I got my first EV last week, so this is absoultely perfect timing. It's in no small part down to you and your videos, that has persuaded me to finally take the plunge, so thank you!
Good for you mrbigglesworth have you not seen the video's throughout the world that has burst into flames ! ITS NOT A GAMBLE WORTH TAKING WITH A LIFE 😂
@@stum8374 They do NOT burst into flames thats ICE , if an EV does catch fire it will very slowly burn , but statistics show that more ICE catch fire than EVs Firefighters are dealing with a car fire; The road is closed between the A361 Supermarine roundabout up to the A419 junction by the B&Q... .4 hours ago Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service was alerted to reports of a fire at Douglas Gardens in Poole, a road away from Ashley Road and... .1 day ago 4 December 2024 11:39 MKFM understands there is a vehicle fire on the V10 in Milton Keynes . 4 December 2024 Emergency crews were called to reports of a motor on fire between Junctions 5 (Shotts Interchange) and 6 (Newhouse) on the road's eastbound... .2 days ago Firefighters visited Kirkby Gardens in Worcester after a small fire broke out in the engine compartment of a vehicle. .1 day ago Firefighters were called to reports of a vehicle on fire in a farm building. The incident occurred in the Leyburn area at about 5.30pm...December 6, 2024 Fire crews extinguish two separate car blazes in Eastbourne East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service were called to reports of a car fire, in Enys Road, on Sunday (December 1) at about 7am. The blaze broke out in a car on Gaywood Road near King Edward VII Academy school, King's Lynn, on Thursday (November 5). .1 day ago Car fire on A19 at Selby - emergency crews called in 10 hrs ago FIREFIGHTERS were called to extinguish a vehicle fire near a busy main road in Poole. Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service was alerted... .1 day ago A55 was closed in one direction after vehicle fire The incident took place between Holywell and Caerwys 4 DEC 2024 Delays have been spotted on a section of High Wycombe and Stokenchurch's stretch of the M40 due to a car fire. .4 days ago Firefighters visited Kirkby Gardens in Worcester after a small fire broke out in the engine compartment of a vehicle. . 1 day ago
My wife and I brought our first EV two weeks ago and have been rather 'neurotic' about how the range seems to drop as soon as you put on the AirCon/Heating. This video (plus comments below) really make it clear with the general low milage we do we should not worry. Plus the advice about pre-conditioning the battery made me look at my owners handbook as to what do during the winter months re: charging. Thank you.
Another thing that lowers efficiency in winter (and you touched on it when talking about tyre pressures) is the air is denser, so the car has to work harder to push through it especially when 'making progress' down the motorway.
Agree, tire pressure make a noticeable difference on our Kia. The tire manufactures recommend quite low pressures, however the Kia dealer pumps them up to 40 psi/2.8 bar and it definitely improves the handling of the car as well as increasing the range by about 5-8%.
Another factor with winter range is snow tires. They tend to be less efficient than all season tires. But it is worth the range hit to be safer on icy and snowy roads here in Canada. It is even mandated in some parts of the country.
Experiencing my first winter with an EV and this video is so useful - especially the power usage of the heating. As a former rugby player I think my body thermostat is lower than most so I am comfy with air con set to 18/19°, but I’ve been turning it on an off mainly to demist windows. I have noticed with the rain we’ve had this week my short journey efficiency was pretty low with aircon left on, but longer journey the car did better, I’m guessing because the car warms up and its energy usage on the heating drops…
Another great video, and a perfect topic at this time of year, especially for myself here in Western Canada. I have been experimenting with different techniques myself, including anti-fogging on the glass, which was a waste of time. I even did a road trip at -38’C., normally in my 2023 Niro I get 500 km’s on a full charge in the summer . On that day I did 245 km’s with 20 km’s left in the tank. I had three stops during the trip. Yes I do have a heat pump
To be honest I rarely do more than 50 miles a day, so I don’t worry about range much,and charge up most nights at 7p per kWh, so leave the climate control at 21C and the seats, steering wheel etc on auto. A comfortable diver is a safer driver than a shivering one!
Thanks for the tips! FWIW, while it's true that ICE and EV cars both are affected by cold weather, EVs are affected much more, because energy from the battery is used up to heat the cabin. ICE vehicles are always having to deal with _too much_ extra heat, because the engines are so inefficient thermodynamically, wasting 70% or more of the energy in the gas, so in the winter we just grab some of that extra heat that would otherwise get thrown away and use that to keep the cabin warm. A few EV designs have a more holistic thermal management system, where waste heat from the motor(s) and battery can be shuffled around to where it's needed, such as heating the cabin, but this contributes only a small amount, since there's not nearly as much waste heat in an EV to start with. (By the way, it's not accurate to say that the 12V battery is used for the climate control. It's true that in an ICE, heated seats and steering wheel would run off the 12V system, but the _power_ comes from the alternator, and would quickly run the battery down if the energy was being drawn from there. ICE vehicles only have A/C since the engine makes plenty of waste heat if you need to heat the cabin. But in the example here, you can tell the cabin heat for the EV isn't coming from the 12V battery, because you're drawing 2-3 kW, way more power than the battery could provide except for a very short period of time. There are resistive elements for when it gets too cold for the heat pump to work, or when the temperature called for is much higher than the current temperature, but these are powered directly from the main battery electrical system, not the 12V battery.) Other cold weather effects are far less significant for both types of cars, and so EVs wind up getting hurt a lot more by winter weather, in terms of range (but they avoid a number of other problems ICE vehicles have to contend with, so there's that :) ).
As a current ICE driver, I would never have thought of the screenwash needing to be stronger - it makes perfect sense now that you have mentioned it though.
I rarely comment on video's , but just wanted to say i appreciate you and your video's. Never change, there will always be people who know it better, or make stupid comments. Dont let it get you down.
Preheating is done on ICE vehicles too. I keep my diesel pickup in my garage because I live in Canada and I hate clearing snow of it. The 6.6 litre engine has a block heater, engine oil pan heater and a transmission oil pan heater which I plug in about 1.5 hrs before driving. This makes a big difference in fuel efficiency and emissions.
When doing a longer journey, I use mains electricity to warm up the battery and the cabin ready for use. In my EV, it’s important that the battery needs to be charged a few KWh short of the maximum set (maxima of 80 or 100 %).
Screen wash tip - ALWAYS buy the -25C stuff (it’s usually the same price as the -5C stuff anyway) and use it 50% diluted from April to September but neat from September to April. I’m an apprentice Scot and I’ve also learned to buy my winter stock of next winter’s screen wash in April/May when it’s often on discount and buy 4 x 5lt cans (Halfords sells them in boxes of 2 or 4 cans). Even here in Central Scotland 20ltrs is enough for most “normal” screen wash tank sizes - I buy 8 x 5lt cans because although my Mini Countryman S E has a small/ normal sized washer reservoir my other car has a huge 10lt screen wash tank and because of its vertical tailgate screen uses a lot of screen cleaning. Battery preheating - my new EV has battery pre-conditioning that can be set to manula control where I turn it on or auto when the navigation computer does it if I program in a charger as my destination but this winter (this is my 2nd EV having run another one from 2021 to 2024 that had no battery preconditioning) I found that at home it wasn’t preconditioning the battery on the manual trigger and on doing an RTFM session I found that the car has to be moving for the battery preconditioning to work, so do read your car’s operation manual. I cannot precondition the Countryman EV’s battery if it’s sat on the drive or plugged into my Zappi on OIG waiting to be charged.
Here in Alberta, Canada it can repeatedly get below -30°C in the winter (November to March). My 2018 e-Golf is always outdoors and there is no liquid heating of the battery pack. I do schedule cabin heating three times over the night which does make a slight difference in the battery's performance. Last winter we hit -38°C and the car would not start because my 5 year-old 12 volt battery was too cold and did not deliver enough power for the car's computer systems. It is time for a replacement 12V battery - a new battery does not fail like this. When it is this cold the Lithium Ion battery has reduced capacity, but it will and does power the car when needed. Heating and winter conditions reduces my typical range at -35°C in half to 3.3 km per Kwh down from 7.4 km per Kwh in the summer 25°C warmth. Four years of EV ownership has convinced me that gasoline is a necessary fuel for safe winter travel in non-urban Canada. Our temperatures are simply too low and the distances too great to subject people to an avoidable risk of being stranded with the meagre heating capacity of battery-sourced energy. The reality is that >90% of Canadians live in urban areas where battery-powered vehicles are sufficient for most driving needs.
The big difference is however, in an EV the anxiety is amplified with each degree drop in temperature. They also charge slower. Those ions take much longer to find a parking space.
Switching heating on and off is inefficient because people usually overset the target temperature when they feel cold, then switch off when the temperature overshoots. Most efficient is set the temperature to the lowest level that is comfortable and leave the thermostat to control it
@@ElectricVehicleMan Yep , sometimes sacrifices must be made . My 2020 long range model 3 ain’t got heat pump but my old leaf Tekna did . Heat Pump is so much more efficient and faster to warm up in really cold temperatures .
I think there’s some misunderstanding of how thermostats work; they switch on and off as required to maintain the desired temperature. There is a small amount of oscillation around the set temperature but ina well designed system that is not great
You can save a lot of energy by just heating the seats and the steering wheel at no more than 200W. Especially on short journeys that is a really good idea!
I hope this means an upcoming coast to coast video. There was a Genesis G80 on a very long US coast to coast test this fall, managed 2.9 kWh at Audi-type speeds, not bad.
You certainly are hardy folk up there in Yorkshire. 8 o'clock clock at night here and still 9oC with no expectation of frost overnight. Thanks for all the tips, useful as always.
Keeping your wheels moving is a massive saving. The car uses most of its energy to get the car moving. Same as heating up the cabin. If you can avoid bringing the car to a complete standstill not only will you save money but you'll have less wear and tear on the vehicle and your passengers will appreciate the smooth ride. As a professional driver I see so many driving mistakes. It may sound like a misnomer but if we all slowed down, we'd actually get there quicker. Give yourself more time and it's far less stressful..
Another excellent video! One thing you didn't mention is the drive modes. It's perhaps obvious that Eco mode will give you more range but in the winter this mode can also help maintain grip in icy conditions as it limits the amount of power to the motor/s. Anyone new to EV's may want to consider this.
We bought our Chevrolet Bolt used with about 13,500 miles on the clock, and for its first 3 years of life it averaged 3.9 miles/kWh, exactly what the manufacturer predicted. In winter we're getting more like 3.2 to 3.5 miles/kWh, due to the various factors you describe, b ut at 10c/kWh iot's the difference between 3c /mile and 2.5c /mile, hardly a killer. The vehicle my wife would otherwise be commuting 20 miles a day in, a Honda Odyssey minivan, was getting 19mpg at best around town, so with gas at $3 a US gallon at present, that's 15.78 c/mile. The EV is saving about $50 a month compared to the gas vehicle. One thing I also noticed twice recently, one with me and once with my wife driving, we've turned off the fast road (55mph limit) about 3 miles from home, onto a slower road with traffic lights and max 40mph limit, and if the guessometer says 100 miles of range left at the turn off, it's still 100 miles of range when we get to our driveway. That's the guessometer adjusting to the change in driving style.
Yup. My 3 litre Range Rover drops 5mpg average in the middle of the winter. That’s a loss of about 67 miles per tank full. No one ever sees that though because over 500 miles we forget when we last filled up. The missus’ EV looses a similar 60 miles a charge in the winter. Same really
I have a ZOE ZE50, summer range on a journey is up to 220 miles. Winter is more like 140 -160 miles and i have seen less than 100 miles at sub zero temps on the motorway. The ZOE doesn't have battery heating so suffers in the cold.
