I (still) don’t own an EV for various reasons, but I’m still interested. One question that keeps popping up in my mind is this one:
Where I live way up north, many people drive EVs - mostly Teslas apparently. A solid third of the parking lot at work is filled with EVs. The one thing that always strikes me when I leave work around the same time as everybody else is the sheer amount of noise of all those Teslas warming up their batteries before their owners come out to drive home make in the winter: it’s like dozens of heating cannons running at the same time.
Each time, I wonder how much juice is used just to prime the battery before use vs. actual miles traveled.
If you leave in a cold country, have you worked out how much energy you burn simply keeping the battery alive in the winter? Is your EV still more energy efficient than an ICE in the winter for your particular use pattern?
There are plenty of people who remote start ICE vehicles as well.
I don’t know if it’s really warming the battery, but to warm the interior. By the time I get to my car, the cabin, seat, steering wheel are all at a comfortable temperature. The battery works regardless.
Preheating the cabin of an EV must be more efficient than using remote start on an ICE vehicle to pre-heat the cabin.
However for my case, I’ve never used remote start on an ICE vehicle, plus “fuel” for an EV feels so much cheaper and more plentiful and the control is better and I’m not generating air pollution, so I do. It’s probably changing my habits to be more wasteful in return for more comfort
Edit: when my battery is cold, the only difference I see is lack of regen: I have to use my brakes. While I know my battery will also charge slower and have lower capacity, that hasn’t impacted me yet