I’ve always heard that EVs are not a great option if you live in really cold areas due to them not being very efficient in the cold. Why is that? And do gas powered vehicles have the same issue?
In: Engineering
Allow me to offer a shift in thinking: ICE vehicles are incredibly wasteful on energy as far as converting it to motion, all 12 months of the year (around 20-25%). But in colder months, that waste energy can get put to some use in heating. In the summer months, it just goes straight out to the atmosphere. EVs are incredibly efficient as far as converting energy into motion, as high as 95% under the right conditions. That means it doesn’t have the waste heat to warm up the cabin. As far as the actual energy to move the car in cold weather, it’s not that much worse than in the summer. It’s the pesky humans in the car that insist on not being cold that are the issue.
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