Winter / cold weather range loss study results

[RainorshinePNW]

Thought this was interesting, especially for those of us new to EVs. Mustang Mach E seeing ~30%. Thankfully hasn't been that bad for me with my Lighting, but still seeing about a 20% loss.

Mustang Mach E owners here- that about right in your experience?

https://insideevs.com/news/626577/winter-cold-weather-ev-range-loss-study/

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[cvalue13]

I’m not sure I trust any study that concludes the best electric anything - car, lightbulb, blender, whatever - comes out of Jaguar

 

[RickLightning]

 

[Maquis]

My 270 mile range Mach-E gets about 210 or so when it‘s below freezing. About 22% drop. I don’t do anything to maximize range unless I’m going on a road trip.
I‘m skeptical of that data. Consumer Reports did a real world test and the Mach-E outperformed Tesla In actual vs EPA rating In cold weather.

 

[RainorshinePNW]

My 270 mile range Mach-E gets about 210 or so when it‘s below freezing. About 22% drop. I don’t do anything to maximize range unless I’m going on a road trip.
I‘m skeptical of that data. Consumer Reports did a real world test and the Mach-E outperformed Tesla In actual vs EPA rating In cold weather.

What I thought was interesting was the volume of data points. Looks like the Consumer Reports one was just based on their example vehicle.

 

[Monkey]

They are sure estimating the cold range of the e-tron rather high. Someone in our family owns one and I can say that it loses just as much range in the cold as our Model Y. Same with the Jaguar rating... WTF? Not that I know anyone who's bought one and I've never driving one, but that's a suspiciously glowing estimate there.

 

[Pioneer74]

Not very scientific that some of th cars ranges are estimated and some are verified.

 

[RickKeen]

There are multiple factors that can impact the "Cold" range.
1.The battery chemistry used. Different battery tech has differing response to cold. So for vehicles with the same battery tech, the response to temp changes at the cell level will be the same.

But its the temp of the battery cells that matter, not the outside temp, so the added factors are:

2. The thermal design of the battery casing. How much insulation the battery has vs. its mass and surface area and aerodynamics. If the battery has no insulation and is in a giant metal case under the vehicle subject to 70 mph airflow at 0 degrees, the battery heater is going to have to be cranked to keep up with the heat loss (if it even can).

It might be the situation that adding insulation to the battery case in the winter could increase the range performance, especially on longer trips. In the F150, for highway driving, ground clearance is not an issue - plenty of room to add insulation around the battery pack.

In addition to the ground clearance issue, on hot days, airflow around the battery may be needed for cooling. Or it at least reduces the amount of power spent running the cooling system. So it might be the case that only adding insulation only in the winter is the right tradeoff.

3. How good the algorithm is at predicting how much battery heating to apply to get maximum range for each trip.

#3 is really the tricky part. Its hard to predict how the car is going to be driven on any given trip. Heating the battery like crazy at the beginning of a short trip might be counter-productive, wasting all that power to make heat that is not used after the car is parked again. On the other hand, failing to bring the battery up to temp at the beginning of a longer trip could miss some opportunity for optimization.

For shorter, around town driving, parking in a heated garage, or pre-heating while plugged-in are big range improvers. But if you are only taking short trips and plugging in in your garage every day, do you really care about the range reduction?

 

[jimfigler]

I’m not sure I trust any study that concludes the best electric anything - car, lightbulb, blender, whatever - comes out of Jaguar

Recurrent is pretty reputable. I signed up with them with my Kona EV

 

[TaxmanHog]

I think mine has experienced a loss ranging from 20% when all my trips are short and the duration of cabin heating is short, vs 25% when the trip is longer and E-heat is running longer.

These observations are based on most recent 120 miles round trip via 95/495 mild 35-40° Friday afternoon/evening, with the cabin maintained at 72° I used about 50% of the pack SOC left home at 92% arrived at DCFC at 42%, that's 1.8 MPK which is what the overall day efficiency was showing on my trip meter. 1.8 actual MPK / 2.4 ideal MPK is about 76% of the ideal MPK.

 

[jimfigler]

There are multiple factors that can impact the "Cold" range.
1.The battery chemistry used. Different battery tech has differing response to cold. So for vehicles with the same battery tech, the response to temp changes at the cell level will be the same.