I think another reason you notice less of an impact from cold weather on ICE car range is that, in the cold, the inefficiency of a combustion engine acts as an extra source of heat *without* using any additional fuel. That is, I think the HVAC system pulls waste heat from the engine, so you don't need nearly as much additional energy to heat the cabin. (I am not even remotely an expert on this, though, so if anyone knows better please correct me.) Given that fact, I think the long term solution for winter range in EVs is for manufacturers to assume lower real-world efficiency when deciding on battery pack size. For example, 75 kWh might be enough for ~300 miles of range in the summer, but if you account for the amount of energy needed for heating in winter, you might need closer to 125 kWh. Maybe not feasible with today's cost of batteries and charging infrastructure, but I think that can at least be a goal for manufacturers to work towards. And with Tesla's next-gen superchargers doing twice the output of today's superchargers, you might not even need that much more time to charge.
_"the inefficiency of a combustion engine acts as an extra source of heat without using any additional fuel"_ -- yes, and in fact this is the biggest source of range loss in an EV as compared to an ICE vehicle. There are many other minor effects, some applicable only in EVs, some only in ICE vehicles, some for both, but all of those others pale in comparison to just trying to keep a poorly insulated box warm enough for the occupants, especially when it gets too cold for the heat pump to work well.
If you know that you are going out early just plug in and preheat the car whilst it is still plugged in. Unplug and go. Once heat is reached the amount of effort to maintain this is negligible. We have heated seats and and a heated steering wheel too but my partner doesn't like using them.
I always use the drive battery to heat the cabin because I've paid 7p/kw for that instead of 25p to heat from the mains outside of "economy 7" and it makes no noticeable difference to the battery percentage.
The GOM on my 8 y/o, tiny battery EV, is extremely pessimistic; a full charge in summer gives me a GOM of 90 miles (92 miles = original claimed range), the same in winter gives me a GOM of 72 miles (regardless of actual outside temperature), even after preheating the car; yet 2 days ago I drove 55 miles (8C temperature) and as I reached home, the GOM suggested I still had 38 miles of range remaining. The following morning, it said I had 28 miles of range remaining; I drove only 3 miles that day - finishing with ..... a GOM of 28 miles. It isnt fake range either, I have driven around 80 miles in sub 5C weather, and still had ~10 miles of range when I reached my planned charger stop. I LOVE my EV, but often wish someone would come out with a retro-fit larger battery pack for it, like they have for the Nissan Leaf; having said that, my battery SOH is still 96.8%; which equals a loss of 0.9KWh from new.
Agree, it's a shame EVMan has perpetuated the myth that it is cheaper to leave the central heating in a house on all the time, more temperature differential between house and outside more heat is lost, otherwise good video.
It is more efficient to maintain temperature than turn it off and on repeatedly over the same time. Assuming you want to remain comfortable. Turning it off and lowering the temperature so it’s too cold isn’t the same thing. Which is more efficient in this example whilst achieving the same outcome: 2 cars drive 100 miles. 1 drives at a steady 40mph 1 drives at 100mph but stops and starts the journey 10 times. All you’re doing with the heating comparison is having a colder house.
Leaving your heating on when you are in bed will use more energy than turning it off. It's basic thermodynamics which I studied at university, beacuse the heat loss from your house is proportional to the difference between the inside and outside temperature. Personally I don't need or even want my house temperature to be at 20C when I'm in bed as it would be too hot. So if you're like me then it's much cheaper and better for the environment to turn off your heating at night.
@ You’re assuming the heating efficiency is the same in that. It isn’t. Maintaining a temp (a lower one as opposed to off!) at peak efficiency vs working hard to get it up to a required temp is the main part of the equation. Cost is better than efficiency.
I’ve a ‘Driver Only’ option for the climate control in my Kona, wonder if this makes a difference to range as I’ve never used it. Screen wash……. Tip that a chemist friend of mine told me, and I’ve done it for a few years and it works a treat. Add some Rubbing Alcohol (Isopropyl Alcohol) into the screen wash, it’s cheap enough on Amazon, and it stops it freezing.
First time preheating the battery not before changing but before a 50 mile round trip today. Resulting in a 10% longer range. Ok I also saved another 1% for the 15 minute cabin preheat while charging. So yes the science works 😮❤
The GV 70 doesn't seem as efficient as our Ioniq 5, which shares many of the same components. I regularly see 3.4m/kWh in winter, and 3.9m/kWh in summer. The HVAC and systems do seem to use a lot more energy than the Ioniq 5 too.
12V battery will be charged by the high voltage battery as soon as you turn the car on, actually. Energy usage of LED lights or radio is neglectable. HVAC is a big energy consumer, in winter as well as in summer. Very efficient to have it at a relatively low temperature in winter (17-18°C) and turn on the heated seats. Yet still comfortable. And indeed, driving style and tire pressure is also an important factor to energy efficiency (for all cars really, regardless of the fuel type)
_"12V battery will be charged by the high voltage battery as soon as you turn the car on, actually. "_ -- really, it's _highly_ dependent on exact make and model. My LEAF (RIP) would only charge the 12V battery if you were actually _driving_ the car. My Model S and my EV6 will charge the 12V battery when parked, whether the car is on or not. I don't doubt that there's a make/model out there that only charges the 12V battery right when you turn the car on, but I have never heard of that system. It's not common, to be sure.
@@harvey66616 I'm pretty sure my MG4 starts charging the 12v battery as soon as you "turn it on" (sit in the driver's seat, basically, when everything but the drivetrain comes to life). I'm basing this on things like the high cabin fan speed, e.g. with the window demister turned on; it runs at the same speed as long as you've sat in the chair & not turned the car off again, except for a brief dip when you kick the drivetrain into life. Compared to an ICE car where the fan runs noticeably slower until you start the engine & the alternator starts kicking out it's 13.8v
My 2022 Citroen Dispatch 75Kw van loses 30 miles of range in winter and I never get it back in summer . After 2 years and 32000 miles the range is a little over 140 . It was 200 miles when new . The dealer says this is normal. Many other van drivers with similar vans say it is normal.
The other thing is just know (learn) what the battery is capable of at different times of year. Lots of short journeys do indeed hammer the "guessometer" range because the car is spending 10 minutes heating everything up from scratch over and over, but that's all it is, a guess. My Zoe was reading 137 miles on a full charge after a lot of this which is of course quite appalling for a 52kWh battery (2.6 mpkwh). On that same day I did 60 miles (with 3 brief stops of around 10 minutes each - I was hunting the shops for something) and plugged back in. End of that day the GOM was reading 170 miles (3.26 mpkwh). So 40 miles difference in the calculation after "a bit of a run" vs. doing a mile here and there. If you don't keep in mind that it's actually capable of probably 160-180 in the winter, you might be fooled into thinking the pessimistic 137 miles on the GOM is all you'll get out of it.
Really enjoyed your video. I have a question if you will please. It’s about your comment that “range is calculated”. I get that. My question is about BATTERY PERCENTAGE (SoC): is battery percentage MEASURED or CALCULATED. In other words, if my EV shows I have 10% of the battery left, can I count on 10% of the cells being MEASURED to still have electrons and do my own CALCULATION if I want? I’m about to take a road trip, and sometimes the range predictions seem “off”. I’m hoping you can confirm that I can rely on the SOC as being accurate and measured. Thanks
I said battery % was calculated, not measured. Not range. I was talking about how much % remains not how many miles are left in the guess-o-meter. Once you know how much you can get out of 1% of your car then you can do your own range guess.
EVM has already addressed this, but just to emphasize: battery percentage is a primary measurement, but is still calculated. The video gets part of this wrong though, as it's just calculated based on voltage. If temperature were part of the calculation, it would be to _take that into account_ , removing the error that temperature causes. But instead, temperature can limit the voltage from the battery, which can then influence the displayed percentage value. (Though in a real way, the uncompensated value is actually more accurate anyway, because unless and until the battery gets warmer, you really do have less energy you can pull from the battery due to the lower voltage.) As EVM notes, the range calculation is then based on the battery percentage, _plus_ other factors such as other electrical draws turned on in the car and your driving style (or, more correctly, just what the recent efficiency of your driving has been, which will take into account your own habits along with environmental effects such as air drag, hills, water or snow on the road, etc.). You can only _measure_ range after the fact, i.e. use miles actually driven along with energy actually consumed, to determine a theoretical range _for that trip_ . It will be close to expected range for similar trips, but every trip is different. Hence the car community (EV or otherwise) calling the range display a "Guess-o-meter". :)
Temp is part of the equation, among other things on top of voltage. Especially wiht LFP batteries where the voltage is very similar in the middle band. I work for a battery manufacturer, pretty much sat next to a firmware specialist that creates these things.
Thanks for telling it like it is about the heating. My car doesn't have a heat pump OR heated seats, and I'm fine with that. I like the comfortable all-over warmth of the resistance heater more than bum-toasters and more than the heater on an ICE car. I also find that the ability to pre-heat the car while it's still plugged in at home negates the need for heated seats. (By the way, I think you meant that your tips *mitigate* winter range loss. No way are you going to negate it.) It takes the power from the car battery but I heat it with enough time to bring the charge back to 100% from the home battery before I leave. So I leave the warm house and get into a warm car. Unless it's raining heavily I won't even put a jacket on, because I never get chilled and driving a long distance is more comfortable just in a sweatshirt. There is no way in hell I am going to compromise on staying comfortably warm just to save range. It would only come down to saving five minutes or so at a DC charger anyway! If things are looking adverse (say a headwind) and I've miscalculated, and I think it's looking tight to get to my planned charger, it's *far* more effective to take 5 mph off my speed than to switch off the heater. The car itself works on an estimate of about 5% loss of range by using the heater. Most of that probably happens at the beginning, bringing the cabin up to temperature. Turning the heating off when you're 20 miles from the charger is barely going to make any difference. Just slow down a bit and your range will miraculously recover.
The tyre pressure check is critical as pressures drop way more than ppl think it might! Also, if an ICE vehicles windscreen washer jets have frozen, I have never had the engine manage to defrost them on the go, only after parking up for 20 mins with a hot engine might that work. But yes, I got the jist and use a lower freezing point screen wash every year! I don't have an EV but am considering it, though don't do anywhere near the miles required to make it a greener car over its useable life that my current diesel. Tough decision to make!
Fortunately I don’t need to precondition my model 3 as i hardly ever drive past its range limit, but it is a waste of energy, it might help with range but it still costs money to precondition to drive 0 miles, it’s the equivalent of leaving your ice car idling.
@@ElectricVehicleMan its a shame you don’t stay away from words such as “monumental waste of energy “ when talking about preconditioning, but will use such words when talking about ICE vehicles and washer fluid. Maybe you are worried of the backlash from some of your audience or maybe you are biased, but it shows. I own a model 3 and i wouldn’t swap it and i can accept the criticism of EVs
@@pppscoobyBiased against what? ICE cars? 40% of what an ICE engine produces is lost in waste heat! Even in the middle of summer, whether you want it or not it’s there! You see what you’ve done there is attributed a factual comment as if it’s bias. Or are you arguing with physics? Do you not consider that out of the petrol you buy and put into a car, nearly half is wasted as heat out of the exhaust/radiators etc? Would you not consider that a ‘monumental waste’? Not everything is about choosing sides. You don’t have to look to be offended at every comment.
@@ElectricVehicleMan looks like you are offended by my comment which you didn’t understand and started blabbing on about something else that’s not even part of your video.
Good stuff. One question, How do I stop the plugged in pre heating from draining my domestic battery of its off peak charge. Octopus intelligent go, MG4 long range and ohme smart charger. I don't expect an answer now but if you were to do a session thereabouts I'd be chuffed.
