I was talking to a UPS driver the other day about EV's. They are very concerned about how these vehicles will perform in my neck of the woods. About a third of the year it is well below freezing here. As is the ICE UPS trucks have difficulty in the snow. The drivers are concerned that the problems will be compounded by cold batteries and having to charge them constantly given that Tesla's don't do well here at all and have to be charged often.
My concerns about this are entirely selfish of course. If I bought a bed locally it would have been about $3k. The same bed on Amazon was $700 including mattress and frame. I buy locally when it makes sense and what I want is available but sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Amazon only uses UPS here.
People have this extreme sceptisism towards electric vehicles for some reason. They have been out for many years now and have performed just fine in cold weather. Yes, they have a reduced range, that can be solved with a larger battery. I could also imagine design where a small gas/diesel engine provides heat for the batteries and interior cabin of the vehicle, leaving the batteries to power the drivetrain entirely.
In fairness the UPS drivers skepticism is well founded and possibly reflecting back on them in the form of karma and Murphy's law. They poke fun at the Tesla drivers that often get stuck on the side of the road from dead batteries. I find this fascinating as I understood the cars could tell you that you won't make it to {destination} on the current charge.
A hybrid solution does sound like a great idea. Are Rivian planning on doing this?
They're typically on the side of the road for the same kinds of reasons as any other cars - people stopping to fidget with phones or stuck with flat tires.
It's reasonable to expect (and reality appears to deliver) long and low-maintenance life from an electric vehicle [0]. There are, of course, issues of keeping the battery warm enough and cold weather climate control. One of the big advances in the Model 3 is using a heat pump for heating where previous models (and most other electric cars, like the Bolt that I drive) use a resistor.
Further mechanical improvements in insulation and thermal management will probably continue to push cold-weather performance quite a ways further. It is, however, always going to be a challenge. Your ICE vehicle produces quite a huge amount of waste heat which can be redirected to the cabin or the glass. And, of course, they're not completely immune to the cold themselves. Places with really serious winters have parking spaces with electrical outlets for engine block heaters. Those will continue to have utility in an electrified future to keep batteries warm and charged.
Personally I'm very excited to see urban delivery trucks electrify sooner rather than later. They're doing a lot of stop-and-go and idle a lot. And they don't drive very fast. So they're super-obvious low-hanging fruit that will really help reduce noise and air pollution in cities. Plus, cargo loading times are long enough to significantly mitigate charging times. Mid-range last-mile delivery in rural areas will be a little bit harder, but still seems plenty achievable with technology we have right now. Long haul seems more difficult and the benefits over a hybrid less clear.
In all cases, however, there's no excuse for being stuck on the side of the road for want of energy. All road vehicles, regardless of their source of energy, indicate how much they have left. Running out is an operator error.
I've never seen a Tesla on the road. I'm not sure they're made in enough quantity or sold across enough geographies and demographics to measure anything technical by collecting anecdotes.
I am told it is. This is by a couple UPS drivers. They could be telling my tall tales. I can only take them at their word. I will ask them to get pictures next time they see this.
It’s only a matter of time before they figure something out for this. Right now companies are concerned about at least having a product. Once they feel comfortable and they have a solid flow of cash and products I’m sure they’ll focus on these details.
It could be something like different cooling system that is very well isolated from the outside world and can maintain a controlled internal climate with little power or whatever.
I have faith in that it’s a fixable issue that requires just a bit of time.
Initially they might have to do heavier vehicles or change fleets half way through the day or something like that. Or have a small ICE to extend range
This winter I was riding my bike at -6°C (21.2°F) with my phone mounted on the handlebar. After about half an hour of riding, I stopped to take a picture with it.
The picture alone made the battery drop by around 3%, and after a minute I turned the screen on again for a very short time, afterwards the battery dropped from 80% to 8% in less than 5 minutes.
I had this phone on my handlebar for a couple of times at down to -7°C (19.4°F), as well as another one (I have my daily driver mounted for podcasts and photos and another cheap one as a Garmin replacement for tracking) and had never seen this before nor afterwards.
The difference is that your phone does not have thermal management for its battery, other than passive cooling. EV batteries, on the other hand, do actively manage their temperature; even a parked EV might, if the environment is too cold, use up a bit of its stored power to heat up the battery to keep it in the correct temperature range.
That's OK. EVs don't have to satisfy every edge case from day one. There are plenty of cities they can serve in less-than-freezing climate. This problem for now is solvable by brute-force by maintaining battery temperature, and this seems to work well enough for Norway.
Perhaps long routes in freezing temperatures will be a niche where hydrogen fuel cells turn out to be useful, or maybe just incremental improvements of existing battery tech and management will suffice.
My concerns about this are entirely selfish of course. If I bought a bed locally it would have been about $3k. The same bed on Amazon was $700 including mattress and frame. I buy locally when it makes sense and what I want is available but sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Amazon only uses UPS here.