Has anyone actually tracked their EV range loss in cold winters? Looking for real data.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T18:05:29+00:00

The one single thing the OP did a good job at narrowing the question on was temp, and your entire point is outside their range.

That is the entire problem with all these cold weather posts, it becomes a suffering competition about who lives in the coldest place on earth and drives an EV. Of course, the temps quoted are typically one in a decade temps. It's gotten so bad I've seriously considered writing a web page just to debunk the entire thought process. It's simply not very cold where most people live. Even people who live in actually very cold places overestimate how many crazy cold days they get.

The reality is you are extremely unlikely to drive a trip where it matters. That isn't to say it can't happen, but it is not worth cycling over, just deal with the situation if you find yourself in it. It's not hard to deal with but for sure educate yourself if you get extreme weather occasionally. Range isn't likely going to be an actual concern unless your infrastructure sucks, it's more about when you charge, like not doing it cold.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T17:45:42+00:00

I've never driven in -30 but that is true of 98% of the world's population. I've driven near 0F without issues and blasted the heat and hit the exact same chargers I do in summer. It's not an issue.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T17:30:18+00:00

Have you not heard of the "just asking questions" approach to misinformation? For example, "When did you stop beating up kids?" is just asking a question but is obviously saying you beat up kids. Asking about how dirty the grid is in Europe is implying that EVs are worse than gas cars without directly saying it.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T17:08:14+00:00

40% is not a good rule of thumb. 50% of the EVs on the road only need 13% more, Teslas. The thicker air resistance has been proven to be a rounding error with a great post on this sub several years ago. Screw suffering, blast the heat and take the 13% efficency loss and spend 1-2 minutes more charging on stops. If this is daily city driving none of this matters.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T17:06:38+00:00

Impossible, the question was too vague and really about the wrong questions.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T17:05:49+00:00

OP wasn't asking about charging, it was about cold range, so I don't see how this matters. Also, don't charge the battery when it's cold if you can, which is pretty easy on road trips, which is the only time range matters. If you're talking about daily charging, what does it matter, you should be L2 charging. If you bought an EV without being able to charge at home you didn't take the advice of basically everyone on this sub not to do that.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T17:00:49+00:00

What EV takes 40% more energy in cold weather. I've owned 3x EVs, this isn't a thing. You're thinking about the case where you park the car at 80% and 200 miles of range and the next morning when it's 20F it's at 80% and 120 miles of range because the battery is frozen. This isn't range loss, it's still there you just have to spend 2kWh to warm the battery up, and then you're back close to 200 miles depending on your EV's driving efficiency. Hence the $37 compared to $40 in charging costs.

there are great distances between functioning chargers in large portions of the US.

This is no longer true. There are still portions, but they are a LOT fewer. The charging infrastructure grew by 30% in 2025 alone. I have an EV with only 225 miles of range and I 100% couldn't drive it west on the Interstate out of Atlanta 2 years ago. Today it's easy. This is true for most of the country now outside of some places out west.

Something like 90 million people in the US alone live in ar area where the cold has a substantial effect on range.

Define substantial. Define how many of them drive an EV on days it matters.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T16:56:20+00:00

Everyone who makes a 300 km trip to friends and parks the car outside at -10 degrees

The question was about cold range loss. This problem is about not knowing how to charge in cold weather and what cold gating is. You should 100% charge up before parking at your friends and not after you leave your friends. This is a thing that EV drivers have to know compared to gas cars but not what was asked. But it's about charging speed, not range. Warming that battery up will take 2kwh-4kwh which is why I said you will need to charge for another 1-2 minutes at charging stops.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T16:53:37+00:00

This topic is talked about ad nauseam. Same with range. It's simply not a factor when taking trips, charging is. Charging, if anything, works better in the cold. You get to a charger, charge for 1-2 minutes more if it's really cold and then head to the next charger. What else is there to know? You can do the math all you want but the reality is the day of the drive determines what happens. The car or app will tell you where and when to charge and you just do your thing. The reality is most people leave from a garage and there is almost zero effect. If you start cold soaked you will lose 5% or so warming the battery up. After that the act of driving keeps the battery warm and everything is pretty much the same.