People often suggest a ct clamp in the right place so the battery doesn’t see the charger. I don’t have this so if I get extra intelligent octopus slots I manually adjust the off peak periods in my battery to match
@@neilm9400 I think it can be wired in so the charger can never take it from the battery but then the battery won’t see the car usage either. I think. Home assistant, same brand or manual control I guess. Or just let it drain a few kWh from the battery. It’s only for a preheat.
You need to take the power for the EV charger off immediately after your elecricity maeter andf feed it froim its own mini consumer unit, your house battery then never sees the car charging so does not join in, alternatively you have to use your battery controls to do nothing during the time, but in reality not too much is used.
Does not Kona have a separate heat and AC button too? I was always wondering why since it is the same heat pump compressor that is driving the functionality.
Why wouldn't you preheat the cabin as well using power from the grid? That is going to save energy from the battery to heat the cabin after you set off.
I try not to preheat from the grid because the electricity in the battery cost 7p/kWh (off peak), and power from the grid is almost certainly 25p/kWh, unless I'm setting off in the middle of the night. So, unless I'm going on a really long journey and would have to public charge, it's not a good idea to preheat plugged in.
@@colinnich I set the battery to pre-heat in the middle of the night, while the car is on charge. In the morning I'll see if it wants to do it again, and if it does, let it and then go back to 100% from the grid/house battery. Then I'll pre-heat the cabin, and again return the car to 100% from the grid/house battery. In practice most of that comes from the house battery, not the mains, and if I'm starting a long trip I don't mind if the house battery donates a bit as I won't be home using power. Obviously I'd only worry about returning the car to 100% if I was setting off on a trip that needed all my range. If I was just going to Glasgow or somewhere I wouldn't need to bother.
I have a similar problem with mine but if I'm trying to eak out as much range a possible I will pulse the defogging then turn it off again. I also find that the seat heating uses the regeneration more so use that to warm up the car.
Wow Andy...did you actually buy this GV70 and it's not a press car for review by you and Harry? Fantastic if so. I've got the cheaper 2024 Kona EV and had it for Australian winter(in Tasmania) and loved the heated seats and heated steering wheel plus mine has all 4 outer seats with heating. Would closing the cover for the panoramic roof help the warmth in the car as well? Not winter yet here where I live, more like coming into summer and first summer with my new Kona should be interesting to see the efficiency difference.
One thing no one seems to mention is the significant change in drag due to the increase in the air density from summer to winter. This adds around 10% extra drag. You also dismissed the extra losses due to increased viscous drag of the transmission system. Yes EVs do have a gearbox it reduces the speed of the motor drive prior to the differential drive. As I drive my EV the average miles per kWh gradually increase as the drive system warms up.
Those range figures are I presume from dead flat to 100% charge which is not going to happen, I would have appreciated the real life range according to the manufacture min and max charge allowable charge levels which is normally 20% to 80% not sure what this make is. Which probably means 145 ish miles range without heating or all the other extras, giving another 10 or 15% off of that, so I could reasonably expect 120 -130 miles winter range. Is that a fair assumption to make on real life usage?
You can charge to whatever you want, especially at home. The 20-80 thing isn’t what you think. The only ranges I mentioned were purely to highlight the difference a driver can make. I never mentioned anything else.
Unfortunately range is somewhat slippery number in EVs cos it depends on so many different things. But i can give you some real life seasonal range numbers for my Model 3 which might help: 1. Summer, 20 degrees, A-roads (40-50mph): Around 240 miles using 80% of the battery. I had to stop to pee and eat before the car needed to charge 2. Summer, 20 degrees, motorway cruising at a steady 75-80mph: Around 170 miles using 85% of the battery. That was 2.5hrs driving, so i could have gone longer but i was happy to take a break. 3. Spring, 2-4 degrees, motorway cruising at a steady 70-75mph: Around 155 miles using 81% of the battery. Again 2.5hrs. 4. Winter, -3 to -5 degrees, A roads (40-50mph): Around 150 miles using 80% of the battery. 3.5 hours of driving and we were ready for a break. 5. Winter, -10 to -15 degrees, running around town shopping in different places (20-50mph): Around 110 miles on 80% of the battery. More energy is used heating the car every time we get in than gets used moving it.
Getting an EV is is a great quality of life improvement, it makes the daily commute so much less hassle in the winter, just walk out the house without a coat & get in & drive off.
You have a diesel station in your garage? Day to day I never have to go to a gas station, I just park my ev in the garage and plug it in. Evs are more convenient day to day as long as you can plug it in at home.
Short journies are obviously the worst as a lot of energy to heat the car and then it is enefficientif only say 5 miles driven. This again is the same in an ICE car, but chance is that the ICE car would not have warmed up. Long trips spread out the loss from heating and maintaining the heat is low effort, so far more economical. I have found my Tesla Model 3 to be very efficient on 50 mile trips with a drop of roughly .5kWh compared to Summer, when using mostly dual carriageway and 60MPH roads. Then speed makes a big difference and doing 45MPH on another trip at 7c I managed equivalent of over 5 miles per kWh.
I make 4 miles to go to work. If the windows are clear, I just turn on the heated seat. I don't bother to warm it up. If the windows are frozen or misty, I will turn it on for 3-5 minutes before I leave home. If I have to go for a longer run, especially with the big boss of my life, I prefer to preheat the car, so she won't start the bla bla bla, I told you, you don't know about cars, why did you buy the EV? The point is that she never driven a car and don't even recognise a Merc or a VW. I grew up in a truck, third gen truck driver, made million of miles in my life, but she knows better.
Your analogy about heating your home constantly is erroneous (for those using a boiler or electric storage heating, at least). According to the Energy Saving Trust, heating the home all the time is more expensive than using a timer. There is no “burst”.
@@adaptandsucceed6875 Your confusing cost with efficiency. It’s cheaper to turn it off because you’re under a blanket at night and don’t mind it being colder. However; if you wanted to maintain a temp then it’s better to leave it running steady than off and on. Which is what you would do on a single car journey.
Your 30kW leaf told you the split of energy use in the car! The most important thing in Winter is the correct tyres, that is why I always fit all season tyres as soon as the originals are worn out, they are superb year round in typical UK weather conditions so no need to even think about fitting winter tyres.
@@davidspencer7254 On the original Leaf shape there is a very clear battery health bar chart shown on the righthand side of the screen at all times so indeed the older exampleas are showing battery health.
Back when I drove a Chevy Volt, with 35 miles of EV range, the best heater settings for below freezing temperatures was to: 1) Seat heater(s) on high, heat off. If that was not enough: 2) Temperature set to low-ish normal values 3) Fan speed low or very low 4) All air directed to feet In addition: -Leave you heavy winter coat on, of course -A hot cup of coffee helps keep you comfortable -Turn on window defrost whenever needed As EVM points out, none of this is needed now that I have a 300+ mile EV and drive 25-30 miles daily. I just use the automatic HVAC and set the temperature to whatever is comfortable. Great of EVM to remind us of tire pressure, which reduces with temperature. Important to check when temperatures are below freezing. I ran the max pressure on the tire's sidewall, 50 psi, to get as much out of my 35 mile range as possible.
It's a shame you don't mention the speed of your eco-driving and Audi-style driving, I'm guessing below the speed limit for the former (65 mph?) and above for the latter? Something I've noticed with Teslas is even if you never turn on the cabin heating the car will still turn on the battery heater when you start driving if the temp is below about 5º (and you haven't preheated the battery whilst plugged in - e.g. you don't have home charging). This is typically for about 15 minutes and consumes 3 kWh of energy. Over a long 100 mile drive that will average out to a small overall loss. However, if you only ever use your car for a quick trip to the supermarket your loss of range can be staggering... the only way to avoid it is with pre-heating on a charger, but then it still is effectively costing you the same in higher electricity energy costs, you just aren't losing out on the range.
This is also one of these things that just increases the gap between the viability of EVs for those who can charge at home and those that can't - you both lose out on range and your cost per mile increases relatively much more when you replenish that energy at a more expensive public charger.
Preheating the cabin and the battery cost money, but I only have mine set to 18.5. The heated seats on and the heated steering wheel. This is quite warm enough when I get into my car. However my wife and I often forget, It's not hardwired in our brains., even though we have had Teslas for three years. My first car had a vent you manually opened that let air running over the engine to enter the cabin. The engine was in the middle of the passenger and driver. It was a Reliant Regal. Same model as Del Boys but the saloon. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but a lot warmer than my motorbike. 0 to 60 in 25 seconds top speed 65. Range anxiety was a thing back then, would it get to where you wanted without breaking down. Often it did not. Today's drivers have a cotton wool wrapped world. EV haters, petrol haters, diesel haters. We were motorests and stopped helped when we saw a breakdown.
I had 2 Reliant Regal Supervans (like Delboy's) - both bought new, one in 1965, t'other in 1969. Both had conventional heating systems with a blower, and I was never cold. Neither of them ever broke down on a journey, ever.
@@gospelman7222 I could not afford a new one. Mine was second hand I bought in 1975 I think. It did not have a letter donating the year so it was pre 1963 If it did have a blower it was broken. Loads of breakdowns. Best one was when it blew out the core plug on the engine, going up a steep hill. A big bang then Instantly filling the car with steam and smoke, I could not see a thing and thought it had exploded. The big ends went also and I had to rebuild the engine. The front wheel collapsed on a road trip. Fun days.
_"Preheating the cabin and the battery cost money"_ -- that's true, but for cars with a heat pump system, even in an unheated garage, it costs less money to preheat than to have the car try to heat itself from ambient while you're driving. Honestly, I'm with EVM here...the vast majority of my trips I am not anywhere close to using the full range of the car, so conserving battery power isn't that important. Yeah, I could save a few pennies by preheating, but compared to the cost of actually _driving_ the car, that's inconsequential. And the heating system does a pretty good job of getting the car comfortable even if it doesn't start until I'm actually on the road. Heated seats and steering wheel do make a big difference here though, I'll admit!
Driving is supposed to be fun and enjoyable. Two things that evs are not. Range anxiety. Battery life worry. Resale value worry. Pre heating? Will you car burst into flames during the night. If that is fun then can keep it.
Your Tesla has a very complicated heat recovery system that no other EV has and when you are travelling it will be using less from the battery and recovering more from other heat generated? Isn’t that one of the reasons why Tesla is so efficient?
@@keithgeorge7338 Mine doesn’t have that. Only newer ones. It’s a heat pump, loads of EVs have one. My 2015 Leaf had one. It’s just Tesla make it sound like they invented it.
At the beginning you say how ICE cars [with big tanks] don't notice the range loss as much. But: It took me a while to realise this:- an EV is 95+% fuel efficient whereas an ICE throws away 60% of the energy in its fuel. So the extra energy required by driving faster, using ancilliaries, uphill routes, denser air when it's cold and wet, and headwinds etc are vastly more significant for an EV. If combustion engines suddenly, miraculously, became 95% efficient, they too would suffer from loss of range, just like EVs. It's not simply that you didn't notice putting extra fuel in the tank!
As you say, people forget the effect of cold temperatures on ICE cars. In my Focus when it is frozen, even with its heated windscreen it takes a good 5 minutes to defrost everything, wasting diesel as it goes. This has a large negative effect on the MPG of my 8 mile commute.
