I have a Chevy Bolt with identical range and can confirm that range is halved in Winter. Still no big deal in urban areas. My 1-hour commute to the other side of the city is only 8 miles. I just charge the car every-other week for an hour. Ezpz.
Rated range, meaning 100%-0% in near-ideal conditions, drops significantly in the winter. Battery conditioning and a cold start can drop it by 35% if it’s using resistive heat (as opposed to a heat pump), plus reserve capacity on both sides (you don’t usually want to go below 20% or above 80%, to maintain battery health).
I recommend people take the listed rating and cut it in half for real world use in bad conditions. For instance, if you need to travel somewhere that’s 75 miles away (150 round trip) in the middle of winter without charging, then you need a battery rated for 300 miles. You can obviously get by with less if charging along the way is viable, and these are just estimates. If your route is 80 mph, it will suck down a lot more juice than the same distance at 55.
I bet in the winter in the upper midwest that range drops to like 110 miles.
I have a Chevy Bolt with identical range and can confirm that range is halved in Winter. Still no big deal in urban areas. My 1-hour commute to the other side of the city is only 8 miles. I just charge the car every-other week for an hour. Ezpz.
From what I’m reading the Chevy bolt does not have a heat pump and it seems that most of your commute is just standing still in traffic.
In these conditions it makes sense that range goes down in winter but for longer drive with a more recent EV it’s not really an issue anymore.
I barely noticed any difference in range in winter compared to summer with my EV. I have to admit though that winters are quite mild here.
8 miles in one hour? At that point you could almost bike if it wasn’t freezing. You could bike at a steady 10mph, though it would take nearly an hour.
Sadly there is absolutely no safe way to bike from my home to my work.
Rated range, meaning 100%-0% in near-ideal conditions, drops significantly in the winter. Battery conditioning and a cold start can drop it by 35% if it’s using resistive heat (as opposed to a heat pump), plus reserve capacity on both sides (you don’t usually want to go below 20% or above 80%, to maintain battery health).
I recommend people take the listed rating and cut it in half for real world use in bad conditions. For instance, if you need to travel somewhere that’s 75 miles away (150 round trip) in the middle of winter without charging, then you need a battery rated for 300 miles. You can obviously get by with less if charging along the way is viable, and these are just estimates. If your route is 80 mph, it will suck down a lot more juice than the same distance at 55.