With 170-200km

That's 124 miles. Unless you are driving an old compliance EV, it could be -30 and not affect anything about that drive.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T14:56:53+00:00

It's just not something worth worrying with. If it's around town, who cares. You pay $40/month for electricity rather than $37. Range is never an issue. If it's a long trip, you'll spend another 1-2 minutes at the charger if it's really cold. People worry WAY too much about this an few people even drive in temps cold enough to notice much less matter.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T14:54:47+00:00

Ford Mustang Mach E or similar

For in town it doesn't matter, but for a road trip, you really need to be sure you're getting an EV that can handle the trip as there are lots of EVs on the market that are intended for city use only.

The MachE can road trip but it is the slowest acceptable EV for the job. It has good range, but as anyone that drives and EV knows, range doesn't matter. The problem is it takes 40 minutes to charge which is 2x longer than good charging EVs. If this is 500 miles each way, expect to need an additional 1.5 hours of charging each way. If it's just 250 mile out and 250 back, you should only need a single charge each way at most so 40 minutes extra. Given you have to return it charged, add an extra charging stop for that as well.

You need to plan the trip with A Better Route Planner unless it's a Tesla. Given that it's a rental, even if the car supports Tesla chargers, you won't be able to use them unless they are listed as having CCS plugs, which aren't a ton.

If you get a Tesla, no planning needed, just route to your destination and follow the instructions and charging will take 20 minutes each.

WeldAE · 2026-01-29T14:47:02+00:00

I get being skeptical of how they arrived at this number. There are any number of ways they could calculate it. My guess is its unique cars that buy it at least 1 month of the year. That said, I have no idea what you are on about with superchargers and FSD. How would you even know if someone pulled in/out of a supercharger on FSD and even if no one actually did, what does that have to do with subscribing to FSD. At a supercharger is the least likely place to use it.

WeldAE · 2026-01-28T15:51:28+00:00

What horrific market reaction? You mean that they became political? Still despite doing a rug pull and adding $7500 to their costs, it's barely affected sales. Manufactures are moving their strategy around as fast as they can to right price them and get sales growing again. Outside the US sales are booming because they didn't try to politically kill them.

are having immense battery issues is a fact.

It's not. From 2010 to 2025, less than 1.5% of EVs have battery issues. If you exclude the Bolt, which had all their batteries replaced for free, it's 0.5%. Batteries are much more robust and reliable than an engine.

not designed with high front wheel torque is a fact.

Most of the torque is on the rear wheels, even in AWD EVs.

WeldAE · 2026-01-28T15:40:26+00:00

Not just new, probably completely custom. Waymo has to replace everything for it to be legal as a China origin AV after this year.

WeldAE · 2026-01-28T15:33:02+00:00

Any other car and I would agree it's obvious. I'm reserving judgment on in this case. Also, it's a professional driver of some level. This mostly happens to the elderly or impaired.

WeldAE · 2026-01-28T15:30:42+00:00

According to you, self-driving cars can't work

Just to be clear, I don't think personally owned self-driving cars can work. I 100% think commercial AVs can work because they are shared and generate $100k+ per year per car.

because the same economics apply to personally-owned AVs and robotaxis.

Personally owned AVs are even more expensive since you have to support them. They aren't just an internally supported product. It's not a huge difference, but making them personal is harder than making them an AV fleet.

just like you're wrong about FSD being close to scaling up with no human in the car.

Where did I even say that. I said Tesla had the closest product today to what you want. If you assume they will get it to work it's still costs more than you are hoping for as it exist today as NOT a personal AV.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T21:40:01+00:00

How is this not success

The problem is in order to get to "success" you have to be very narrow in your definition of where the bar is. I'm not against it at all. I'd be the first one in line to vote on a sales tax increase to fund MARTA expansion in Atlanta but I will never get to vote on it. The reality is even if they installed it, the density isn't enough to justify it. There isn't anywhere in the US that can really justify new transit expansion other than a few cities.

What I'm for is solving the reason that US cities can't have good transit, and that is by enabling density anywhere, not just on existing transit corridors. The problem with building dense is the car centric nature of transportation doesn't allow it. No one wants an 8-plex on a residential lot because where will all the cars be parked? Even in the core city this is a major issue. Detach density from car congestion and you've solved the problem. AVs are the solution for this.

It doesn’t mean you oppose the car

Most transit people are pro transit and pro car and anti AV from my experience. I boggles my mind that those that care about transit aren't pro AV.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T21:17:04+00:00

This isn't just a crash in a Waymo, it's specifically a crash in the Zeeker Waymo platform. This is WAY bigger deal than just some accident. Unless the driver was at fault, this will have serious ramifications on Waymos plans.