@@ElectricVehicleMan Please stop. You really have taken this too far and are looking a bit foolish now. My original joke wasn’t intended to be a critique or criticism of your video. Simply a funny comment and in the comments section, for other viewers to possibly chuckle at. A riff, if you will on the old McDonald’s ads “Save money on binoculars. Move closer to the object you wish to view”. However because you have obviously taken offence, I’ll apologise for any offence caused to your ego. But FYI it’s not a great look to be a bit mard, cause you didn’t get the joke
Equally it will be more energy efficient to turn on/off than to maintain temp in a car. Average temperature is most important metric, which will be lower when on/off
@@GM-dc8vr No. a house has thermal mass to keep the heat in so it’s just maintaining a temperature. Getting it down to a cold temp means the system will be operating well above the efficiency band. In a car, the heat pump will maintain temp far more efficiently than repeatedly using the resistive heater by turning it off and on. A car is biased for speed of heating, not efficiency.
@@ElectricVehicleMan energy is energy. A house will lose heat at a certain rate dependent on the temperature differential between inside and out. The thermal mass isn't particularly relevant beyond a lag effect. There's no efficiency band for a gas boiler, or most heating types, it's just off or on. So keeping the house at a high temperature does only one thing - keeps it in the temperature band where thermal losses to the outside are highest.
Thanks, amongst others, this video has convinced me that the time to go EV is at least 10 years away, when the infrastructure and technology has improved, and my current petrol car is at least 16 years old, as my previous one was when I finally traded for a bigger car with smaller engine!
Depends on whether you can charge at home or not. If you can charge at home, and your typical round-trip is less than even a degraded winter range (180-200 miles being typical of most current EVs), then actually anytime from now is a pretty good time to switch. Assuming you're in the UK, you could switch to an Octopus tariff to get seriously cheap motoring energy (7p/kwh - and as a fringe benefit you can run your tumble dryer, washing machine, etc. at the same rate); even at 1.8miles/kWh that's less than 4p per mile in energy costs... comfortably under half the price the most efficient petrol car on the market will get you. Obviously, if you can't charge at home, or at work, then that does rather change the equation - but I'd predict that the infrastructure will be markedly better in 5 years, let alone 10.
Meanwhile you’re happy to drive around in a car that at best uses 30% of the fuel to move forward. The rest is basically wasted as heat. Seems strange when you work it out like that. £100 to fill a tank of petrol and £70 is used to heat the cabin or wasted. Bonkers really.
@@tangoadvance8393 There's no denying ICE infrastructure is far better to stop range anxiety and convience, It should be being over 100 years old. EV industry has shot itself by over promising and underdelivering. One huge storm in US with media coverage on owning an EV in it really affected sales instantly in US. I'm on my third EV would never own one if I couldn't charge at home. Would buy a Hybrid instead.
So I did a approx cost comparison of having the lights turned on in a static EV for an hour compared to a ICE car where the engine has to be running …… Here’s the cost comparison for running the lights in both cars for 1 hour: Electric Audi e-tron GT • Energy consumption for lights: 0.09 kWh. • Electricity cost: £0.07 per kWh. Petrol Audi • Fuel consumption at idle (for alternator): ~0.8 liters/hour. • Petrol cost: £1.45 per liter. Comparison • Electric Audi e-tron GT: £0.0063 (less than 1p per hour). • Petrol Audi: £1.16 per hour. The petrol car is nearly 184 times more expensive than the electric car for running lights for one hour. Conclusion This stark difference demonstrates the efficiency of electric vehicles for auxiliary systems. Even at low electricity prices (7p per kWh) and moderate petrol costs (£1.45/liter), EVs offer significantly lower operational costs………
@@tangoadvance8393 Its a silly comparison because you could just have the lights on an ICE without running the engine A more sensible comparison would be to have an EV and an ICE running for an hour, with their lights on and their heaters on full and then take into account that the ICE would be recharging its battery during that time. Cost that comparison up Then modify and extend the test by having both types of vehicle fully charged/fuelled and see which one runs out first in a time comparison and cost that one up as well if you like Your initial comparison still remains silly and you are clearly aware of that
@@TheVicarOnly it’s not a silly comparison at all. Go drive on any road and park up for an hour or 2 in a remote location and leave your lights on……….see how comfortable you feel without running the engine. ……….
So ALL cars suffer range loss in cold weather. Really? An ice car does not run on a battery. Screen heaters run from the 12v under the bonnet. There is no detrimental effect on the range. The only time fuel is used other than when driving is when the air con is on. I can guarantee you that a fully charges eV will not go as far as a fully fuelled ice car in even the coldest of weather. Nor fir that matter will it in mild weather. Evs are the biggest con perpetrated on the motorist in 100 years.
@dingopisscreek Are you for real? You think that cold weather doesn’t make an engine run way less efficiently until it really heats up? As most journeys are short, it’s very noticeable. Wow! 😄🤦♂️
So I had to go at calculating the difference between electric and petrol car running the lights for one hour whilst stationary……. Electric Audi (e-tron GT) Range Loss for 1 Hour of Lights: 0.36 miles Petrol Audi Range Loss for 1 Hour of Lights: 7.92 miles The petrol Audi loses 22 times more range than the electric Audi for running the lights for 1 hour, emphasizing the efficiency of EVs in auxiliary power usage.
Does that car have a heat pump, mine doesn't give you a breakdown of whats using the energy, but when stopped the display changes from m/kwhr to kw, when it's cold, with the seats and heating on (set to 20degC) with the outside temp below 4 degC, it starts around 2.3+ kw, after 15mins it's down to 0.6kw, so 5kw just for the heating is quite high (or the heating is much more powerful than my car)
@@KINGandWINNER Reported by me? What on earth does that mean. I can’t report anyone! Are you telling me you’ve never seen petrol cars plugged in to stop them from freezing? In some countries it’s very common! EVs heat their own battery up when needed. A two second google would show you that. Come on bro!
If i have a near 500 mile range in my diesel car and I lose 10 % range i dont care. Your EV very different. Plus EVs lose range sat still. All that asside i guess my next car will be an EV thanks to the likes of you.
Stick with diesel. The few people I know with EVs are going or gone back to diesel. Never again is the answer when I ask them why. Costs, unreliable crap was most replys. Short life. Cars worthless at 3 yrs old. Garages refuse to buy used EVs. Getting a common problem. Diesel will be king for decades.
Yeah I love paying £100 for a tank of petrol, safe in the knowledge that £70 of that £100 is heating the car and £30 is pushing the car forward. Amazing concept……😂
I'm not going to name the company or the vehicle manufacturer. This company wanted to go over to Electric.. they had chargers fitted and from a fleet of 20 ice vehicles they changed 5 these 5 vehicles have now been sent back and they have returned to using ice. I drive an locally and its ok not good but not bad just boring I guess. Before 2030 I will be returning to ice at some point. I guess its like marmite 🤔.
As usual far too much waffle and having to think about things that one simply doesn't even need to think about with an ICE. Life is too short. I know you're making a few quid on UA-cam but with most people you're flogging a dead horse. Without government mandates these things would be a five minute wonder.
The only way you get to the point of 'not having to think about things' (which most EV drivers don't anyway) is to let the tech mature to the point people want. Like mobile phones when they first came out.
Okay so eventually he gets to the point. Cold weather only really effects petrol diesel vehicles if the journey is less than 10 miles ish.thats it. Evs are rubbish in the cold just as they are in the heat. As soon as you need to heat or cool an ev you will loose around 30% On average I get 3.9 milers per kwh. When it's around 0c that goes down to 1.9miles per kwh this is on a 20 mile journey Some evs are better than others, in simple terms until a new and environmentally friendly alternative to lithium batteries is on the market, evs are only going to be for certain uses. You don't drive an ev because of the environment. Of course worth noting until the electricity supply network is up graded and more gas turbines are used to produce electricity the only way to do away whit clean and efficient diesel cars is if the public ( you and I are stopping from owning and driving vehicles. That's why theypush the c02 BS
I got my first EV last week, so this is absoultely perfect timing. It's in no small part down to you and your videos, that has persuaded me to finally take the plunge, so thank you!
What’d ya get ?
Good for you mrbigglesworth have you not seen the video's throughout the world that has burst into flames ! ITS NOT A GAMBLE WORTH TAKING WITH A LIFE 😂
@@stum8374 They do NOT burst into flames thats ICE , if an EV does catch fire it will very slowly burn , but statistics show that more ICE catch fire than EVs
Firefighters are dealing with a car fire; The road is closed between the A361
Supermarine roundabout up to the A419 junction by the B&Q...
.4 hours ago
Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service was alerted to reports of a fire at Douglas Gardens in Poole, a road away from Ashley Road and...
.1 day ago
4 December 2024 11:39
MKFM understands there is a vehicle fire on the V10 in Milton Keynes . 4 December 2024
Emergency crews were called to reports of a motor on fire between Junctions 5 (Shotts Interchange) and 6 (Newhouse) on the road's eastbound...
.2 days ago
Firefighters visited Kirkby Gardens in Worcester after a small fire broke out in the engine compartment of a vehicle.
.1 day ago
Firefighters were called to reports of a vehicle on fire in a farm building. The incident occurred in the Leyburn area at about 5.30pm...December 6, 2024
Fire crews extinguish two separate car blazes in Eastbourne
East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service were called to reports of a car fire, in Enys Road, on Sunday (December 1) at about 7am.
The blaze broke out in a car on Gaywood Road near King Edward VII Academy school, King's Lynn, on Thursday (November 5).
.1 day ago
Car fire on A19 at Selby - emergency crews called in
10 hrs ago
FIREFIGHTERS were called to extinguish a vehicle fire near a busy main road in Poole. Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service was alerted...
.1 day ago
A55 was closed in one direction after vehicle fire
The incident took place between Holywell and Caerwys 4 DEC 2024
Delays have been spotted on a section of High Wycombe and Stokenchurch's stretch of the M40 due to a car fire.
.4 days ago
Firefighters visited Kirkby Gardens in Worcester after a small fire broke out in the engine compartment of a vehicle.
.
1 day ago
Sorry to hear it hope you feel better soon
@@stum8374 Yeah those ICE vehicles do burn well.
My wife and I brought our first EV two weeks ago and have been rather 'neurotic' about how the range seems to drop as soon as you put on the AirCon/Heating. This video (plus comments below) really make it clear with the general low milage we do we should not worry. Plus the advice about pre-conditioning the battery made me look at my owners handbook as to what do during the winter months re: charging. Thank you.
Another thing that lowers efficiency in winter (and you touched on it when talking about tyre pressures) is the air is denser, so the car has to work harder to push through it especially when 'making progress' down the motorway.
The same with any vehicle.😎
@AuntieBuddie yeah it is
EV doesnt need air.
@@NoName-md5zb I never said it did, I said the air is denser so needs more energy to push through it.
@@AdamAugustPhoto you said it lowers efficiency. It doesnt affect it.
Agree, tire pressure make a noticeable difference on our Kia. The tire manufactures recommend quite low pressures, however the Kia dealer pumps them up to 40 psi/2.8 bar and it definitely improves the handling of the car as well as increasing the range by about 5-8%.
Another factor with winter range is snow tires. They tend to be less efficient than all season tires. But it is worth the range hit to be safer on icy and snowy roads here in Canada. It is even mandated in some parts of the country.
Tyres cannot be efficient. Unless you mean when used as fuel?
Experiencing my first winter with an EV and this video is so useful - especially the power usage of the heating. As a former rugby player I think my body thermostat is lower than most so I am comfy with air con set to 18/19°, but I’ve been turning it on an off mainly to demist windows. I have noticed with the rain we’ve had this week my short journey efficiency was pretty low with aircon left on, but longer journey the car did better, I’m guessing because the car warms up and its energy usage on the heating drops…
The heating may drop a bit so does the mechanical losses as the drive system warms up on longer journeys.
Another great video, and a perfect topic at this time of year, especially for myself here in Western Canada.
