The EV
Chronicles

This is a long one, so buckle up fellow EV nerds. If you own an EV, you have most likely been asked this question, probably many, many times: "How much Range does your EV lose in the winter?" So, if you are just curious or your yourself are considering buying an EV in the future, you have come to the right place! I hope to enlighten you with this blog to expand your basic understanding of thermodynamics and how to apply that knowledge to understand how EVs work in winter we

I have a 2025 Polestar 3 and have been running tons of winter tests the past two months. I just wanted to write this short rant. The Polestar's navigation calculations for arrival SOC have generally been pretty good, often pessimistic, arriving with a couple percent more than the estimated at departure. But this winter, I have experienced a handful of instances where the estimates weren't just a little optimistic, they were downright horrible, double digit SOC horrible. I

I just returned from a weekend roadtrip from my home in SE PA to Warsaw, Indiana and back.  This is the first time I have road-tripped using mostly Non-Tesla chargers. Other than the cost/kWh being 25-50% more than the Tesla chargers (particularly with a monthly subscription), all of the chargers we stopped at were great. I think we ran into only 2 Chargers that weren't working and I had one session on my final leg home where I seemed to be having a communications issue bet

The reason that I am writing this post is that I discovered over the past week, that my Polestar 3 doesn't ALWAYS pull power via the EVSE for preconditioning when plugged in. I always assumed that all EVs, in order to minimize unnecessary charging cycles of the battery, would pull power from the EVSE when plugged in no matter what. Let's get into the details of how I discovered that this is actually NOT how a Polestar 3 is programmed. I know, before continuing, some of you

Almost two years ago, I wrote a blog about the Truth and Lies about EVs and Cold Weather ( https://marcepochet.wixsite.com/the-ev-chronicles/post/tesla-chronicles-46-truth-and-lies-about-evs-and-cold-weather ).  Two years later, and sadly, not much has changed.  In my opinion, that was one of my best, most details blogs about driving an EV in the winter, so I suggest reading it (again if you read it the first time) if you want to know more about all the factors that go into r

This analysis of the Polestar 3 SW is based on SW Version 1.4.12 as of late November 2025. I started to write this blog MONTHS ago and could just never get it finished. I almost just decided to delete it completely. Honestly, since I started to write this, there have been a few YouTube videos on this topic that probably do a much better job at giving you an overview of the Polestar 3 SW than I can do here in text form. So maybe the most useful aspect of this post is that

For those of us that travel frequently in our electric vehicles (EVs), you might be able to relate to the following statement: Traveling in an EV (in 2025) from point to point is pretty easy, but living with an EV once you get there can be quite challenging. For many EV owners, when at home, living with an EV is amazing, because many of us have access to the L2 charger we have installed in our homes. But living with an EV at just about any other location is so dependent on t

We just returned from our 4th trip to Florida (to Walt Disney World) via driving one of our EVs. Our first two trips were in our 2021 Model Y and the last two trips in our 2025 Polestar 3. This post is mostly going to be about comparing the Polestar 3 with the Cargo Box to our previous trips, but I will interject a few comments about the overall trip for this 4th trip to Florida. The major difference on this trip was that had 4 adults in the car, with a week's worth of stuf

Right after getting back from Florida, and while the Polestar 3 was in the shop for service on the AC charger and the HVAC vent controllers (that all went very well by the way), I decided to order the Thule Roof rails with the feet and fit kit for the Polestar 3. I currently have no way to mount my bike(s) on the Polestar and I have some old roof rail bike racks as well. I have been using a hitch mounted rear bike rack system for years, but the Polestar 3 as I ordered it, d

Last weekend, we finished our epic trip to Walt Disney World where we spent a week with various members of our family. We had 9 of us in...