 4y ago
      If the "guess-o-meter" is so bad that it leads reasonable people to wildly wrong conclusions, I'm hesitant to blame that on the user. If all the factors you described are understood by humans, why aren't they factored into the display algorithm? If the car is going to drain battery for an hour getting warm before it can start to charge, then say that on the display.
      • simfree 4y ago
        The car can't predict the severity of weather, whether or not your going to preheat the car or your driving style. All of these factors combine to make the range estimator a guesstimate on both gas and electric cars.
        • PhasmaFelis 4y ago
          But it could make a better guess than it does, or even leave the numerical guess untouched but give the driver other useful information. Specifically, the information you gave in your first comment. Teslas have great big dashboard screens. There was no need to leave OP thinking that the car was unchargable unless it was brought into a warm place.
    • lelanthran 4y ago
      > and basing his entire decisions on what the car's guess-o-meter says for remaining milage is pretty crazy IMO. What are you supposed to base it on? Does your EV come with a working crrystal ball? Should I read the car's horoscope? I mean, really, I've read stupid statements, but blaming the user for trusting the displayed battery capacity on a device really takes the cake.
      • simfree 4y ago
        The guess-o-meter doesn't reflect the actual state of the battery, but rather what it has seen in the recent past, hence OP should toggle to battery percentage and trust that instead of a known inaccurate estimator.
• brianglick 4y ago
  You wouldn't really need a heated garage (at home, anyway) if you had a 220 volt charger. That should be able to overcome any charging challenges in extreme cold, anyway. Relatively easy to get that into your garage. Also - if you arrive at your friend's place in the winter and park overnight, you won't lose a ton overnight if the car's just parked there.
  • GalenErso 4y ago
    Meanwhile, with an ICE car, you don't need to worry about having a garage, nevermind a heated one; the right charger, warming a pack, losing fuel overnight, or taking three hours to fully charge. I can pull up to any gas station and fill my tank in 2 minutes. And my gas isn't magically evaporating if it's a little chilly. The 30 different requirements for EVs to work in cold weather are too complex and prohibitively expensive. That 2035 deadline is never not going to be pushed back unless the EV industry pulls a rabbit out of a hat.
    • Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      I mean by that metric, it's hard to figure out how to install a dryer in your house too. It's the same circuitry.
      • rtkwe 4y ago
        With the difference that the dryer connections are usually installed when the house is built so there's easy access to run the wires to and from the breaker box. Installing them afterwards is more expensive and complicated to do because of the limited access. It's also not something you can expect to find anywhere other than at another EV owner's place. Admittedly over time that will become less of an issue but for now it's going to be pretty rare.
        • tshaddox 4y ago
          Right, so you’re only saying that EVs are new, not that they’re more difficult to setup than a dryer.
• jackmott 4y ago
  You only need a 220volt plug, then its fine. You can also leave it overnight just fine. I think plugging a 110v during the cold is kind of an edge case, the car tries to charge but it makes thing worse. Maybe a software update would cure that.
  • cwalv 4y ago
    > I think plugging a 110v during the cold is kind of an edge case, the car tries to charge but it makes thing worse I doubt if it could make things worse, despite what the range indicator says.
• Phlarp 4y ago
  If it's cold enough a Tesla plugged into 120v/20a charging circuit will actually lose voltage over time. It's consuming over 2000 watts just to keep the battery at an acceptable temp for the chemistry to function. The weight of the battery pack is great for traction in warm / dry conditions, but when driving on ice that weight is just momentum sending you sliding into snow banks. After a bumper or body panel gets ripped off during the inevitable extraction from above mentioned snow bank, expect to wait 6-9 months for the most basic of body work. The self driving is an absolute clown show in anything but perfect conditions (mounting evidence it sucks in perfect conditions too~) Nothing in the world excites me more than expensive nerd toys with electric power trains, but as a Minnesota native I'll take a $900 rolling trash can beater car over a top of the line Tesla six months out of the year. There is a very valuable lesson in observing the legacy auto industry existing in Michigan where the winters get very cold and cars need to perform with snow or ice on the roads. Meanwhile Tesla mostly engineers their cars to be good at driving from LA to SF and back.
  • hedora 4y ago
    At what temperature would it consume 2000 watts keeping the battery warm? Surely it uses a heat pump, so it is pumping 8000-4000W of heat into the battery pack. That would be a large steady state heat loss!
