Yeah, they are compensating with heating elements. This will of course use some of the capacity. Telsa is doing heating elements as well. Heating during overnight charging should be easier if you are on grid power. Charging batteries when they are cold can harm them. Discharging them when they are cold equates to more internal resistance, so you could lose up to 15% range without heating elements. No idea how much power the heating elements draw. I would bet that Tesla's battery acquisition Maxwell [1] could make some improvements in this area.
It’s not as if internal combustion engines work great in -20C temperatures either. Often they won’t even start, and diesels typically have an (plug-in electric!) engine block heater in such climates. So I just don’t see this as a problem.
Also, what proportion of the world lives in climates where it makes sense to optimize for -20C weather? Northern Europe, parts of North America... and that’s pretty much it. So while Norway (which now buys mostly electric cars... and famously a LOT of Teslas) might use cold-optimized chemistries, it’s not a major consideration for electrifying the world.
Speaking as someone who's car is currently plugged in, and who just went through a couple weeks of below -40c mornings, this is bunk. Modern IC engines start reliably at -20 without preheating. Mine started fine this morning at -22c even though I had not plugged it in. It isn't a great idea for the engine/battery in the long term, I am kicking myself a little for not plugging it in, but I had no doubt it would start (honda civic). I've even cold started it at -36 in an emergency. I generally wait for my brake/clutch/PS fluid to warm up but they have nothing to do with starting.
In a modern IC engine, the real issue isn't the block heat but the battery. A bad/old/tired battery won't provide the amps when cold. For all practical purposes, anyone worried about cold starts would be better served by a battery heater/blanket than a block heater.
For gasoline vehicles, you’re correct (although it certainly helps to have a block heater). Block heaters are essential for cold weather diesels. But all combustion engine vehicles need a way to start, and they rely either on muscle power (eg pull-start lawnmower) or a battery (okay, I have hill-started my car quite a few times...). In practicality it means internal combustion engines rely on batteries just as much for starting. And the chemistry they used (lead acid) wasn’t terribly good in cold weather, either. Nowadays, they sell nice compact lithium chemistry battery jumpstart packs the size of a paperback novel which will start your car. Regardless, batteries are still the solution.
If your engine is running, your battery won't even feel those electronics. Your alternator/rectifier is pumping 13.9v so long as the engine is turning. Your 12v battery definitely should not be drained by anything unless at a very low idle/off.
>It’s not as if internal combustion engines work great in -20C temperatures either.
Pretty much every ICE made in the last 40yr, save your $110 lawnmower that was made without a choke to save $0.38, is fine at -10 to -20f so long as it has some semblance of compression. If anything the biggest problem is that batteries don't work so well in the cold so they'll have a really tough time starting an old engine with poor compression (which will be even harder to start in the cold).
It hits -20 all the time where I live and many/most people in the neighbourhood park outside. Modern cars with healthy batteries absolutely will start.
So will an electric vehicle. Of course, it’s recommended to let your internal combustion engine run a bit to warm up before highly stressing it to prevent damage.
LiFePO4 batteries simply want to be warmed up before accepting a significant charge rate to prevent damage. That’s comparable.
> Of course, it’s recommended to let your internal combustion engine run a bit to warm up before highly stressing it to prevent damage.
I don't have a reference handy, but I read a decade or so ago that the best way to warm up and engine is actually just to drive in a reasonable fashion.
Not sure what it’s being downvoted if you street park a car at -20 it ain’t gonna start if it doesn’t have engine block heating.
If your car was sold in a region that gets that cold it was likely pre-installed if not you had to take care of that.
The block heater heats up the oil which heats up the engine block it’s usually electric that can run off the battery or an external outlet.
If you buy a car which was intended for warm or moderate climates and drive it in Norway or Minnesota during peak winter you won’t be starting it in the morning.
Growing up in central Alberta (with routine -25C daytime temps) we always plugged in our cars, but now almost nobody does. There's no need anymore. Modern cars start fine.
It is a good idea, but there are lots of good ideas when it comes to cars. Do you ever start your car when parked on an incline? That can play havoc with oil delivery but we all do it. Park a car in the cold with a not-full gas tank? That isn't recommended either.
Cold-starting engines 30 years ago was a big problem. They had lots of different metals that would flex against each other. Modern engines are built to tighter tolerances and that means metals that expand/contract at more similar rates. And our oils do not thicken as easily thanks to improved chemistry. A cold start really isn't going to destroy your engine. It will still probably outlive the rest of your car.
30yr ago was 1991. Pretty much anything with fuel injection (i.e. basically everything in 1991) will start just fine at low temperatures.
The one OEM who's processes I have knowledge of with was doing their testing down to -40F in the late 1980s (which coincidentally is the temperature at which their electronics system starts throwing codes for misbehaving temperature sensors).
- Some of the manufacturers at times have moved back towards Iron-Block/Aluminum-head designs (rather than all aluminum.) Thankfully yes modern gasket technology and metallurgy has improved but there is still extra wear and tear as a result.
- Depending on the way the ECU is set up, there may be other advantages to pre-warming the block. As an example, my WRX sometimes gets -really- cranky starting in cold temps. But it's not the start I'm worried about.
