Electric vehicle batteries are a lot like people, in one important respect: They’re most comfortable in temperatures around 65 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
When the weather gets much colder or hotter than that, a battery works less efficiently. It has to work harder, too, to keep the vehicle’s cabin comfortable for its equally picky human occupants.
The result? Electric vehicles can’t drive as far or as efficiently in extremely hot or cold weather.
AAA has been testing exactly how big an effect temperatures have on modern EV batteries. In its latest research, shared exclusively with NPR, it found that hot temperatures reduced range by an average of 8.5%. Cold weather cut vehicles’ range by a whopping 39%.
“Internal combustion engine vehicles also lose range in extreme cold weather,” points out Ed Kim, the chief analyst with the research group AutoPacific, who was not involved in AAA’s research. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated a 10% to 30% drop in gas vehicle fuel economy in cold weather, depending on the type of trip. “This isn’t a problem that’s exclusive to EVs. This happens to basically any kind of vehicle when it gets really cold.”
I mean, diesels need to be plugged in with a heater running all night during winter in large portions of America and I think all of Canada.
When we start talking about this stuff, location really matters.
“Cold weather” is vague as fuck
And in REALLY cold weather they literally idle them continuously, because if they get that cold they will not start at all.
And if you get stuck out in the woods, you have to literally light a fire under your engine to warm it up enough.
But I think they’re just talking about regular cold weather, like Minnesota. Trying to use an EV in the really cold places is just a bad idea.
Counter-point, Norway is almost exclusively EV at this point. EVs are fine in cold weather if you have a sensibly built society. At least they aren’t worse than gas or Diesel.
Location really matters in Norway, too. On the coast, the climate is pretty temperate with lows just below freezing, whereas up North (with the reindeer), the temperature can drop below -40 in the winter.
Alaska: runs electric school buses reliably
Facts? Facts!? Bah!
The article mentioned they tested “cold” in 20°F(-6°C) and “hot” in 90°F(32°C). But yeah subzero(°c) temp makes everything run inefficiently, ICE car need to warm up and maintain the heat in the cabin, so does EV, just that we don’t really measure ICE car and announce it like we do with EV.
With an ICE you get the heat for free as a byproduct. Here in Austria I’ve never noticed a significant efficiency difference, maybe up to 10% could be true for ICE cars in our winters.
People often forget that ICE vehicles suffer from range reduction from the cold as well: ICE vehicles are up to 20% less efficient in the cold.
I haven’t found that hot temperatures reduce the range of my EV, other than turning on the air conditioning. After all, most modern EVs have temperature regulation systems for the batteries to prevent these kinds of problems. I lose about 10 to 20 miles off my range by running the AC. I’m sure something similar happens in a gas powered vehicle, it’s just that you don’t have a guess-o-meter on the dashboard in a gas car showing you the immediate impact.
The nice thing about EVs, is you can pre-cool or preheat the cabin while they are plugged into the wall if you’re worried about it. In colder climates you can also pre-heat the battery while the car is still plugged in.
https://recharged.com/articles/ev-preconditioning-in-winter-explained/
Ultimately we’re just gonna have to switch to EVs whether it’s convenient or not. Life is life and sometimes you just gotta suck it up and adapt to changing conditions. We’ll figure out all the little tricks for keeping batteries working the same way we figured out all the little tricks to keep diesel engines working: through trial and error and lots of cursing, followed by revelatory “ohhhhhhhhs” and word of mouth - sometimes even intergenerational word of mouth.
And we can talk and talk about which type of engine performs better but at the end of the day, humanity’s gonna keep starting wars over fossil fuels for as long as they’re valuable, driving the prices up higher and higher, so sustainable energy is the only path forward with any future, not just environmentally speaking but financially speaking. If you’re a self-employed haulier and you’re approaching retirement age, I could see why you’d wanna try and make your combustion engines last you to retirement. But anyone who’s buying, needs to buy electric or they’re sabotaging themselves. Because the big companies are gonna kick and scream against EVs and solar for as long as they think they can squeeze a little more profit out of fossil, but as soon as they make the switch to electric they’re suddenly gonna start lobbying government to tax the fuck out of anyone still running fossil. If you haven’t made the switch by then, you’re gonna be fucked.
It happened with the banking crisis: the entire system was geared towards keeping that game of musical chairs going as long as possible. But once one or two big names started to offload their CDO and CDO ^2s, things all changed very quickly and suddenly the players that already had chairs were eager to get the music to stop as quickly as possible. It’ll be the same way with fossil fuels: it’ll look like it’s gonna last forever until suddenly it’s dead.
I have a trip calculator on my car and I reset it everytime I get gas. If I need heat or AC, my MPG goes down between 1 to 3.
Wait, there’s no breakdown by manufacturer / battery generation? This doesn’t seem like news.
I wouldn’t trust anything from AAA. 39% loss in cold is straight up false unless you’re talking like -20F. These tests have been done many many times by more respectable orgs and they usually get around 20%
39% loss in cold is straight up false unless you’re talking like -20F.
My guess is that this number may be possibly accurate for cars without a thermal management system for the battery. In the USA, this would be exactly one car model and even of those there are years where it would be fine: the Nissan Leaf.
The Leaf came out in 2010 and has been air cooled until just this year in 2026. Some models had a battery heater though, but not all. I could see for a model without a heater and extreme cold the 39% range suppression. However, since its only one car, putting that 39% number is disingenuous because it suggest its more widespread when it isn’t.
I’m hoping sodium ion cars become available soon. I’ll happily trade some range in ideal conditions for being more resistant to very cold temps.
We here in the US are simply working towards phasing out very cold temps entirely.
That’s funny, but I need to be the pedant.
Global warming/climate change is raising the average temperature, yes. But it is also making extremes more extreme. So cold fronts are getting colder, and heat waves hotter.
Instructions unclear. Burning fossils should cause global warming, not global spikes on both ends.
/s
The model 3 is approximately 50kWH standard range. Roughly 221,000btu, which is roughly 7L of gasoline for about 300mi range estimated. Even cutting that range in half, it’s a lot of distance compared to a ICE.
The relative drop in range for an EV vs ICE is significantly dampened by the efficiency of each. The ICE is just so wasteful that it’s much more noticeable when the weather hit happens. It’s why drag coefficient and tyre friction matter much more in EVs.
The real issue is the comparative lack of charging stations and the duration of the refill. There are solutions being worked on now.
Those of us who like to road-trip and camp have real anxiety about range and charge availability.
Range anxiety is real, but I haven’t had too many issues with the time spent at a charger. My car gives me a target charge to get me to the next charger instead of expecting me to charge to full. This pairs well with the charger that only charges at max speed until the battery gets to 60% or so.
If I’m on a long enough trip to need multiple stops, I’m generally more than happy to spend the 15-20 minutes stretching my legs, going to the rest room, and picking up coffee or a snack from the store. That said, if I was taking an emergency long trip and felt like every minute counted, I would take my gas truck.
