If you are not sure what I am referring to here, last week, as much of the nation was attacked by the Polar Vertex like Godzilla rips through Tokyo, sending temperatures across the Upper Midwest well below 0 F. I know this might come to a shock to the general public, but just about everything that is mechanical or electrical (or both), will have higher rates of failures and issues. Motors, pumps, engines, anything that relies on liquids moving for heating or cooling, batteries, etc. This basically means that just about every system in a gas or electric car is potentially vulnerable in extreme cold.
The actual data from recent artic events around the world actually indicates that ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles have double the probability of failing in some manner than an electric (AKA BEV - battery electric vehicle), but that hasn't stopped the media from producing sensationalized news stories about BEVs having issues in this cold weather, that are honestly full of half truths or flat out lies about electric vehicles.
So last week, the media of course latched onto some issues with Tesla's and Tesla Charging in the city of Chicago. Pardon the pun, but my take on the situation is that many flaws and issues with "the system" were exposed by "The Perfect Storm" of circumstances that individually may have been problematic for a few EV owners, but when combined altogether, many EV drivers, most of them Tesla owners "got stranded" at Supercharger. And, to some extent, I am going to throw some of the EV owners themselves under the bus for being part of the problem by not fully understanding how to properly operate their vehicles in extremely cold weather.
I am going to admit that most of the information that I have on this matter is from watching several YouTube videos and reading some articles on the matter. This is mostly because I have survived through three winters with ZERO issues in cold weather. I have driven to/from the FLX in temps between 0-10F and on several occasions have easily traveled long distances in temps from 10-25F.
One of my favorite YouTubers, Kyle Conners, runs the "Out of Spec" family of YT channels that frankly, are amazing. His team has done some amazing videos and has been instrumental in pushing higher reliability for DCFC providers over the past year. He actually flew to Chicago to find out what the heck was going on last week. That video can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K64HQ5ZPfdQ&t=1029s As he and his team like to say, it is "nerd level 9000" detail, but it is a great watch if you have 35 minutes.
Kyle and his team also did a series of tests almost exactly one year ago when Colorado was hit with a similar polar plunge and several ABB chargers across CO stopped working. In this situation, if I recall, some of the cooling fluid in the cables actually froze at some Electrify America stations which were designed and built by ABB. Another example of the great work his team has done can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c&t=353s
And one more, the Transport Evolved Team (TEN) generated this video as well this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nymbbmhUix0
I don't have the time nor the energy to be a YouTuber, so I write. Which is ironic, because all through school, I hated everything about "English Class".
If you don't have the time to watch any of these videos on this matter, here is a brief summary (OK, as I am proof reading my work, this is not brief, "Sorry, not sorry" as we say in my family) of what I can tell contributed to the failure of the system in this extreme cold:
In my opinion, this is a Congestion problem, not a COLD weather problem
There were no reports that I know of where the issues like those experienced in Chicago, occurred in any rural areas across the country, many of which has much lower temperatures than Chicago
Chargers in Large Cities are already BUSY
I know, this might be a shock, but EV owners in and around large cities are much less likely to have charging at home or work. This results in reliance of chargers in and around cities to not only be needed by people on road trips, but the locals rely heavily on these chargers.
This is a recipe for "disaster" if anything disrupts the or changes the utilization needs of these chargers. The cold weather provided that disruption
Why this year an not Past Winters?
Many large cities, like Chicago, now have a very large number of Ride share operators (Uber, Lyft, etc.), no surprise there.
Many ride share drivers rent their ride share vehicles from rental car companies. In 2023, Rental Car companies like Hertz, have been offering these ride share drivers a great monthly rate on renting EVs. Roughly $35/day (I cannot confirm, but have read at least one report this is roughly half the fee than a comparable ICE rental). These programs have really gained significant traction in 2023 and is contributing to EV charging congestion.
Many of these drivers, like others that live in and around these cities, also, do not have a home or apartment where they can charger their vehicles overnight, so they must rely completely on the public charging infrastructure.
So at this point, you can see how these incentives are making already busy chargers even busier
These EV owners are renting / driving the wrong EVs for the weather extremes
Tesla vehicles have great thermal management systems, but even these systems have limitations.
In extremely cold weather, Tesla vehicles generate heat for the battery in two ways.
I just learned about how important this is just is this week. One source of heat is from the Heat Pump and the second is from the electric motors, all of which are connected to each other with heating/cooling loops. If you send power to a motor but then don't let it turn, it will heat up (and it will fail if you let it continue to heat up or if you don't cool the motor). Well, Tesla vehicles run the heating / cooling loops through the motors, and in extremely cold weather, this gives them the ability to pull additional heat from the motors and use that heat for the batteries and the cabin.
Many of the rented Teslas are Single motor Model 3's
A single motor variants of an EV cannot generate as much heat has a dual motor variant. In fact at some point, the temperatures can get so extreme, that a single motor and the Heat pump are not able to keep the battery warm at all (I have no idea what this temperature is, but guessing like -20 to -40F or lower).