I have been experimenting with different techniques myself, including anti-fogging on the glass, which was a waste of time.
I even did a road trip at -38’C., normally in my 2023 Niro I get 500 km’s on a full charge in the summer . On that day I did 245 km’s with 20 km’s left in the tank. I had three stops during the trip.
Yes I do have a heat pump
To be honest I rarely do more than 50 miles a day, so I don’t worry about range much,and charge up most nights at 7p per kWh, so leave the climate control at 21C and the seats, steering wheel etc on auto. A comfortable diver is a safer driver than a shivering one!
Thanks for the tips!
FWIW, while it's true that ICE and EV cars both are affected by cold weather, EVs are affected much more, because energy from the battery is used up to heat the cabin. ICE vehicles are always having to deal with _too much_ extra heat, because the engines are so inefficient thermodynamically, wasting 70% or more of the energy in the gas, so in the winter we just grab some of that extra heat that would otherwise get thrown away and use that to keep the cabin warm.
A few EV designs have a more holistic thermal management system, where waste heat from the motor(s) and battery can be shuffled around to where it's needed, such as heating the cabin, but this contributes only a small amount, since there's not nearly as much waste heat in an EV to start with.
(By the way, it's not accurate to say that the 12V battery is used for the climate control. It's true that in an ICE, heated seats and steering wheel would run off the 12V system, but the _power_ comes from the alternator, and would quickly run the battery down if the energy was being drawn from there. ICE vehicles only have A/C since the engine makes plenty of waste heat if you need to heat the cabin. But in the example here, you can tell the cabin heat for the EV isn't coming from the 12V battery, because you're drawing 2-3 kW, way more power than the battery could provide except for a very short period of time. There are resistive elements for when it gets too cold for the heat pump to work, or when the temperature called for is much higher than the current temperature, but these are powered directly from the main battery electrical system, not the 12V battery.)
Other cold weather effects are far less significant for both types of cars, and so EVs wind up getting hurt a lot more by winter weather, in terms of range (but they avoid a number of other problems ICE vehicles have to contend with, so there's that :) ).
I didn't say the climate was from 12v, just infotainment systems etc.
Main traction battery does the climate.
What problems are these then that ICE vehicles have to contend with?
As a current ICE driver, I would never have thought of the screenwash needing to be stronger - it makes perfect sense now that you have mentioned it though.
I rarely comment on video's , but just wanted to say i appreciate you and your video's. Never change, there will always be people who know it better, or make stupid comments. Dont let it get you down.
Preheating is done on ICE vehicles too. I keep my diesel pickup in my garage because I live in Canada and I hate clearing snow of it. The 6.6 litre engine has a block heater, engine oil pan heater and a transmission oil pan heater which I plug in about 1.5 hrs before driving. This makes a big difference in fuel efficiency and emissions.
When doing a longer journey, I use mains electricity to warm up the battery and the cabin ready for use. In my EV, it’s important that the battery needs to be charged a few KWh short of the maximum set (maxima of 80 or 100 %).
I find pre conditioning before a drive in the cold makes a huge difference before a drive as well:)
Screen wash tip - ALWAYS buy the -25C stuff (it’s usually the same price as the -5C stuff anyway) and use it 50% diluted from April to September but neat from September to April. I’m an apprentice Scot and I’ve also learned to buy my winter stock of next winter’s screen wash in April/May when it’s often on discount and buy 4 x 5lt cans (Halfords sells them in boxes of 2 or 4 cans). Even here in Central Scotland 20ltrs is enough for most “normal” screen wash tank sizes - I buy 8 x 5lt cans because although my Mini Countryman S E has a small/ normal sized washer reservoir my other car has a huge 10lt screen wash tank and because of its vertical tailgate screen uses a lot of screen cleaning.
Battery preheating - my new EV has battery pre-conditioning that can be set to manula control where I turn it on or auto when the navigation computer does it if I program in a charger as my destination but this winter (this is my 2nd EV having run another one from 2021 to 2024 that had no battery preconditioning) I found that at home it wasn’t preconditioning the battery on the manual trigger and on doing an RTFM session I found that the car has to be moving for the battery preconditioning to work, so do read your car’s operation manual. I cannot precondition the Countryman EV’s battery if it’s sat on the drive or plugged into my Zappi on OIG waiting to be charged.
Screen wash is a great point as it has no heat. Sadly no heat in the led headlights to clear them too!
Here in Alberta, Canada it can repeatedly get below -30°C in the winter (November to March). My 2018 e-Golf is always outdoors and there is no liquid heating of the battery pack. I do schedule cabin heating three times over the night which does make a slight difference in the battery's performance.
Last winter we hit -38°C and the car would not start because my 5 year-old 12 volt battery was too cold and did not deliver enough power for the car's computer systems. It is time for a replacement 12V battery - a new battery does not fail like this. When it is this cold the Lithium Ion battery has reduced capacity, but it will and does power the car when needed. Heating and winter conditions reduces my typical range at -35°C in half to 3.3 km per Kwh down from 7.4 km per Kwh in the summer 25°C warmth.
Four years of EV ownership has convinced me that gasoline is a necessary fuel for safe winter travel in non-urban Canada. Our temperatures are simply too low and the distances too great to subject people to an avoidable risk of being stranded with the meagre heating capacity of battery-sourced energy. The reality is that >90% of Canadians live in urban areas where battery-powered vehicles are sufficient for most driving needs.
I always use Prestone screenwash when I’m driving to the mountains for a ski holiday.
The big difference is however, in an EV the anxiety is amplified with each degree drop in temperature.
They also charge slower. Those ions take much longer to find a parking space.
Our Fiat 500E also shows separate power consumption by motor and by climate system. Cracking car, like a go cart.
Thanks, I’ve been turning my heater on and off. Now it’s on low to stop the windows misting. 👍
Very helpful. For some reason I had in my head it would be less efficient to have heated seats compared to the regular air blower... many thanks
Switching heating on and off is inefficient because people usually overset the target temperature when they feel cold, then switch off when the temperature overshoots. Most efficient is set the temperature to the lowest level that is comfortable and leave the thermostat to control it
@@tonykelpie it’s not inefficient if it’s on for 5 minutes and off for 55 minutes .
But then it only warms you for 5-10mins if 60. So it’s not efficient, it’s just off.
@@ElectricVehicleMan Yep , sometimes sacrifices must be made . My 2020 long range model 3 ain’t got heat pump but my old leaf Tekna did . Heat Pump is so much more efficient and faster to warm up in really cold temperatures .
I think there’s some misunderstanding of how thermostats work; they switch on and off as required to maintain the desired temperature. There is a small amount of oscillation around the set temperature but ina well designed system that is not great
@ Do
You turn your heating off at night or just have a lower temperature?
This was really helpful and very well explained, thank you 😊
You can save a lot of energy by just heating the seats and the steering wheel at no more than 200W. Especially on short journeys that is a really good idea!
I hope this means an upcoming coast to coast video. There was a Genesis G80 on a very long US coast to coast test this fall, managed 2.9 kWh at Audi-type speeds, not bad.
There will be.
You certainly are hardy folk up there in Yorkshire. 8 o'clock clock at night here and still 9oC with no expectation of frost overnight. Thanks for all the tips, useful as always.
Hardy my ass
Very useful video. Thanks much.
Keeping your wheels moving is a massive saving.
The car uses most of its energy to get the car moving. Same as heating up the cabin. If you can avoid bringing the car to a complete standstill not only will you save money but you'll have less wear and tear on the vehicle and your passengers will appreciate the smooth ride.
As a professional driver I see so many driving mistakes. It may sound like a misnomer but if we all slowed down, we'd actually get there quicker.
Give yourself more time and it's far less stressful..
Another excellent video! One thing you didn't mention is the drive modes. It's perhaps obvious that Eco mode will give you more range but in the winter this mode can also help maintain grip in icy conditions as it limits the amount of power to the motor/s. Anyone new to EV's may want to consider this.
Eco mode also reduces wear and tear on the tyres and drivechain components.
@@MrWobling but it's boring 😀
@@colinnich true. But I'm using it a lot more since I realised a full set of tyres on my Skoda Enyaq will set me back £700 from Blackcircles 😲
We bought our Chevrolet Bolt used with about 13,500 miles on the clock, and for its first 3 years of life it averaged 3.9 miles/kWh, exactly what the manufacturer predicted.
In winter we're getting more like 3.2 to 3.5 miles/kWh, due to the various factors you describe, b ut at 10c/kWh iot's the difference between 3c /mile and 2.5c /mile, hardly a killer.
The vehicle my wife would otherwise be commuting 20 miles a day in, a Honda Odyssey minivan, was getting 19mpg at best around town, so with gas at $3 a US gallon at present, that's 15.78 c/mile. The EV is saving about $50 a month compared to the gas vehicle.
One thing I also noticed twice recently, one with me and once with my wife driving, we've turned off the fast road (55mph limit) about 3 miles from home, onto a slower road with traffic lights and max 40mph limit, and if the guessometer says 100 miles of range left at the turn off, it's still 100 miles of range when we get to our driveway. That's the guessometer adjusting to the change in driving style.
Yup. My 3 litre Range Rover drops 5mpg average in the middle of the winter. That’s a loss of about 67 miles per tank full. No one ever sees that though because over 500 miles we forget when we last filled up. The missus’ EV looses a similar 60 miles a charge in the winter. Same really
I have a ZOE ZE50, summer range on a journey is up to 220 miles.
Winter is more like 140 -160 miles and i have seen less than 100 miles at sub zero temps on the motorway.
The ZOE doesn't have battery heating so suffers in the cold.
I think another reason you notice less of an impact from cold weather on ICE car range is that, in the cold, the inefficiency of a combustion engine acts as an extra source of heat *without* using any additional fuel. That is, I think the HVAC system pulls waste heat from the engine, so you don't need nearly as much additional energy to heat the cabin. (I am not even remotely an expert on this, though, so if anyone knows better please correct me.) Given that fact, I think the long term solution for winter range in EVs is for manufacturers to assume lower real-world efficiency when deciding on battery pack size. For example, 75 kWh might be enough for ~300 miles of range in the summer, but if you account for the amount of energy needed for heating in winter, you might need closer to 125 kWh. Maybe not feasible with today's cost of batteries and charging infrastructure, but I think that can at least be a goal for manufacturers to work towards. And with Tesla's next-gen superchargers doing twice the output of today's superchargers, you might not even need that much more time to charge.
_"the inefficiency of a combustion engine acts as an extra source of heat without using any additional fuel"_ -- yes, and in fact this is the biggest source of range loss in an EV as compared to an ICE vehicle. There are many other minor effects, some applicable only in EVs, some only in ICE vehicles, some for both, but all of those others pale in comparison to just trying to keep a poorly insulated box warm enough for the occupants, especially when it gets too cold for the heat pump to work well.
If you know that you are going out early just plug in and preheat the car whilst it is still plugged in. Unplug and go. Once heat is reached the amount of effort to maintain this is negligible.
We have heated seats and and a heated steering wheel too but my partner doesn't like using them.
Many cars even have a setting to preheat the car for you at an expected departure time.
I always use the drive battery to heat the cabin because I've paid 7p/kw for that instead of 25p to heat from the mains outside of "economy 7" and it makes no noticeable difference to the battery percentage.
The GOM on my 8 y/o, tiny battery EV, is extremely pessimistic; a full charge in summer gives me a GOM of 90 miles (92 miles = original claimed range), the same in winter gives me a GOM of 72 miles (regardless of actual outside temperature), even after preheating the car; yet 2 days ago I drove 55 miles (8C temperature) and as I reached home, the GOM suggested I still had 38 miles of range remaining.
