I’ve written before about the awkward fact that electric vehicles (EVs) can run into range problems when things get chilly, but this piece by the Financial Times’ Patti Waldmeir is well worth a read on the topic.
Consumer Reports, my Bible for big-ticket purchases, said in August that “cold weather saps about 25 per cent of range when cruising at 70mph”. On short trips in the cold with frequent stops and reheating the interior the range was cut by about 50 per cent . . .
“The charge level sweet spot is between 20 and 80 per cent charged,” says [Mike] Dunne [chief executive of ZoZoGo, a global EV consultancy], and most automakers recommend this to preserve battery life long term. “So that means you lop off 20 per cent of range at the top and 20 per cent at the bottom,” and that falls further in the cold. “As a Midwesterner . . . you get there, but how am I getting back? It’s very stressful,” he says.
He adds that charging infrastructure in the Midwest is also lagging behind the coasts, and drivers often find charging points are not working. “I think we will see pockets of demand in the Midwest but not mass adoption for years,” he says.
California has, of course, now introduced a ban on the sale of new internal-combustion-engine cars from 2035, a mandate that is likely to be copied in other states, although not, I imagine, in the northern part of this country.
A greater problem may be that many automakers, anticipating the switch to EVs, are pulling out of the manufacture of internal-combustion-engine (ICE) vehicles.
As I noted a week ago:
[R]elying on their reading, not of the consumer, but of a corporatist establishment of which they are themselves a part, America’s Big Three have already anticipated what lies ahead. Chrysler plans to be all-electric by 2028, and GM is headed in the same direction, but has settled on 2035. Only Ford appears to be hedging its bets, splitting its operation into EV and ICE units. It’s pouring money into the former but appears set on doing more with its legacy business (bleak term) than simply running it down. Tobacco companies have shown how that can work.
Something tells me that Ford may have made the better choice, and that we may be headed towards an EV train wreck (so to speak) before too long. Forcing the pace with EVs rather than letting the market in these vehicles develop naturally is an example of central planning at work. And central planning does not, shall we say, have a great track record.
But what about Tesla’s success?
Waldmeir:
My city of Chicago, with its glacial reputation, has no shortage of Teslas. . . . I nabbed a random cross-section of Tesla drivers last week and discovered why: they all had a second car, a garage, a home battery charger and drove their electric vehicle only in the city. With a range of more than 300 miles, cold apparently is not a problem for affluent two-car families that drive their Tesla as part runabout, part status symbol.
No, this isn’t looking good.