Ride share drivers are new to EVs
This should go without saying, but all vehicle owners should understand the steps they should take in the winter to keep their vehicles running in extremely cold weather. For an ICE vehicle for example, this might mean using different fluids (like low temp washer fluid) or using fuel additives to prevent fuel line freezing. It is the responsibility of the owners to know these things.
Likewise, owners of EVs have the same responsibility to understand similar things with respect to operating their vehicles in cold weather, as I reported in my last post, There are a few key things EV owners really MUST do to have a good user experience:
Charge at a DCFC immediately after driving - the battery is already warm so it is the best time to charge an EV
Put the Supercharger into the Navigation - this will force some EVs to preheat the battery to accept maximum charging rate. This can take upwards of an hour or more, so anyone who lives a short distance from a charger entering the charger as a destination won't do much good.
Do not park you vehicle for many hours when you are at low SOC, particularly when it is this cold. A cold battery stores less energy than a warm one.
Unfortunately, it appears that many of the impacted drivers, many of which appear to be new to EV driving, just haven't taken it upon themselves to understand the basics of EVs and how to properly operate them in the cold, and this is a big problem.
So, how should be assign "blame" here. Well, the congestion issue is definitely concerning for EV owners current and future who live in and around the larger cities in the country, and in my opinion, the top issue at play here. Chargers are simply going to get more busy until the infrastructure can catch up. Tesla and other charger providers are trying to keep up, but it takes upwards of 2+ years to get all the permits and approvals to get a charger designed and approved. These companies need to do better, but also, our government and utilities must share some of the blame here as they are putting up unnecessary roadblocks slowing down the installation of much needed charging stations.
The rental car companies must also accept some blame here. Their programs to incentivize ride share drivers to get into EVs is just making the demand and utilization of the charging infrastructure worse and worse every day. They also don't seem to be working with Tesla or other EV charging providers to help out with or speed up the installation of EV chargers in areas where they have high, monthly EV rental rates. As such, even on nice, mild, Spring and Fall days, these chargers are probably already swamped.
The EV owners must accept a large portion of the blame here as well. There are way too many uniformed EV drivers out there which are making the already stressed locations around Chicago even worse by having no clue how to properly operate their vehicles in cold weather. Case in point, Kyle and others have discovered that many owners were showing up at the chargers with Very, VERY cold batteries. It then takes only a few bad operators to ruin everything for everyone, and that is basically what happened. From what I can tell from many videos I have watched on the matter, this can cause a charging session that should not be any longer than 20-40 minutes to become 2-3 hours at a minimum. Reducing the throughput of these chargers just makes the entire situation worse, and honestly, this situation alone seems to have been enough to cause major issues and backups at a few of these sites.
Finally, with the matter of EV owners being "stranded". We have already established the system was not able to keep up, which was resulting in a long queue to form of people showing up, waiting to charger. In that queue, you likely have other uniformed owners arriving at congested chargers at very low SOC, expecting to just be able to plug in their vehicles upon arrival, but they can't, they have to wait. If they arrived with very little SOC, they likely didn't have enough energy to drive to the next closest charging location that didn't have a wait, so their only choice was to sit there and wait their turn. But it is like -20F, so they must sit there with their heaters on full just to stay warm in the car, and while waiting, their cars ran out of energy and owners then had to abandon those cars or freeze to death, leaving us the media pictures of a dozen or so Tesla's sitting near the chargers, totally dead. Now, after even more time sitting out in the cold, these cars, even if they could be pushed over to the chargers, will never receive a charge because there has to be at least a minimal amount of energy available to keep all the monitoring and charging control system operational during the charge. The EV community often calls this a "bricked" EV. At this point, the only people that can revive a bricked EV is going to be a dealer or a vehicle service center.
I truly believe that one of the major hurdles for EV adoption across the country is that you have to actually THINK a little, and you have to KNOW a little about your car. Based on my interactions with humans of "average" intelligence over the past several years, I'd say about 30% of the population will NEVER be smart enough to own and drive EVs, at least not until AI is in the car that actually does ALL the thinking for them, literally telling them everything I have laid out in this post and my last post, in real time, almost every day. It will have to learn their habits and charging locations and factor all that in to tell them exact what to do and when to do it. The next 30% (middle to low intelligence people) will not be able to own EVs until there are chargers everywhere like we have gas stations today. So, that basically leaves about 40% of today's population, IF willing, and that is a big IF (I know some very intelligent people that just can't be bothered with all this thinking), can easily own EVs today without much issue at all. For the rest of the 60% of the population, there is basically zero hope for while.
A few more articles from the team at Insideevs.com:
Here are a couple pictures of us charging at a L2 charger in Watkins Glen NY on 1/31/2022. On this particular day, it was "warm" at about 15F. Temps dropped to near 0F the next two nights while staying at a local B&B. The car was parked outside, so waking up to a COLD soaked battery one morning before driving to the nearest supercharger as our SOC was dropping into low single digits (7% at arrival) was definitely stressful, but thankfully the chargers were not full and we added 71% in 32 minutes. This was the morning after trying to sit at a L2 after dinner the night before and watching our SOC drop as the charger was delivering less charge than the car needed for the cabin and battery warming. I wish I would have known then what I know now.