- Below ~25F, the fluid in the clutch gets to the point where I can sometimes pull my leg off the clutch and wait at least a half-second before the pedal 'thunks' up. An engine block heater would probably help with that a bit.
- The way the ECU is programmed, there is a -long- delay from when the car switches from open loop (just working off a MAP or MAF sensor) to closed loop (looking at the O2 sensor). In cold enough weather, If the temp gauge doesn't reach a certain point before I hit the highway, it -never- hits closed loop and my mileage is absolute trash. Not every car is set up like this, but more than you think. It's an emissions thing.
Most of your clutch's working fluid is nowhere near any block heater. It is in your clutch master cylinder right above your clutch pedal. It is essentially inside the cabin with you rather than under the hood with the engine. You might have a fluid reservoir under the hood but, warm or cold, that fluid isn't being used unless you have a leak.
As for running temperatures, the standard trick is to reduce airflow across the radiator. Trucks put on "bras" or you can rig up something made of carboard in front of the radiator. Always cardboard because it is soft enough not to damage anything if it gets loose.
Only the fancy ones, most people don’t have parking spots like these.
The building I used to live in Finland had outlets for maybe 20% of the parking spaces. Mostly people wanted the pole if they wanted to run an interior heater so their windows wouldn’t be frozen in the morning.
No such thing in the coldest metropolitan area in the US (Minneapolis/St. Paul, at least there are none which are larger and colder). Avg daily high/low of -5C/-13C in January over the last ten years. City streets are lined with cars, and only very rarely will you see an extension cord pulled to a street parked vehicle.
Diesel at least was much more popular in Europe which would explain the prevalence of block heaters and the popularity of their use in gasoline/petrol engines, but that doesn't mean they are necessary.
Growing up we had a block heater on our large diesel farm truck and on diesel tractors, I have never in my life used a block heater on a non-diesel vehicle having spent the first >25 years living in climates which regularly hit -30C.
This is why garages (including heated garages) are super common in Minnesota. It’s not just an extravagance. And, conveniently, garages tend to have outlets in them, very often better than just 120V 15A, too!
It’s dissmissible if the comparable solution (internal combustion engines) already have to use the exact same intervention (engine block heater). I grew up in Minnesota (and visit regularly). If anything it affects me MORE than most people, and I’ve been stranded with a non-starting internal combustion engine car in the cold winter many times which is how I know the existing internal combustion engines already don’t do well. It is not uncommon for parking lots (especially in the Northern parts) to be equipped with outlets for this precise reason (and people often leave their engines running while they go into the store on particularly cold nights so they won’t be stranded). Makes electrification there actually easier in some ways as there’s already widespread infrastructure for trickle charging.
Concerns which are not that well-informed are, indeed, dismissible.
If you drive an ICE car bought in say California to where it gets to -20c and park it outside it won’t start either since most likely the dealership didn’t include a block heater in your package.
not true, i don't see anyone on my street plugging in and we get -30 or lower some days, though probably not good for the engine but yes they will start no problem.
No they do not. They need winterized diesel fuel (kerosene added), but that's it. -30C was a "nothing special" for BMW N47 engine to start. -37C is a pour point of 0w40 engine oil, but higher temps are fine in terms of cold engine startups
As someone who lives in California, and likes snow sports, it looks like I could run into -20C conditions in the Sierras, and certainly the Rockies (although driving that far with an electric car would probably be too annoying to attempt).
It’s probably not a concern for the average Bay Area family.
I use a rough metric of 0°F as the lowest low to generally worry about (Fahrenheit is nice that the 0-100°F range is pretty close to the typical ambient temperature range in temperate zones). Despite living around the 5b/6a zone boundary (that's -10°F on the map), I have yet to see my car's temperature gauge report 0°F or below, so the conditions are a bit lower than I'd gauge as "lowest typical low."
But that said, zones 6a/6b are definitely in the region of "yeah, I'd worry about 0°F overnight", and people in 7a will definitely worry about temperatures around 10°F if they're going to start their car. 6a-7a covers most of the population corridor in the NE US, about ⅓ the US population. Additionally, much of the Midwest is in the 0°F-is-possible territory, from St. Louis and Chicago straight through to Detroit and Pittsburgh.
The general point is that starting in -20°C isn't some "well, sucks to live in Canada/Minnesota/North Dakota" concern, but rather "gee, a significant chunk of the US population has to do this on an annual basis."
What are you talking about? It gets under -20C routinely each winter for a couple nights every year through the whole of the northeast; upstate New York, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Ontario, Quebec.
Toronto is the 3rd/4th most populous city in North America (depending on how you count it). Almost every winter there's a -25C overnight. Not for days on end like where I grew up in Alberta, and not every year, but it definitely happens. There's 7 million people in the Greater Toronto / Hamilton corridor alone. 2 million people in the Montreal area. Almost a million in Quebec City, 1.4 millionish people in the Ottawa/Gatineau area. Not to mention Detroit, Windsor, Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, Burlington, etc. etc. etc. Oh, and I'm seeing a mean minimum of -19C in Chicago for January, too, so throw in a few more million people there because that's close enough.
"Not a lot indeed." Only maybe a couple dozen million people.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I hear the US has a "midwest", too. I hear there's people there, too.
