Winter, blizzard, frost, traffic jam. Will people in electrics freeze? [WE BELIEVE]

This theme comes back like a boomerang, so we decided to make it a separate material. During winter traffic jams on the motorway, will people in electric cars freeze because they run out of energy for heating? During this time, will the owners of internal combustion vehicles sit and calmly wait for the arrival of services?

A snowstorm and a big traffic jam on the highway - can an electric car handle it?

Table of contents

• A snowstorm and a big traffic jam on the highway - can an electric car handle it?
  • EV is just as good, and MUCH better when driving slowly

We have an electric car, we drive it along the Warsaw-Poznan highway. We calculated the energy to get to Poznań with a small margin. When we are 100 km from our destination, 20-25 kWh of energy remains in the battery.

> Real winter range of Hyundai Kona Electric: 330 kilometers [Bjorn Nyland's TEST]

Then there is a sudden blizzard. Several cars collide, others get stuck in a giant traffic jam. Frost may not crackle, but it is cold - the temperature is clearly negative and the wind enhances the feeling of cold. Will the owner of an electrician in the car freeze while waiting for service?

We assume that the cabin is warm because we warmed it up while driving. So we just need to keep the temperature inside. We also need to provide electricity to the car electronics. How much power is needed for this? Real Reading From Hyundai Kona Electric:

Power consumption during the Hyundai Kona Electric winter test (sub-zero temperatures). 94 percent need drive, heating only 4 percent, electronics 2 percent. (C) Nextmove

The total power consumption with the vehicle in the above state is 1,1 kW.

> How much energy does heating an electric vehicle consume in winter? [Hyundai Kona Electric]

These readings fit into the logic: if the oven requires up to 2,5 kW for heating, and about 1-2 kW for a classic electric heater, then about 1 kW should be enough to maintain the temperature in the cabin of a small car.

So, if we have 25 kWh of energy in the battery, heating the cab and maintaining the electronics will work for almost 23 hours. If 20 kWh – at 18,2 hours. Loss of coverage as a result of heating will be -6 km / h.

However, suppose we want to maintain a higher temperature and the car heats up the battery additionally. Even when we get to power consumption 2 kW, the energy stored in the battery is enough for us 10-12,5 hours parking.

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For comparison: an internal combustion car consumes 0,6-0,9 liters of fuel per hour when parked. With the heaters running, the flow rate can jump to 1-1,2 liters. Let's take a value of 1 liter for ease of calculation. If an internal combustion car consumes 6,5 l / 100 km during normal driving in cold weather, then range loss will be -15 km / h.

In such situation every liter of fuel in the tank is an additional hour of downtime... If the driver has 20 liters of fuel left, the car will be parked for 20 hours, etc.

EV is just as good, and MUCH better when driving slowly

Based on the above calculations, it is easy to see that In a traffic jam, an electric car performs as well or better than an internal combustion car.if the driver is sane (because the unreasonable also runs out of fuel on the route ...). But the electrician has another significant advantage: when driving slowly, like in a traffic jam, it consumes little energy.

This is a few kilowatt-hours per 100 km instead of a dozen, more or more than twenty. Besides some energy is recovered during braking.

Meanwhile, in an internal combustion vehicle whose driver passes through a traffic jam by shifting gears between one and two, the fuel consumption will be the same or higher than normal driving. It can be 6,5 liters, maybe 8, 10 or more - a lot depends on the size of the engine and the cover.

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Information from the editors of www.elektrowoz.pl: it does not seem that there will be such frosts and snowstorms in Poland. However, the question comes back to us again and again - many probably think that the electrician will stop and freeze completely - so we decided to separate it from the larger study and supplement it with additional conditions.

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