To be fair, this data doesn’t adjust for the age of the vehicles. Older gas-powered cars fail at a higher rate than the new ones and electric vehicles are obviously much more recent on average.
Duh.
We have GM to thank for that.
#stillbitteraboutEV1
Imagine a world where EV1 kicked off the EV revolution in the 90s and 2000s, and we were living 15 years in the future.
In For All Mankind the EV1s were released in the 1980s.
Huh, had no idea about the EV1. I’m bitter that the Volt was cancelled.
First: It’s a site dedicated to electric vehicle promotion. So it might be a tiny bit biased.
Second: Their criteria was for their claim was, “13 percent of the cases with starting difficulties are electric cars”. Well, golly gosh gee, how surprising that an electric car would be easier to start in cold weather, since as long as you have any juice left in your battery, it’s gonna go. You don’t have problems like diesel fuel gelling, or oil turning into molasses. (If it gets cold enough, your battery might freeze solid, and then you have real problems.)
Finally: “[…] electric vehicles are involved in roughly 21% of all its cases so far in 2024” Given that Norway is roughly 25% electric vehicles–they don’t give the exact percentage in the article–that’s… Pretty much in line with overall percentages. It might even be high, given that EVs are more likely to be new than ICE vehicles.
If we’re going to do cars–and I don’t think that there’s a reasonable alternative that can be brought to bear in a reasonable time–then I’m all for electric. But this isn’t a great way to promote them.
Your second point is basically agreeing that electric cars are better at starting in the cold, where all you’re doing is explaining why. Maybe I missed what your second point of disagreement was.
I think your second point is the point of the article, as much hate as electric cars are getting from some hick mechanics - they have a shit load less moving parts and so will generally be more reliable
The problem–aside from the god-awful build quality of Tesla in particular–has usually been software. Too much shit being done by a single central system. Yes, they should be much simpler. But instead they’ve been made much more complex.
Oh god yeah idek if a cooperation could ever properly build a car in this day, bit the raw concept should be better (Tesla’s don’t even have lidar cause elon doesnt believe in it lmao)
That, and it’s hard to record customers with LIDAR.
People seem to forget that gas cars have a battery in them too and that fails in cold weather.
Lead-acid batteries aren’t lithium ion? And the car starter battery isn’t equivalent to that of an EV?
You might as well say that I have trouble starting my gas weed wacker, therefore cars are hard to start.
You can buy a lithium car battery these days. Expensive as all get out, but you can get one.
You shouldn’t replace a different type of battery with another. The vehicle will be set up with a different charging profile and you’d need to change that as well.
And I’m not too certain what hardware is in cars but if its not setup to charge the li-ions just how they like, they tend to explode
I’m guessing the batteries advertised as drop-in replacements have BMSs built in.
Yeah, that’s a fantastic way to start a fire. Lithium really doesn’t like being treated like lead acid…
I’ve been told there are addon charge controllers available for such situations. But as I said, it’s stupidly expensive.
There’s a 12volt battery in every EV for starting and accessories like heat and a/C.
have affected the chargers themselves rather than the vehicles, according to local sources.
I can’t find any news that confirm that?
Everyone is arguing about how they should fuel their cars, but I just want to see more electric powered transit.
My mum’s 2019 Toyota Yaris has to have its engine run every few days or the battery dies from just sitting on the driveway. It could be a faulty car battery but considering this car isn’t even that old and has barely driven 30k miles, it’s not doing so great. I discovered yesterday that my EV charges better after I’ve driven it around and the battery’s warmed up a bit. The car goes a bit haywire when you cold start so it seems like it needs some prep time before a drive.
You probably have some parisitic power draw somewhere, my old Ford focus had the same issue. Was just a bad relay causing a fan to run when the car was off.
Some car batteries only last 3 - 5 years. It might be due for a replacement. They are fairly easy to change yourself too if you want to keep the costs down.
Also depends on the environment. Down here in central Texas you can’t expect the el cheapo batteries to last more than 2 or so years because the summer heat is brutal on them.
Yes it does. You car (almost all EVs) slowly precondition the battery while driving. Many newer cars optimize the battery temperature when you add a charger to your navigation to have the optimal temperature once you reach it. If you know you need to rapid charge and the drive is short, it’s usually a good idea to add it to your navigation as the car will then maximize the heating/cooling before you get there, whereas with normal driving it would do this slowly to minimize drain.
I had to rapid charge with a frozen battery once. Not a fun experience.