The following morning, it said I had 28 miles of range remaining; I drove only 3 miles that day - finishing with ..... a GOM of 28 miles.
It isnt fake range either, I have driven around 80 miles in sub 5C weather, and still had ~10 miles of range when I reached my planned charger stop.
I LOVE my EV, but often wish someone would come out with a retro-fit larger battery pack for it, like they have for the Nissan Leaf; having said that, my battery SOH is still 96.8%; which equals a loss of 0.9KWh from new.
I believe your analogy about leaving the heat on in the house at night is incorrect. Less heat equals less energy use.
Central heating is designed to have on 24/7/.The cost of energy stops people doing this .Less heat means a cold house.
Agree, it's a shame EVMan has perpetuated the myth that it is cheaper to leave the central heating in a house on all the time, more temperature differential between house and outside more heat is lost, otherwise good video.
It is more efficient to maintain temperature than turn it off and on repeatedly over the same time.
Assuming you want to remain comfortable.
Turning it off and lowering the temperature so it’s too cold isn’t the same thing.
Which is more efficient in this example whilst achieving the same outcome:
2 cars drive 100 miles.
1 drives at a steady 40mph
1 drives at 100mph but stops and starts the journey 10 times.
All you’re doing with the heating comparison is having a colder house.
Leaving your heating on when you are in bed will use more energy than turning it off. It's basic thermodynamics which I studied at university, beacuse the heat loss from your house is proportional to the difference between the inside and outside temperature. Personally I don't need or even want my house temperature to be at 20C when I'm in bed as it would be too hot. So if you're like me then it's much cheaper and better for the environment to turn off your heating at night.
@ You’re assuming the heating efficiency is the same in that. It isn’t.
Maintaining a temp (a lower one as opposed to off!) at peak efficiency vs working hard to get it up to a required temp is the main part of the equation.
Cost is better than efficiency.
I’ve a ‘Driver Only’ option for the climate control in my Kona, wonder if this makes a difference to range as I’ve never used it.
Screen wash……. Tip that a chemist friend of mine told me, and I’ve done it for a few years and it works a treat. Add some Rubbing Alcohol (Isopropyl Alcohol) into the screen wash, it’s cheap enough on Amazon, and it stops it freezing.
First time preheating the battery not before changing but before a 50 mile round trip today. Resulting in a 10% longer range. Ok I also saved another 1% for the 15 minute cabin preheat while charging. So yes the science works 😮❤
The GV 70 doesn't seem as efficient as our Ioniq 5, which shares many of the same components. I regularly see 3.4m/kWh in winter, and 3.9m/kWh in summer.
The HVAC and systems do seem to use a lot more energy than the Ioniq 5 too.
Ioniq5 is a GV60, this is much bigger and isn't the same chassis. There's a petrol version for example.
12V battery will be charged by the high voltage battery as soon as you turn the car on, actually.
Energy usage of LED lights or radio is neglectable. HVAC is a big energy consumer, in winter as well as in summer. Very efficient to have it at a relatively low temperature in winter (17-18°C) and turn on the heated seats. Yet still comfortable. And indeed, driving style and tire pressure is also an important factor to energy efficiency (for all cars really, regardless of the fuel type)
It’s not as you turn the car on, actually.
Not on all cars, maybe just yours.
And it’s ’negligible’, actually. 😉
@ElectricVehicleMan Most of them then... And thanks, English is not my native language
_"12V battery will be charged by the high voltage battery as soon as you turn the car on, actually. "_ -- really, it's _highly_ dependent on exact make and model.
My LEAF (RIP) would only charge the 12V battery if you were actually _driving_ the car.
My Model S and my EV6 will charge the 12V battery when parked, whether the car is on or not.
I don't doubt that there's a make/model out there that only charges the 12V battery right when you turn the car on, but I have never heard of that system. It's not common, to be sure.
@@harvey66616 I'm pretty sure my MG4 starts charging the 12v battery as soon as you "turn it on" (sit in the driver's seat, basically, when everything but the drivetrain comes to life). I'm basing this on things like the high cabin fan speed, e.g. with the window demister turned on; it runs at the same speed as long as you've sat in the chair & not turned the car off again, except for a brief dip when you kick the drivetrain into life. Compared to an ICE car where the fan runs noticeably slower until you start the engine & the alternator starts kicking out it's 13.8v
@ Charges the 12v when it’s plugged in, not turned on.
My 2022 Citroen Dispatch 75Kw van loses 30 miles of range in winter and I never get it back in summer . After 2 years and 32000 miles the range is a little over 140 . It was 200 miles when new . The dealer says this is normal. Many other van drivers with similar vans say it is normal.
The other thing is just know (learn) what the battery is capable of at different times of year. Lots of short journeys do indeed hammer the "guessometer" range because the car is spending 10 minutes heating everything up from scratch over and over, but that's all it is, a guess. My Zoe was reading 137 miles on a full charge after a lot of this which is of course quite appalling for a 52kWh battery (2.6 mpkwh). On that same day I did 60 miles (with 3 brief stops of around 10 minutes each - I was hunting the shops for something) and plugged back in. End of that day the GOM was reading 170 miles (3.26 mpkwh). So 40 miles difference in the calculation after "a bit of a run" vs. doing a mile here and there.
If you don't keep in mind that it's actually capable of probably 160-180 in the winter, you might be fooled into thinking the pessimistic 137 miles on the GOM is all you'll get out of it.
Really enjoyed your video. I have a question if you will please. It’s about your comment that “range is calculated”. I get that. My question is about BATTERY PERCENTAGE (SoC): is battery percentage MEASURED or CALCULATED. In other words, if my EV shows I have 10% of the battery left, can I count on 10% of the cells being MEASURED to still have electrons and do my own CALCULATION if I want? I’m about to take a road trip, and sometimes the range predictions seem “off”. I’m hoping you can confirm that I can rely on the SOC as being accurate and measured. Thanks
I said battery % was calculated, not measured.
Not range. I was talking about how much % remains not how many miles are left in the guess-o-meter.
Once you know how much you can get out of 1% of your car then you can do your own range guess.
@ perfect. That’s what I was hoping. I missed that detail in the video. Thanks for clarifying for me.
EVM has already addressed this, but just to emphasize: battery percentage is a primary measurement, but is still calculated. The video gets part of this wrong though, as it's just calculated based on voltage. If temperature were part of the calculation, it would be to _take that into account_ , removing the error that temperature causes. But instead, temperature can limit the voltage from the battery, which can then influence the displayed percentage value. (Though in a real way, the uncompensated value is actually more accurate anyway, because unless and until the battery gets warmer, you really do have less energy you can pull from the battery due to the lower voltage.)
As EVM notes, the range calculation is then based on the battery percentage, _plus_ other factors such as other electrical draws turned on in the car and your driving style (or, more correctly, just what the recent efficiency of your driving has been, which will take into account your own habits along with environmental effects such as air drag, hills, water or snow on the road, etc.).
You can only _measure_ range after the fact, i.e. use miles actually driven along with energy actually consumed, to determine a theoretical range _for that trip_ . It will be close to expected range for similar trips, but every trip is different. Hence the car community (EV or otherwise) calling the range display a "Guess-o-meter". :)
Temp is part of the equation, among other things on top of voltage. Especially wiht LFP batteries where the voltage is very similar in the middle band.
I work for a battery manufacturer, pretty much sat next to a firmware specialist that creates these things.
Fan speed should also be set correctly. Might need to be high to de-mist but then turn down for rest of trip.
Smear shaving foam on the inside of your windows, and hey presto they don't steam up
Be interesting to know if my lowly Vauxhall Mokka can be pre-heated? Is it better to run in Eco/normal/sport? Thanks for another great video
So the yellow color is winter antifreeze? Weird. On the continent, we are used to that yellow means summer and blue means winter fluid.
Any idea when GivEnergy are going to release their Electronic Management System please?
@@davidsmith8728 It’s out now if you specifically ask. Although it’s out of stock til Jan I think.
Thanks for telling it like it is about the heating. My car doesn't have a heat pump OR heated seats, and I'm fine with that. I like the comfortable all-over warmth of the resistance heater more than bum-toasters and more than the heater on an ICE car. I also find that the ability to pre-heat the car while it's still plugged in at home negates the need for heated seats. (By the way, I think you meant that your tips *mitigate* winter range loss. No way are you going to negate it.) It takes the power from the car battery but I heat it with enough time to bring the charge back to 100% from the home battery before I leave.
So I leave the warm house and get into a warm car. Unless it's raining heavily I won't even put a jacket on, because I never get chilled and driving a long distance is more comfortable just in a sweatshirt. There is no way in hell I am going to compromise on staying comfortably warm just to save range. It would only come down to saving five minutes or so at a DC charger anyway! If things are looking adverse (say a headwind) and I've miscalculated, and I think it's looking tight to get to my planned charger, it's *far* more effective to take 5 mph off my speed than to switch off the heater.
The car itself works on an estimate of about 5% loss of range by using the heater. Most of that probably happens at the beginning, bringing the cabin up to temperature. Turning the heating off when you're 20 miles from the charger is barely going to make any difference. Just slow down a bit and your range will miraculously recover.
The tyre pressure check is critical as pressures drop way more than ppl think it might!
Also, if an ICE vehicles windscreen washer jets have frozen, I have never had the engine manage to defrost them on the go, only after parking up for 20 mins with a hot engine might that work. But yes, I got the jist and use a lower freezing point screen wash every year!
I don't have an EV but am considering it, though don't do anywhere near the miles required to make it a greener car over its useable life that my current diesel. Tough decision to make!
Fortunately I don’t need to precondition my model 3 as i hardly ever drive past its range limit, but it is a waste of energy, it might help with range but it still costs money to precondition to drive 0 miles, it’s the equivalent of leaving your ice car idling.
@pppscooby if you do drive past its range limit - precondition before DC fast charging - The guy waiting next for you to finish will thank you.
Which is what I said in the video.
@@ElectricVehicleMan its a shame you don’t stay away from words such as “monumental waste of energy “ when talking about preconditioning, but will use such words when talking about ICE vehicles and washer fluid. Maybe you are worried of the backlash from some of your audience or maybe you are biased, but it shows. I own a model 3 and i wouldn’t swap it and i can accept the criticism of EVs
@@pppscoobyBiased against what? ICE cars?
40% of what an ICE engine produces is lost in waste heat! Even in the middle of summer, whether you want it or not it’s there!
You see what you’ve done there is attributed a factual comment as if it’s bias.
Or are you arguing with physics? Do you not consider that out of the petrol you buy and put into a car, nearly half is wasted as heat out of the exhaust/radiators etc?
Would you not consider that a ‘monumental waste’?
Not everything is about choosing sides. You don’t have to look to be offended at every comment.
@@ElectricVehicleMan looks like you are offended by my comment which you didn’t understand and started blabbing on about something else that’s not even part of your video.
Good stuff! Are you going to do a review of the eGV70?
Did it months ago. It’s in the channel somewhere.
@ElectricVehicleMan Ta, found it. And the GV60, too 👍
Good stuff. One question, How do I stop the plugged in pre heating from draining my domestic battery of its off peak charge. Octopus intelligent go, MG4 long range and ohme smart charger. I don't expect an answer now but if you were to do a session thereabouts I'd be chuffed.
@@rbdogwood You’d need the same brand of charger and battery.
Or home assistant.
People often suggest a ct clamp in the right place so the battery doesn’t see the charger. I don’t have this so if I get extra intelligent octopus slots I manually adjust the off peak periods in my battery to match
@@ElectricVehicleManso they have to know about each other.... And if you don't have that?
