In cold weather, gas-powered cars outperform electric vehicles, whose driving range can plunge 20 to 50 percent because their batteries slow down as the temperature drops.
That’s the inconvenient truth one Kansas electric truck owner discovered while driving around to run errands.
Automotive YouTuber Tyler Hoover posted a video on Monday in which he revealed that he sold his 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning truck after owning it for six months because its “winter battery performance was a disaster.”
The car aficionado owned one-half of a Ford Lightning with a friend, who had alerted him to the range problems caused by cold weather.
Hoover researched online and was shocked to discover low temperatures can reduce an EV’s range by as much as 50 percent.
Range is the distance an electric car can travel on a single charge.
Hoover started his video at home, with his Ford Lightning display indicating it had been charged to 149 miles of range.
After dropping his daughter off at her school 2 miles from home, he was stunned to learn that his truck’s range had plunged.
“That school run was only 2 miles,” he said. “I think we started with 149. We’re at 143.
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“So 7 miles of range to go 2 miles, unloaded. There’s no trailer back there. It’s just cold outside.”
After driving 10 miles, Hoover noted that his truck had used 21 miles of range.
“Wow! That’s not quite as bad as towing a light load, but that’s still really, really bad,” he said.
As he drove, Hoover noticed that his EV’s range continued to plummet amid the cold and heavy winds.
At one point, he said, his truck had used 40 miles of range to travel just 16 miles.
Essentially, both cold weather and wind resistance can drastically reduce the driving range of an electric car.
If you live in a part of the country where the winters are cold and windy, you’d constantly have to recharge your EV just to keep it from dying on you.
As Hoover concluded his errands and arrived back at his neighborhood, he said he finished his trip with 37 miles of range left.
“We started with 149 and we went 64 miles,” he said. “So that’s 120 miles of range in 60 or so miles — towing nothing. It’s just cold outside.”
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After discussing the problem further, Hoover said, “Rob, the other half of ownership on this, he drives around all day for work. He’s a liquor rep, stops in dozens of liquor stores over the course of a week. So he is barely keeping up when it comes to charging at home and the range of this truck in winter, and it is stressing him out. So he’s not sure if he wants to keep this thing anymore.
“And at some point, Ford is probably going to fix this and extend the range of these trucks dramatically, which will probably make these plummet in value, kind of like the early Teslas or a lot of other early cars where they fix the bugs.
“So we’re thinking it may be time to dump this thing.”
And dump it they did.
In a prior YouTube video, Hoover noted that his Ford Lightning failed to perform a truck’s most basic function, which is towing over long distances.
“This truck can’t do normal truck things,” he said in his Sept. 23 video.
“You would be stopping every hour to recharge, which would take about 45 minutes a pop. And that is absolutely not practical.”
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Even electric car fans concede that range problems are a major issue in cold weather.
Kathleen Connors, who has driven electric cars for more than a decade, told WBZ-TV in Boston that range is the No. 1 problem EV owners face.
“When you’re driving a gas-powered vehicle, you don’t have to worry about losing range because it’s like 20 below zero,” Connors said.
However, electric vehicles are extremely vulnerable to temperature drops. “The colder it is, the more range you are going to lose,” she said.
Ford admits its EVs “experience energy decreases in cold temperatures due to battery cell chemistry.”
“Temperatures below 40°F cause the electrolyte fluid to become sluggish, limiting how much power is available to discharge and how quickly the vehicle’s battery can charge,” it said.
But it’s not just Ford EVs that lose power in cold weather; all electric vehicles do.
According to a 2019 AAA report, an EV’s driving range can drop about 41 percent when it’s 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside if the car’s cabin heat is running.
To preserve battery power, Ford advises Lightning owners to park in a garage and to keep the truck plugged in when it’s parked. This is because an EV’s battery drains even when the vehicle is not running.
This is an impractical suggestion for owners who live in big cities, where many people don’t have access to private garages unless they pay an exorbitant monthly fee to house their car.
Ford also advises them to keep the heat off in their Lightning even when it’s freezing outside and to drive slowly to preserve the pickup’s battery.
All this underscores that the United States is not ready to transform itself into an EV-dominated country, contrary to the frivolous pipelines of left-wing climate alarmists such as President Joe Biden.
EVs are not only very expensive, but they’re also energy-inefficient and high-maintenance.
One day, EVs may dominate the automobile landscape after some serious deficiencies are addressed. But now is not that time.