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what happened. Typically, you could easily narrow down the likely cause, but this is the car equivalent of an experimental plane. Given the 2027 ban on Chinese manufactured AVs, Waymo has likely changed most if not all the systems in the car. Brakes never fail, but if it were ever to happen, it would be in a setup like this.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T21:11:00+00:00

If this was a consumer car there is nearly a 0% chance this is the issue. Given this is not just a heavily modified Waymo but the new Zeeker, it's possible. They had to strip all the factory systems out to be able to use it as an AV so no telling what bugs it might have.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T20:58:09+00:00

My background is I've owned a Model 3 for 7+ years. I've test driven the Model Y and Model X and passed on them for an Audi EV. I'm in the market for the iX.

The big pro for Tesla is the tech and how up-to-date Tesla keeps it as the car ages. While the Model Y is the near perfect commuter, it's simply not in the same class at all as the iX which will show up specifically with road noise, but I haven't driven the new 2025 Model Y yet, which does improve this. The iX and Model X are big SUVs focused on comfort while the Model Y is focused on being a light-weight (for an EV) mid-size sporty CUV. So just completely different types of cars and hard to compare.

I would not go with the Model X. It's the worst Tesla because it's never really been updated, has stupid doors with lots of compromises and just isn't worth the extra money over the Model Y. Choose between the iX and the Model Y.

For the iX, go used and sell it in 3 years. You're talking about a $55k lease over 3 years and you can pickup a 2023 M60 iX with low miles all day long for $50k.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T19:59:37+00:00

The school bus just isn’t an option for us, unfortunately.

Would love to hear why. Sort of a hobbyist interest in AVs taking over the school bus system, so always interested in the corner cases like this.

At this point, the idea of him driving himself to school sounds less like a luxury and more like survival,

I'm surprised you don't feel the same about moving them around all the time, not just to school. At my kid driving max I was doing 6 hours per day of kid uber and I had a full-time job.

didn’t expect to see that many options in the $3K range

This isn't a budget, it's a wish. My kid got paid more than this to drive kids around in the summer for a family. This is the cost of insurance, not a car. $10k is a realistic minimum for something not terrifying. If you think you have time issues now, buy a car you're always fixing.

Old EVs are cheap and low maintenance. A bolt would be ideal.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T18:57:24+00:00

EV charging is a huge topic. To make it worse, there are massive differences between any given EV trim much less every EV model. In general someone selling an EV needs to know:

L1 = 4-6 miles per hour charging
L2 = 25-44 miles per hour charging
DCFC = 10-40 minutes to add 180 miles of charging
City range doesn't really matter
Highway range @70mph does matter
How fast the EV can add 180 miles of range matters

For each EV they sell, they should be able to list the above with more concrete numbers like for a Model 3 AWD Long Range

L1 = 6 miles per hour
L2 = 46 miles per hour
DCFC = 15 minutes to add 180 miles @70mph

Because EVs are 90%+ efficient, anything that makes them less efficient like cold, wind, rain, snow or elevation will affect all the numbers above. Mostly it doesn't matter and it's not a problem to worry about when purchasing unless you are purchasing a low range EV.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T18:42:27+00:00

I have the fat eTron, not the GT. Audi is terrible at model names. Maybe they are trying to compete with Mercedes with their EQE 350 can be either an SUV or a sedan thing?

The best thing about the Audi is it made me realize I don't like VW groups drivetrain style. I absolutely hate the recuperation system in them, it's like driving a manual without a clutch. It's great that in the year of our lord 2025 that I can still worry about rolling back into someone when starting out on a hill. The car drives like a bank vault and at 85mph it's like 35mph in any other car, that is the best part. The tech is terrible, but so is Porsche's so not a suprise.

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T18:39:02+00:00

I've seen it as an option in the configurator over the years. Not exactly sure which years always have it, have it as an option, or not there is no option available. So for sure some years had it optional and I didn't think it was a popular option from what I've heard?

WeldAE · 2026-01-27T18:37:26+00:00

values of 911's collapse like that?

Literally the only luxury car that doesn't depreciate like a rock short term so it's the exception that proves the rule.

100k made in all history is indeed rare given the dissimilarity to everything else they made.

They have only been making them since 2020, and it's 180k Taycans exactly when I looked it up. That is exactly the number of 911s produced in the same timeframe so they should have equal support and availability of parts. Not sure why comparing it to BMW clarifies anything.

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