@@neilm9400 I think it can be wired in so the charger can never take it from the battery but then the battery won’t see the car usage either. I think.
Home assistant, same brand or manual control I guess. Or just let it drain a few kWh from the battery. It’s only for a preheat.
You need to take the power for the EV charger off immediately after your elecricity maeter andf feed it froim its own mini consumer unit, your house battery then never sees the car charging so does not join in, alternatively you have to use your battery controls to do nothing during the time, but in reality not too much is used.
I tried just the heated seats but the windows fogged up
Also some EVs, I have kona have got a driver only button for the heating making it more efficient if you're on your own
Nothing to do with being on your own, the passengers should have worn a coat 😁
Does not Kona have a separate heat and AC button too? I was always wondering why since it is the same heat pump compressor that is driving the functionality.
We can say that it's like ice in the glass with water. You can not drink ice but water. If you heat the glass, ice turns to water.
How about recirculating the air in the cabin, at least until it's all warmed up
Why wouldn't you preheat the cabin as well using power from the grid? That is going to save energy from the battery to heat the cabin after you set off.
I try not to preheat from the grid because the electricity in the battery cost 7p/kWh (off peak), and power from the grid is almost certainly 25p/kWh, unless I'm setting off in the middle of the night. So, unless I'm going on a really long journey and would have to public charge, it's not a good idea to preheat plugged in.
You would. I didn't say not to?
@@colinnich I set the battery to pre-heat in the middle of the night, while the car is on charge. In the morning I'll see if it wants to do it again, and if it does, let it and then go back to 100% from the grid/house battery. Then I'll pre-heat the cabin, and again return the car to 100% from the grid/house battery. In practice most of that comes from the house battery, not the mains, and if I'm starting a long trip I don't mind if the house battery donates a bit as I won't be home using power.
Obviously I'd only worry about returning the car to 100% if I was setting off on a trip that needed all my range. If I was just going to Glasgow or somewhere I wouldn't need to bother.
Biggest issue we see in our EV is the windscreen, it fogs up so much more no matter what we do so have to have the heating on to keep that clear.
I have a similar problem with mine but if I'm trying to eak out as much range a possible I will pulse the defogging then turn it off again. I also find that the seat heating uses the regeneration more so use that to warm up the car.
@@tryhardfpv5351 As shown, the pulsing uses more.
Wow Andy...did you actually buy this GV70 and it's not a press car for review by you and Harry? Fantastic if so. I've got the cheaper 2024 Kona EV and had it for Australian winter(in Tasmania) and loved the heated seats and heated steering wheel plus mine has all 4 outer seats with heating. Would closing the cover for the panoramic roof help the warmth in the car as well? Not winter yet here where I live, more like coming into summer and first summer with my new Kona should be interesting to see the efficiency difference.
No it's a press car for an event.
maybe time to build a carport?
One thing no one seems to mention is the significant change in drag due to the increase in the air density from summer to winter. This adds around 10% extra drag. You also dismissed the extra losses due to increased viscous drag of the transmission system. Yes EVs do have a gearbox it reduces the speed of the motor drive prior to the differential drive. As I drive my EV the average miles per kWh gradually increase as the drive system warms up.
@@brianbailey4565 I only mentioned things you can change.
Neither of those can be altered by the user.
@ElectricVehicleMan no, but it helps to explain why the range drops in winter.
@ That’s not the title/purpose of the video though.
Those range figures are I presume from dead flat to 100% charge which is not going to happen, I would have appreciated the real life range according to the manufacture min and max charge allowable charge levels which is normally 20% to 80% not sure what this make is. Which probably means 145 ish miles range without heating or all the other extras, giving another 10 or 15% off of that, so I could reasonably expect 120 -130 miles winter range.
Is that a fair assumption to make on real life usage?
You can charge to whatever you want, especially at home.
The 20-80 thing isn’t what you think.
The only ranges I mentioned were purely to highlight the difference a driver can make. I never mentioned anything else.
Unfortunately range is somewhat slippery number in EVs cos it depends on so many different things. But i can give you some real life seasonal range numbers for my Model 3 which might help:
1. Summer, 20 degrees, A-roads (40-50mph): Around 240 miles using 80% of the battery. I had to stop to pee and eat before the car needed to charge
2. Summer, 20 degrees, motorway cruising at a steady 75-80mph: Around 170 miles using 85% of the battery. That was 2.5hrs driving, so i could have gone longer but i was happy to take a break.
3. Spring, 2-4 degrees, motorway cruising at a steady 70-75mph: Around 155 miles using 81% of the battery. Again 2.5hrs.
4. Winter, -3 to -5 degrees, A roads (40-50mph): Around 150 miles using 80% of the battery. 3.5 hours of driving and we were ready for a break.
5. Winter, -10 to -15 degrees, running around town shopping in different places (20-50mph): Around 110 miles on 80% of the battery. More energy is used heating the car every time we get in than gets used moving it.
Getting an EV is is a great quality of life improvement, it makes the daily commute so much less hassle in the winter, just walk out the house without a coat & get in & drive off.
I can do that in my superior diesel.
You have a diesel station in your garage?
Day to day I never have to go to a gas station, I just park my ev in the garage and plug it in. Evs are more convenient day to day as long as you can plug it in at home.
It’s easy to forget that when it says 8 kw for 5 mins (which it wont be) then that’s 0.67 Kw / h. Maybe 2 miles in the car you are testing.
Short journies are obviously the worst as a lot of energy to heat the car and then it is enefficientif only say 5 miles driven. This again is the same in an ICE car, but chance is that the ICE car would not have warmed up.
Long trips spread out the loss from heating and maintaining the heat is low effort, so far more economical.
I have found my Tesla Model 3 to be very efficient on 50 mile trips with a drop of roughly .5kWh compared to Summer, when using mostly dual carriageway and 60MPH roads. Then speed makes a big difference and doing 45MPH on another trip at 7c I managed equivalent of over 5 miles per kWh.
I make 4 miles to go to work. If the windows are clear, I just turn on the heated seat. I don't bother to warm it up. If the windows are frozen or misty, I will turn it on for 3-5 minutes before I leave home. If I have to go for a longer run, especially with the big boss of my life, I prefer to preheat the car, so she won't start the bla bla bla, I told you, you don't know about cars, why did you buy the EV? The point is that she never driven a car and don't even recognise a Merc or a VW. I grew up in a truck, third gen truck driver, made million of miles in my life, but she knows better.
Your analogy about heating your home constantly is erroneous (for those using a boiler or electric storage heating, at least). According to the Energy Saving Trust, heating the home all the time is more expensive than using a timer. There is no “burst”.
@@adaptandsucceed6875 Your confusing cost with efficiency.
It’s cheaper to turn it off because you’re under a blanket at night and don’t mind it being colder.
However; if you wanted to maintain a temp then it’s better to leave it running steady than off and on. Which is what you would do on a single car journey.
Your 30kW leaf told you the split of energy use in the car! The most important thing in Winter is the correct tyres, that is why I always fit all season tyres as soon as the originals are worn out, they are superb year round in typical UK weather conditions so no need to even think about fitting winter tyres.
Did it tell you how much you used on degradation because of poor design? 😂
@@davidspencer7254 On the original Leaf shape there is a very clear battery health bar chart shown on the righthand side of the screen at all times so indeed the older exampleas are showing battery health.
@edwyncorteen1527 not in real time though.
@@davidspencer7254 i can get a reading of battery health at any time on our Leaf using Leafspy including when the car is running.
Agree about all season tyres. They should now be standard on most cars. I’ve used Falken and Vredestein on previous cars.
Handy that you can leave the tesla heated while at the shop!
Back when I drove a Chevy Volt, with 35 miles of EV range, the best heater settings for below freezing temperatures was to:
1) Seat heater(s) on high, heat off.
If that was not enough:
2) Temperature set to low-ish normal values
3) Fan speed low or very low
4) All air directed to feet
In addition:
-Leave you heavy winter coat on, of course
-A hot cup of coffee helps keep you comfortable
-Turn on window defrost whenever needed
As EVM points out, none of this is needed now that I have a 300+ mile EV and drive 25-30 miles daily. I just use the automatic HVAC and set the temperature to whatever is comfortable.
Great of EVM to remind us of tire pressure, which reduces with temperature. Important to check when temperatures are below freezing. I ran the max pressure on the tire's sidewall, 50 psi, to get as much out of my 35 mile range as possible.
It's a shame you don't mention the speed of your eco-driving and Audi-style driving, I'm guessing below the speed limit for the former (65 mph?) and above for the latter?
Something I've noticed with Teslas is even if you never turn on the cabin heating the car will still turn on the battery heater when you start driving if the temp is below about 5º (and you haven't preheated the battery whilst plugged in - e.g. you don't have home charging). This is typically for about 15 minutes and consumes 3 kWh of energy. Over a long 100 mile drive that will average out to a small overall loss. However, if you only ever use your car for a quick trip to the supermarket your loss of range can be staggering... the only way to avoid it is with pre-heating on a charger, but then it still is effectively costing you the same in higher electricity energy costs, you just aren't losing out on the range.
This is also one of these things that just increases the gap between the viability of EVs for those who can charge at home and those that can't - you both lose out on range and your cost per mile increases relatively much more when you replenish that energy at a more expensive public charger.
Preheating the cabin and the battery cost money, but I only have mine set to 18.5. The heated seats on and the heated steering wheel. This is quite warm enough when I get into my car. However my wife and I often forget, It's not hardwired in our brains., even though we have had Teslas for three years. My first car had a vent you manually opened that let air running over the engine to enter the cabin. The engine was in the middle of the passenger and driver. It was a Reliant Regal. Same model as Del Boys but the saloon. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but a lot warmer than my motorbike. 0 to 60 in 25 seconds top speed 65. Range anxiety was a thing back then, would it get to where you wanted without breaking down. Often it did not. Today's drivers have a cotton wool wrapped world. EV haters, petrol haters, diesel haters. We were motorests and stopped helped when we saw a breakdown.
I had 2 Reliant Regal Supervans (like Delboy's) - both bought new, one in 1965, t'other in 1969. Both had conventional heating systems with a blower, and I was never cold. Neither of them ever broke down on a journey, ever.
@@gospelman7222 I could not afford a new one. Mine was second hand I bought in 1975 I think. It did not have a letter donating the year so it was pre 1963 If it did have a blower it was broken. Loads of breakdowns. Best one was when it blew out the core plug on the engine, going up a steep hill. A big bang then Instantly filling the car with steam and smoke, I could not see a thing and thought it had exploded. The big ends went also and I had to rebuild the engine. The front wheel collapsed on a road trip. Fun days.
_"Preheating the cabin and the battery cost money"_ -- that's true, but for cars with a heat pump system, even in an unheated garage, it costs less money to preheat than to have the car try to heat itself from ambient while you're driving.
Honestly, I'm with EVM here...the vast majority of my trips I am not anywhere close to using the full range of the car, so conserving battery power isn't that important. Yeah, I could save a few pennies by preheating, but compared to the cost of actually _driving_ the car, that's inconsequential. And the heating system does a pretty good job of getting the car comfortable even if it doesn't start until I'm actually on the road. Heated seats and steering wheel do make a big difference here though, I'll admit!
Driving is supposed to be fun and enjoyable. Two things that evs are not. Range anxiety. Battery life worry. Resale value worry. Pre heating? Will you car burst into flames during the night. If that is fun then can keep it.
Your Tesla has a very complicated heat recovery system that no other EV has and when you are travelling it will be using less from the battery and recovering more from other heat generated? Isn’t that one of the reasons why Tesla is so efficient?
@@keithgeorge7338 Mine doesn’t have that. Only newer ones.
