| > So you’re 3 miles from a supercharger with 15% battery left and your car is a frozen brick in under an hour. You can’t deliver more fuel to it and your efficient route plan is a liability and there’s a queue of bricked EVs waiting for flatbed recovery. There are a few things to consider. First up, if you want to optimize for energy efficiency then the best option in an EV is to carry a blanket and rely on the seat heaters as much as possible. Consider this scenario with a long range model 3. 80kwh, 15% means you have 12kWh available (Let's drop that to 8 due to cold weather). The seat heater consumes 500W at low power. That gives you 16/people hours of heat. But let's say you just run the HVAC straight. You've still got 1 hour of heat (assuming it's using the 6kw restive heater. More if you are using the heat pump). In any event, the approach to "I'm in an EV and stuck in traffic" is exactly the same as if you were in an ICE with low fuel. Shut things off. Wait until you are freezing, turn it on again. Ration your fuel/energy until you are unstuck. To get to your charging destination in this scenario, you need roughly .9kwh of energy (300wh / mile, which is on the high end) or about 2% of your battery. |
That said, these vehicles are clearly not made for a long haul cold weather existence. Can they be made to work for occasional use with some planning and prayer? Sure. But these stories and the counter-claims leave no doubt that people who park cars in -30F and do 300 mile one-way trips through mountain passes and deserted highways should stick to ICE vehicles. If you're doing some variant of this with regularity (say 0F and occasional 150mile trips), you should probably do the same for safety reasons, even though EV will probably be fine for all but the rarest disaster.
Regardless of ICE or EV, people doing this kind of driving are well-advised to prepare for having a non-functional vehicle. It's always best to stay with the vehicle if it's habitable and if rescue is what you can count on, but having cold-weather gear, food, shelter, means to create/use external heat sources, and ability to "hike out" are some basic rules of the cold road that even 'tourists' should abide by. If you're doing remote winter driving, basically also pack for winter backpacking. This in addition to road flares, small shovel, tow strap, etc. to support the vehicle. It's less necessary now than it was in, say, the eighties when vehicles were far less reliable, but it's still practical advice: be prepared.