But its the temp of the battery cells that matter, not the outside temp, so the added factors are:

2. The thermal design of the battery casing. How much insulation the battery has vs. its mass and surface area and aerodynamics. If the battery has no insulation and is in a giant metal case under the vehicle subject to 70 mph airflow at 0 degrees, the battery heater is going to have to be cranked to keep up with the heat loss (if it even can).

It might be the situation that adding insulation to the battery case in the winter could increase the range performance, especially on longer trips. In the F150, for highway driving, ground clearance is not an issue - plenty of room to add insulation around the battery pack.

In addition to the ground clearance issue, on hot days, airflow around the battery may be needed for cooling. Or it at least reduces the amount of power spent running the cooling system. So it might be the case that only adding insulation only in the winter is the right tradeoff.

3. How good the algorithm is at predicting how much battery heating to apply to get maximum range for each trip.

#3 is really the tricky part. Its hard to predict how the car is going to be driven on any given trip. Heating the battery like crazy at the beginning of a short trip might be counter-productive, wasting all that power to make heat that is not used after the car is parked again. On the other hand, failing to bring the battery up to temp at the beginning of a longer trip could miss some opportunity for optimization.

For shorter, around town driving, parking in a heated garage, or pre-heating while plugged-in are big range improvers. But if you are only taking short trips and plugging in in your garage every day, do you really care about the range reduction?

Good information. I think a good percentage of EV owners forget or don’t know that battery chemistry slows as temperature decreases. Unless a manufacturer can change the law of thermodynamics it will always happen. As time and technology updates manufacturers will do better to mitigate this issue.

 

[RainorshinePNW]

Here's the source article which actually goes quite a bit deeper into each vehicle and the science of it all. Sounds like those with heat pumps (unsurprisingly, I suppose) are the ones that do better in winter, including the E-tron and Jaguar

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss

 

[Pioneer74]

Here's the source article which actually goes quite a bit deeper into each vehicle and the science of it all. Sounds like those with heat pumps (unsurprisingly, I suppose) are the ones that do better in winter, including the E-tron and Jaguar

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss

Do they actually do better? My DTE doesn't reflect true range. Why not actually test them before writing the article?

Estimated winter ranges are based on on-board telematics and reflect the OEMs proprietary range calculations and software.

 

[RainorshinePNW]

Do they actually do better? My DTE doesn't reflect true range. Why not actually test them before writing the article?

Why would you only clip half that statement?

"Estimated winter ranges are based on on-board telematics and reflect the OEMs proprietary range calculations and software. Verified winter ranges are based on original Recurrent research using a combination of on-board devices and real-time usage data providing more than 35,000 datapoints."

‍Also

"Several organizations have studied these effects, including AAA, but they are often completed in laboratory settings or with only several vehicles. This research project includes a much larger data set. Instead of dozens of vehicles, we are analyzing thousands, and recording their performance in real world driving conditions...

New for 2022: we include data that shows actual, real-world winter range under real-world driving conditions for the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Nissan LEAF, all Tesla models, and Volkswagen ID.4. These verified winter range values reflect average observed data for a variety of drivers under a wide range of use cases...

The estimated winter range for several vehicles has been updated in 2022 to reflect the winter range that we have verified with real-world data. We will continue to update this chart as we verify new models."

I shared this because I thought it was the best reporting/research I've seen to date that utilized the largest data set I've seen to date, both via "estimated" ranges for actual cars software reporting AS WELL AS "verified" ranges. Of course it'd be great if they were able to include ONLY verified ranges from thousands of instances across all models, but I'm not sure that's very feasible/practical, so this seems to me to be a pretty good substitute for now.

 

[Pioneer74]

Why would you only clip half that statement?

You discussed the Jaguar and E-tron in your previous post. I not disputing the verified results.

Sounds like those with heat pumps (unsurprisingly, I suppose) are the ones that do better in winter, including the E-tron and Jaguar

How do they think they only lose 8% and 3% without testing them? By trusting the cars estimation? My Lightning and Mach-E can't get that right and neither can Tesla.

And how do they lose so little with heat pumps compared to the Tesla models that use them?

This is a hack article. If they didn't have facts to back the range loss claims up, they shouldn't have included them. And you shouldn't treat them as gospel.

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