    • Phlarp 4y ago
      >That would be a large steady state heat loss! Yes it is. I don't have a large dataset of exact temp conditions and charging curves (Elon certainly does though, someone go ask him!) I can tell you if the outdoor temps are below 15F a standard outlet has negative net energy input. A heat pump solution would certainly be more efficient, knowing Tesla I can only assume it's peltier junctions. All the hype about the efficiency of an EV goes out the window when it's blowing 16kwh+ a day just keeping the battery above freezing.
    • Dylan16807 4y ago
      From what I can find in a quick search: On a normal plug, drawing 12 amps, older Teslas without heat pumps would start losing the battery heat fight around -15C. A heat pump should be able to do a lot better. Also you're probably only going to get 16 amps of actual draw on a 20 amp circuit.
• hedora 4y ago
  Not all 110v chargers are equal. My BMW came with a 6/10 amp (software selectable) emergency use charger. I bought a 16 amp 110V charger from Amazon, and it is more than enough to keep up with my daily commute. (It is equivalent to an 8 amp 220V charge cable.)
• seattle_spring 4y ago
  You could also just make sure to have a L2 charger. There’s some guy on HN who barges into these threads and insists that no one ever needs an L2 charger, but after I had mine installed there’s no way I could live without it.
  • verelo 4y ago
    Yeah living in Canada and having only outdoor parking, no way i could live without it. Also it’s just cheaper: electricity is much cheaper over night and if i have to charge 24x7 I’m paying much more.
• ikiris 4y ago
  Normal EV owners have high amp 220 plugs. A 110 20a feed is TERRIBLE for charging in all cases.
• wilg 4y ago
  The easiest solution here was just to plug it in when you arrived, not the next day.
  • hanche 4y ago
    That’s a lesson EV drivers in Norway learn very quickly. If you can’t charge at your destination, plan to visit a quick charger nearby, before arrival while the battery is warm from driving. Even using a quick charger, charging is very slow when the battery is really cold. Admittedly, I don’t have personal experience below –20 °C (–4 °F). If it drops down to –40 °(C or F), I am not so sure what will happen. But the strategy should remain the same.
• kergonath 4y ago
  It could have been much worse. A battery that froze solid can develop some interesting issues when used after it thawed, such as thermal run-away (or interesting exothermic episodes, as we call it, but funnier to watch in a reinforced calorimeter than in your driveway), or short-circuits (lots of smoke if you are lucky, otherwise a fireball). Batteries have operating range for a reason, and that operating range is exceeded routinely in winter and summer, even in nominally temperate regions.
• coderenegade 4y ago
  This is also why claims of round trip energy efficiency for BEVs need a disclaimer. You need to put energy in to heat the battery, so under certain conditions, your roundtrip efficiency can hit 0%; i.e. all input energy going towards heating the battery, and none going towards charging the vehicle.
• BirAdam 4y ago
  The Wrangler 4XE has a temp controlled battery. Not sure about other vehicles, but it works. TBH, I think mankind just needs better energy storage. Lithium ion, and lithium iron phosphate are great, but I do not believe these are going to work for us in the long term. I do believe, however, that within 30 years electric vehicles will be more practical than ICE if some kind of better battery is made at a low enough price point.
• sixQuarks 4y ago
  I bet if you had just left it plugged in, it would’ve started charging after the battery warmed up. You freaked out because in cold weather the battery won’t start charging right away, energy will be used to heat up the battery first.
• m463 4y ago
  - even an unheated garage will mitigate extremely low overnight temperatures - if you install a 220v charger with a 60a circuit breaker, you can charge up to 48 amps - keep the car plugged in all the time - not only to charge, but to keep the battery warm and even preheat the car for a toasty drive.
• GrumpyNl 4y ago
  I wish i could afford a house with a well insulated, heated garage. This whole discussion, shows that ev are not for the mass.
• heresie-dabord 4y ago
  Question: As a consumer, had you done any research or calculations before the trip? Were your expectations realistic? What strikes me is that people in some markets have unrealistic assumptions about the current battery technology. Spending more money does not change physics. EV technology is rather good. But there are bad products in the EV market. This review of the F-150 Lightning is interesting for the surprise of the reviewer that the vehicle isn't fit for purpose. https://www.guideautoweb.com/articles/68882/ford-f-150-lightning-2022-on-a-remorque-et-on-a-ete-franchement-decu/ https://www.guideautoweb.com/articles/68882/ford-f-150-light... (Google Translate is your friend.)
• mythhouse 4y ago
  > - would need a heated garage Yes exactly why things like govts banning ICE vehicles in 2035 is unfair on poor people without homes.
• ls15 4y ago
  Better have a gasoline generator with you.