By The Heartland Institute
Independent research produced by the American Automobile Association (AAA) finds electric (EV) and hybrid vehicles (HV) don’t handle the heat or, even worse, the cold well, losing substantial amounts of range.
AAA’s automotive engineering team partnered with the Automobile Club of Southern California’s Automotive Research Center to test three EVs and three HVs across various temperature ranges: 20°F, 75°F, and 95°F. The cars were run on a dynamometer, similar to a treadmill that measures torque, horsepower, and in this case, travel range for vehicles. During the test, each car had its climate control system (heating and air conditioning) set at 72 degrees.
Compared to operating at temperatures of 75℉ and 95℉:
- EVs experience an 8.5 percent loss of average driving range at 20°F, equivalent to a 10.4 percent loss in fuel economy, adding as much as $16.25 to driving costs at public charging stations, although sometimes higher depending on the cost of electricity in the charging area;
- HVs experienced a 12 percent decrease in miles per gallon, or fuel efficiency, adding $28.44 to fuel costs per 1,000 miles.
The decline in operating range for EVs and HVs is even steeper during extremely cold weather. Compared to operating at 75℉,:
- EVs saw an average drop in comparative fuel economy of a 35.6 percent, and a 39.0 percent decrease in driving range when operating at 20℉, adding, per AAA, “$32.11 per 1,000 miles when charged at home electricity rates and $76.93 per 1,000 miles when using public charging;”
- HVs lose 22.8 percent in fuel economy, adding $28.44 in cost per 1,000 miles.
Cold temperatures further complicate travel in another way. It takes vehicles longer to charge or recharge in the cold. This means that on an extended trip, drivers have to plan their routes more carefully to find operating charging stations closer together, and they must spend even more time than normal “fueling” up. That is a serious consideration when one considers EV and HV drivers already spend much more time than average when compared to drivers of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines: from 30 minutes to multiple hours more, depending on the type of charging facility and amount of competition with other drivers for charging outlets.
As NPR notes in an article discussing AAA’s research, “The AC and heat are a surprisingly big draw on a vehicle’s energy,” so AAA has several recommendations for extending driving range in hot and cold temperatures. Among them: if your EV or HV has seat heaters or coolers, use them and them alone when driving during extreme cold or heat, respectively. Did you get that? The way to get the driving range promised by EVs and HVs is to keep your air conditioning off during the summer and your heater off during the winter. Other recommendations are to precondition your battery before charging and run your climate control system while charging, thus drawing power directly from the grid rather than the vehicle.
That brings to mind the problems with electric buses in Oslo and Sweden, where the vehicles have failed to complete their rounds during the winter, forcing those jurisdictions and others to pull them from service, severely truncate their routes, and turn off the heat during travel, leaving passengers shivering at bus stops while waiting for vehicles that never arrive, stranded in buses that have stalled, or in buses running with the heat turned off.
