[rootusrootus]

And yet, some of the biggest proponents of EVs live in frigid areas of Canada and the US. As it turns out, range loss is not really a huge deal for a lot of people, but being able to get in your car and drive without worrying about whether it will start at all is nice. No plugging in a block heater, no worry about fuel gelling, no warm up time. And you can pre-condition the interior so it is warm when you get in. With a modern EV you could lose 50% range and still have plenty for your daily commute. Even a fairly long commute.

[gambiting]

Norway regularly sees -30C in winter and EVs account for like 99% of sales there, it made the news that in January only 7 ICE cars were sold in the entire country.

[fooqux]

It's also a different country with a different culture, etc. Norwegians drive roughly 50% less than people in the US. There's probably a bunch of contributing factors, but the point is that reduced range is less of a problem if you drive less.

I'll be the first to say we need less range anxiety, and Norway is awesome. But we need to be careful comparing the US to Norway here.

[tzs]

Around 90% of Norway's population lives in southern or coastal areas that usually don't get anywhere near that cold.

[gambiting]

And the other 10% still buys EVs apparently.

[tzs]

Yes, they buy some, with roughly the same percentage of new car sales being EV. However, those regions have a significantly higher percentage of households with multiple cars, and they have overall a significantly higher fraction of ICE cars in service than do the warmer areas.

This means you can't really make deductions about EV performance in very cold weather in those very cold regions without getting data on what the EVs are being used for. It could be most of them are in households where they have ICE cars to handle things where they need long range or when they need to tow or haul things, and the EVs are just used for things where loss of range and capacity doesn't matter much.

[throwaway894345]

Probably has a lot to do with the incentives—tax rebates for EVs, taxes for ICE cars, cost of fuel, availability of fast chargers, etc. I’m glad Norway is pushing hard for greater adoption (and the US should too), but these things don’t make for a meaningful comparison.

[gambiting]

Well no, and I agree with you - but I think it's a fair rebutal to someone saying that EV's can't work somewhere where it's really cold, like the only reason people in the northern united states or canada don't buy EVs is purely because of the cold - that's a factor, sure, but I think there's a lot of other reasons other than cold.

[throwaway894345]

I’m the person to whom this rebuttal was originally made, and I did not say that EVs can’t work in the cold (I own one and I live in a northern state—they work, but not flawlessly).

I was only disagreeing with another commenter who claimed the status quo was fine. There’s a pretty big gap between “not fine” and “not workable”.

[kortilla]

The taxes make it financially ruinous to make any other decision there

[throwaway894345]

I own an EV and I’m a proponent of them. It’s still painful to have to deal with the winter range loss when driving outside my normal daily range.