We own a Yaris. She needs a better battery.
From the replies I’ve been getting, I think so.
… If another one of your vehicles died constantly… What would you do…
Don’t know what the 2019 yaris is like but my 2006 yaris with 335.000 KMs on the odometer regularly sits in the drive for a week, sometimes two at a time without moving. I had a battery die on me after towing a caravan in 38°C weather with it for a whole day. This was in 2018, that battery lasted me until last year when the mechanic told me it was going down and needed replacing. All this to say that unless Toyota has gone to absolute shit over the years then I’m guessing something isn’t quite right with your mum’s yaris.
(okay yes, I also wanted to put my trooper of a yaris in the spotlight. My first car ever and the best deal I will ever make in my life).
Sounds like a great car! It does seem like something’s wrong with the battery so a replacement is in order.
Number eleven fail at lower rate that any car
👌👍
Never once in 25 years of living in northern Maine have I had an ICE engine not start in the cold. Fuck I can’t remember even diesel engines falling because of glow plugs.
Yet on the first 0 day I can recall in a few years I have three friends stuck.
I’ll believe this shit when I see some actual data that isn’t a random company in Norway.
A random company in Norway is probably the best equipped to do this kinda testing.
Cold? Check. ICEs on the road? Check. A buunch of electric vehicles on the road? Check.
From the article:
this data doesn’t adjust for the age of the vehicles. Older gas-powered cars fail at a higher rate than the new ones and electric vehicles are obviously much more recent on average.
Their data and the article’s title are highly misleading. No shit a year old tesla is going to be more reliable than a 20 year old toyota corolla. You need to compare cars of a similar age, before you can come to a firm conclusion.
20 year old Corolla that might not have been maintained very well also.
Do keep in mind that in Europe there are often required checks whether a car is ‘roadworthy’, in Norway this seems to be a biannual check: so you cannot really skip maintenance to the extent that that would be a huge factor.
That is a good point but that only is for the mobility of the car, they don’t check if the motor is going to be running properly in 5 mins. So if the alternator dies, it’s not like they checked it. They’re making sure the car is safe to basically drive and crash. Rust and proper suspension and brakes/tires.
Well, frankly, Northern Maine isn’t very much north and not enough inland to get the extremes?
Most of Scandinavia has been below -15F for a good part of the new year and being relatively dense (for Scandinavia) in EV coverage I’d say Norway is the best example of EV very cold weather performance.
We’ve had this same “debate” here as well with ice-owners lamenting the perceived loss of range and EV-owners responding “I know, don’t care. Always works, always warm and always topped up”.
Living in Quebec for the past 18 years, I’ve seen plenty of ICE cars dead in parking lots and driveways when the temperature drops. It’s usually the battery. But the car, when it starts, it makes a really strange noise.
Whereas I, who lives somewhere where it gets below -40 every year, before wind chill, had 2 co-workers late for work or missing it entirely because their cars wouldn’t start. It’s also happened to me. Want to know the cool thing about anecdotes?
Fuck I can’t remember even diesel engines falling because of glow plugs.
Fun fact/anecdote:
I remember reading an old timey engineer/designer being told not to never route wiring or fuel under the diesel engine of a vehicle. The reason is that in colder climates, if it gets really cold and the diesel turns to syrup, people will/would sometimes light a small fire under the engine to heat the block and diesel up.
Obviously, nowadays there are electic engine heaters for that, but that doesn’t help much if you’re in the middle of the Siberian wilderness.
I have been under heavy equipment with a tiger torch in the cold before. Sometimes the glow plugs or ether aren’t quite enough to get it going.
Hah, I’ve helped plenty of friends over the years with ICE cars that won’t start in the cold but have yet to see a BEV refuse to start just because of cold.
Maybe it’s different here in Southern ……. New England
Southern New England gets cold, but last I was there, few people if any seemed to need battery warmers, and definitely not regularly. I’d expect most cars that are as new as basically any consumer EV to be able to start as fine there.
You’re not wrong. Where I live, we just had an entire week where the highest temp we got to was 5°F and the coldest without wind chill was -20°F. My ICE started fine every time without issue. Like the article says itself, this is only really applicable to older ICE cars sometimes having issues in the winter. Give it another decade and then we can get a more accurate picture on reliability (note: I do hope that EVs continue to be reliable en masse after that much time, I’m not anti-EV or anything).
Batteries last longer in cold climates
