Baby it’s cold outside

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ArthurL

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 12, 2017
Messages
104
Good article on cold weather effect on Bolt battery range. +5 F here and full charge gives me 238 km range on mid marker. I don’t do long distance driving in winter so no issue.

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Here’s the thing-

The moment you start driving, the batteries start warming up. Using them, warms them by nature.

Sure there’s more friction in cold, dense air, blah blah blah........ but if there is snow or ice, or chances of it on the road, you should be driving slower by enough to more than make up for this.

#1 thing to lower your range is use of cabin heat.
Keeping that to a minumim will keep your driving range respectfully high.
 
I drive a B250e, (with 28 kWh battery) and it's my second winter season with the car.

It was -19F last Friday. Starting from my heated garage, and a full charge, I did a round trip to see a client. 22 miles each way / 44 miles total. Car sat for 3 hours outside (unplugged) before making the return trip. Pulling into my garage, the car indicated 20% charge remaining. I had the seat heater on the entire time, but was making conservative use of the heater; had it set at 72F but had it on ~ 50% of the time, mostly to keep the windows clear. It was a freeway drive at between 55-60 mph. Based on those conditions, I'm pegging total range at about 53 miles. As a comparison, at anything above 60F, I normally have over 100 miles available.

As a general rule of thumb, in extreme cold conditions, expect up to a 50% drop in range. Yeah, you can do pre-conditioning and other gimmies to mitigate the range loss it a little, but Siberia always takes it's toll.
 
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