Regardless of many misconceptions, driving an electrical automobile in winter circumstances will be simple and simply as pleasing as driving a gas-powered automotive. To show this, I went to the frozen north of Sweden the place I spent days driving Volvo’s EVs on frozen lakes and down snow-covered roads.
The fact is that each one vehicles, it doesn’t matter what powers them, wrestle extra in chilly circumstances. Whereas EV batteries will be much less environment friendly at decrease temperatures, fashionable EV tech goes an extended technique to making up for it.Â
Most fashionable EVs help you heat up your automotive and its batteries whereas it is nonetheless plugged in (a course of known as “preconditioning”), which saves your entire accessible vary on your journey. That is along with extra environment friendly warmth pumps and fashionable tech similar to regenerative braking (discovered on most EVs today), which might put power again into the batteries while you decelerate.
Then there’s the truth that the typical vary of EVs has greater than tripled previously 10 years, whereas the variety of publicly accessible cost factors has additionally elevated. Because of this, long-distance electrical driving in any circumstances is less complicated right this moment than it ever has been.Â
You’ll be able to learn my full expertise of winter EV testing right here, and scroll via this gallery to see what I received as much as.Â