It’s a heat pump, loads of EVs have one. My 2015 Leaf had one. It’s just Tesla make it sound like they invented it.
At the beginning you say how ICE cars [with big tanks] don't notice the range loss as much. But:
It took me a while to realise this:- an EV is 95+% fuel efficient whereas an ICE throws away 60% of the energy in its fuel.
So the extra energy required by driving faster, using ancilliaries, uphill routes, denser air when it's cold and wet, and headwinds etc are vastly more significant for an EV.
If combustion engines suddenly, miraculously, became 95% efficient, they too would suffer from loss of range, just like EVs.
It's not simply that you didn't notice putting extra fuel in the tank!
As you say, people forget the effect of cold temperatures on ICE cars. In my Focus when it is frozen, even with its heated windscreen it takes a good 5 minutes to defrost everything, wasting diesel as it goes. This has a large negative effect on the MPG of my 8 mile commute.
Get up 5 minutes earlier
Negating Range Problems in winter; consider moving closer to the destination you wish to arrive at
@@nmtbhtp1990 Yes. Moving house is way easier than driving. 🤔
“Next weeks video. I find out what a joke is” 🤦♂️
@@nmtbhtp1990 You'll need longer than a week
Read your comment.
That ain't a joke, or even phrased in that way.
@@ElectricVehicleMan Please stop. You really have taken this too far and are looking a bit foolish now. My original joke wasn’t intended to be a critique or criticism of your video. Simply a funny comment and in the comments section, for other viewers to possibly chuckle at. A riff, if you will on the old McDonald’s ads “Save money on binoculars. Move closer to the object you wish to view”. However because you have obviously taken offence, I’ll apologise for any offence caused to your ego. But FYI it’s not a great look to be a bit mard, cause you didn’t get the joke
It's not/never more efficient to leave heating on in a house. Houses lose less heat energy when they're cold.
Equally it will be more energy efficient to turn on/off than to maintain temp in a car. Average temperature is most important metric, which will be lower when on/off
@@GM-dc8vr No.
a house has thermal mass to keep the heat in so it’s just maintaining a temperature.
Getting it down to a cold temp means the system will be operating well above the efficiency band.
In a car, the heat pump will maintain temp far more efficiently than repeatedly using the resistive heater by turning it off and on.
A car is biased for speed of heating, not efficiency.
@@ElectricVehicleMan energy is energy. A house will lose heat at a certain rate dependent on the temperature differential between inside and out. The thermal mass isn't particularly relevant beyond a lag effect. There's no efficiency band for a gas boiler, or most heating types, it's just off or on. So keeping the house at a high temperature does only one thing - keeps it in the temperature band where thermal losses to the outside are highest.
It's the last two weeks of Autumn, so you have done this video " before winter"😊
Thank you for making the pedantry comment so i didn’t have to 😊
I never said it ‘was winter’, I said ‘this is how you can negate winter range loss’.
😉
Thanks, amongst others, this video has convinced me that the time to go EV is at least 10 years away, when the infrastructure and technology has improved, and my current petrol car is at least 16 years old, as my previous one was when I finally traded for a bigger car with smaller engine!
Depends on whether you can charge at home or not. If you can charge at home, and your typical round-trip is less than even a degraded winter range (180-200 miles being typical of most current EVs), then actually anytime from now is a pretty good time to switch. Assuming you're in the UK, you could switch to an Octopus tariff to get seriously cheap motoring energy (7p/kwh - and as a fringe benefit you can run your tumble dryer, washing machine, etc. at the same rate); even at 1.8miles/kWh that's less than 4p per mile in energy costs... comfortably under half the price the most efficient petrol car on the market will get you.
Obviously, if you can't charge at home, or at work, then that does rather change the equation - but I'd predict that the infrastructure will be markedly better in 5 years, let alone 10.
Meanwhile you’re happy to drive around in a car that at best uses 30% of the fuel to move forward. The rest is basically wasted as heat. Seems strange when you work it out like that. £100 to fill a tank of petrol and £70 is used to heat the cabin or wasted. Bonkers really.
@@tangoadvance8393 There's no denying ICE infrastructure is far better to stop range anxiety and convience, It should be being over 100 years old. EV industry has shot itself by over promising and underdelivering. One huge storm in US with media coverage on owning an EV in it really affected sales instantly in US. I'm on my third EV would never own one if I couldn't charge at home. Would buy a Hybrid instead.
The fact this video exists proves to me that EV isn’t the way to go for at least another decade
@@discostu2 How to get the best mpg for ICE cars is just as prevalent. Doesn’t mean they’re useless, just that some want to save money/fuel.
At least 2 years (not a decade!!)
12:42 anti glare 😮
Can stop the sun!
Plus this is UA-cam, it ain’t top gear.
“Shitbox” - hahahahahaaa
all hail, white board of truth!!
So I did a approx cost comparison of having the lights turned on in a static EV for an hour compared to a ICE car where the engine has to be running ……
Here’s the cost comparison for running the lights in both cars for 1 hour:
Electric Audi e-tron GT
• Energy consumption for lights: 0.09 kWh.
• Electricity cost: £0.07 per kWh.
Petrol Audi
• Fuel consumption at idle (for alternator): ~0.8 liters/hour.
• Petrol cost: £1.45 per liter.
Comparison
• Electric Audi e-tron GT: £0.0063 (less than 1p per hour).
• Petrol Audi: £1.16 per hour.
The petrol car is nearly 184 times more expensive than the electric car for running lights for one hour.
Conclusion
This stark difference demonstrates the efficiency of electric vehicles for auxiliary systems. Even at low electricity prices (7p per kWh) and moderate petrol costs (£1.45/liter), EVs offer significantly lower operational costs………
I've got an ICE car with LED lights and I don't need the engine turned on to have the lights on and it would be ridiculous to do so
@@TheVicaroh dear………….you can’t be serious with this comment……..
@@tangoadvance8393 Its a silly comparison because you could just have the lights on an ICE without running the engine
A more sensible comparison would be to have an EV and an ICE running for an hour, with their lights on and their heaters on full and then take into account that the ICE would be recharging its battery during that time. Cost that comparison up
Then modify and extend the test by having both types of vehicle fully charged/fuelled and see which one runs out first in a time comparison and cost that one up as well if you like
Your initial comparison still remains silly and you are clearly aware of that
@@TheVicarOnly it’s not a silly comparison at all. Go drive on any road and park up for an hour or 2 in a remote location and leave your lights on……….see how comfortable you feel without running the engine. ……….
@@tangoadvance8393 You'd be just as cold in an EV with just the lights on
So ALL cars suffer range loss in cold weather. Really? An ice car does not run on a battery. Screen heaters run from the 12v under the bonnet. There is no detrimental effect on the range. The only time fuel is used other than when driving is when the air con is on. I can guarantee you that a fully charges eV will not go as far as a fully fuelled ice car in even the coldest of weather. Nor fir that matter will it in mild weather. Evs are the biggest con perpetrated on the motorist in 100 years.
@dingopisscreek Are you for real?
You think that cold weather doesn’t make an engine run way less efficiently until it really heats up? As most journeys are short, it’s very noticeable.
Wow! 😄🤦♂️
So I had to go at calculating the difference between electric and petrol car running the lights for one hour whilst stationary…….
Electric Audi (e-tron GT)
Range Loss for 1 Hour of Lights: 0.36 miles
Petrol Audi
Range Loss for 1 Hour of Lights: 7.92 miles
The petrol Audi loses 22 times more range than the electric Audi for running the lights for 1 hour, emphasizing the efficiency of EVs in auxiliary power usage.
I’m waiting for the software scandal as they history repeats
The what?
Does that car have a heat pump, mine doesn't give you a breakdown of whats using the energy, but when stopped the display changes from m/kwhr to kw, when it's cold, with the seats and heating on (set to 20degC) with the outside temp below 4 degC, it starts around 2.3+ kw, after 15mins it's down to 0.6kw, so 5kw just for the heating is quite high (or the heating is much more powerful than my car)
bro petro doesn't freeze
Neither do batteries? 🤷♂️
@@ElectricVehicleMan are we suppose to take your word.
@@KINGandWINNER They all have thermal battery management. It’s not rocket science to know what that is.
@@ElectricVehicleMan am I suppose to take you seriously. I case I get reported by you, i'm not gonna say anything harsh.
@@KINGandWINNER Reported by me? What on earth does that mean. I can’t report anyone!
Are you telling me you’ve never seen petrol cars plugged in to stop them from freezing? In some countries it’s very common!
EVs heat their own battery up when needed. A two second google would show you that.
Come on bro!
14:27 🤣
I carry a diesel generator in my EV.
1:15 🥚😃
The best economy is Tesla. It doesnt take 27% to heat a Tesla.
Who said it takes 27% to heat this? Or even close to that!
Save the planet , fart ,keep the windows closed stay warm ,or turn petrol car on have heater on for whole journey.
Just buy a diesel. 900 miles between fill-ups with my Passat.
When did you last drive more than 200 in one go? 🤷♂️
99% of journeys are under 100 miles.
If i have a near 500 mile range in my diesel car and I lose 10 % range i dont care. Your EV very different. Plus EVs lose range sat still. All that asside i guess my next car will be an EV thanks to the likes of you.
Stick with diesel. The few people I know with EVs are going or gone back to diesel. Never again is the answer when I ask them why. Costs, unreliable crap was most replys. Short life. Cars worthless at 3 yrs old. Garages refuse to buy used EVs. Getting a common problem. Diesel will be king for decades.
How to mitigate winter range loss in an EV. Easy swap it for a petrol model.
@@familycurtress6829 Which also has range loss.
Oh snap you got us...
Yeah I love paying £100 for a tank of petrol, safe in the knowledge that £70 of that £100 is heating the car and £30 is pushing the car forward. Amazing concept……😂
For every time you say 'ka' we drink
Do I ever say ka?
@@ElectricVehicleMan No, nothing to see here. Move along.
I'm not going to name the company or the vehicle manufacturer.
This company wanted to go over to Electric.. they had chargers fitted and from a fleet of 20 ice vehicles they changed 5 these 5 vehicles have now been sent back and they have returned to using ice.
I drive an locally and its ok not good but not bad just boring I guess.
Before 2030 I will be returning to ice at some point.
I guess its like marmite 🤔.
As usual far too much waffle and having to think about things that one simply doesn't even need to think about with an ICE. Life is too short. I know you're making a few quid on UA-cam but with most people you're flogging a dead horse. Without government mandates these things would be a five minute wonder.
The only way you get to the point of 'not having to think about things' (which most EV drivers don't anyway) is to let the tech mature to the point people want. Like mobile phones when they first came out.
You have to think about pressing a button to warm something up? Yeah, perhaps cars in general let alone EVs are not for you.
You don't think about your driving style and tyre pressure in your ICE car? Get off the road mate.
Ok, don't buy one. Not sure why you are wasting time commenting on how something you don't want or have would waste time
Okay so eventually he gets to the point. Cold weather only really effects petrol diesel vehicles if the journey is less than 10 miles ish.thats it. Evs are rubbish in the cold just as they are in the heat. As soon as you need to heat or cool an ev you will loose around 30%
On average I get 3.9 milers per kwh. When it's around 0c that goes down to 1.9miles per kwh this is on a 20 mile journey
Some evs are better than others, in simple terms until a new and environmentally friendly alternative to lithium batteries is on the market, evs are only going to be for certain uses.
You don't drive an ev because of the environment.
Of course worth noting until the electricity supply network is up graded and more gas turbines are used to produce electricity the only way to do away whit clean and efficient diesel cars is if the public ( you and I are stopping from owning and driving vehicles.
That's why theypush the c02 BS