EVs upsides and downsides should be considered without it needing to be a comparison to ICE. But, yes, running the heater will use fuel.

In this case EVs with "250 miles" range are losing 30%~ of that range for three months of the year and a further 20% over the first three years of their life, making them reliably closer to a 140-mile vehicle. People who are planning round-trip travel or commuting need to know this information, and unfortunately a lot of EV fans like to mock people for wanting high initial EV range as if winter and or capacity loss aren't real (even with the facts being readily available).

The Bolt is currently the best budget EV by far, but people buying it should consider it a 150-mile range vehicle with "bonus" miles above that.

> for three months

Many places in the US, it is more than 3 months :)

In northern Michigan, it was more like 3 months of not bad weather, hah.

> But, yes, running the heater will use fuel

I imagine it is so on some air-cooled cars (VW "Beetle", old 911 etc), but on most cars the cabin is heated off the engine's cooling system and does not require additional fuel, so it technically will "use fuel" but no more than the normal operation of the car.

OEM aircooled VW heat came from air heat exchangers that took extracted heat from the exhaust gas. Worked terribly when new, and even worse when rust hit: the channels carrying the air from the rear to the front of the vehicle were among the first parts of the body to rust out (at least in Beetles), and if any perforations developed in the heat exchangers you'd get CO going into the cabin.

There were aftermarket gasoline heaters available, which is probably what you're thinking of.

Is it mocking, or just encouraging realistic expectations around your travel needs? I’ve heard many people say an EV won’t work for them, yet their total daily commute is nowhere close to the capacity. And for many of them, even a 110V outlet at home would get them around 40 miles overnight once they’re home (depending on the make/model specifics), and most folks I know are barely driving more than that as a daily driver.

I totally understand wanting to have long distance range in an EV. But even with the cold, for most commutes, anything with that 150-mile-in-winter is range for the majority of trips.

But totally understood it’s a case by case basis. I have family who drove over 100 miles round trip for their daily commute in North Dakota. Those use cases exist, but I think many people without such extreme daily distances are thinking about their daily distance needs in unrealistic ways. I hope this isn’t what you’d consider mocking :)

Cars are really expensive. Buying a whole ass car that can _only_ be used for commuting is a luxury most people cannot afford. They need their vehicle for thier daily commute, but also for weekend trips, home depot hauls, towing, etc etc.

"Does this car only do 80% of what I need it to" is a valid question when so much money is on the line.

My EV still works for weekend trips. I've been on several with it without any issues.

I can still park at Home Depot with an EV, they don't crush them on site. Practically every Home Depot trip I've made was doable in any average vehicle. I see plenty of sedans and crossovers in the Home Depot parking lot. If it's something that's going to be a ton of stuff, I can rent their vans and trucks for $20. If I'm buying so much stuff I need an F-250, $20 isn't a significant part of that budget. I don't know why having an ICE is critical to go to Home Depot.

Towing, really depends on what you're needing to tow. Pulling your boat from the nearby storage to the boat ramp? Probably fine with an EV. Pulling a fifth wheel around national parks? Towing horses around? Definitely not an EV job, for sure.

But people aren't towing a fifth wheel with their Camry or their Rogue or their Equinox. The 99th percentile needs of most vehicles on our city highways could be accomplished with an EV without significant challenges, assuming decent charging is available.

Please stop assuming that an EV battery is guaranteed to lose 20% of its range in the first three calendar years of operation.

I drove a Chevy Bolt for 4 years, 48k miles, and I never noticed any range degradation, most likely thanks to the strong liquid cooling system for the battery and the inability to fast charge the Bolt faster than 1C (50-55kW fastest charging speed, 60-66kWh size battery means .75-88C) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#C-rate)

Some cars absolutely will degrade like you describe, but that is not a guaranteed outcome for every EV, given the differences in fast charging capabilities and battery cooling capabilities.

I did not get my 238 miles EPA range on the Bolt in the winter, but I could easily get 200+ if I needed to squeeze out more range. I generally got closer to 150 miles not because I was forced to, but because my driving style and heating usage did not generally result in the highest efficiency.

Warming up the whole car (including grease in wheel hub bearings, for example, that becomes much harder in cold) takes a lot of energy, so perhaps it is it. I'd say that a fully warmed car though should be a bit more efficient due to a bigger temperature difference and a bigger oxygen amount going into cylinders.

People drive differently in really cold weather - they tend to idle the vehicle more (and spend time in it while idling more), drive slower, and on mushier surfaces (snow/slush/ice), etc. and that is without figuring mechanical stuff like thicker oil.

If someone isn’t driving highway distances all the time, ‘warm up’ is quite inefficient for ICE vehicles, and tends to run very rich.

Totally right that if those factors aren’t there, it should get better fuel economy.

A large portion of that 20% drop you are seeing is due to the change in gasoline mixtures between winter and summer.

Cold air is denser and takes more work to push through.

This. At highway speeds, air resistance dominates the energy consumption. It is roughly proportional to air density, which in turn is inversely proportional to temperature. Compare a nice summer day at 300 K, say, to a really cold day at 240 K. That’s a ratio of 5:4, pretty close to the 20% figure mentioned.

Winter tire (if you have them) and heating are the likely culprits!

Heating shouldn't take any fuel efficiency in a petrol-powered car since the heat is (usually) just a by-product of the engine's inefficiencies.

Letting the vehicle idle in the driveway while the windshield defrosts will decrease fuel mileage, because the engine runs for longer.

It's not really the fault of "heating" that you're idling your car unnecessarily. I'm definitely not idling my car to defrost my windshield, as I'll most likely pre-heat my car, or if I don't, I'll scrape the frost off.

I feel like we’re losing context here. My comment wasn’t in reference to what I do, or what you do. It was in reference to what the root comment said they did.

The person in the root comment proposed that their practice of letting their ICE car warm up to defrost in the winter may lead to decreased gas mileage. This is correct; it will.

The reason I idle before driving is that even after I scrape the ice off, the wipers don't seem to be as effective until the window is warmer, and it's blurry and gets foggy. I try and scrape, wipe and antifreeze as much as possible, but I still find I can't see as well until the windows warm up a bit.

Heating would have no real impact, ICE cars are heated using the heat their engines naturally produce.

Winter tyres though and winter fuel mixes? Those definitely have an effect.

Same and I don't even get cold weather here on the Pacific coast, just high 30s at worst. The engine on my hybrid runs a lot more in colder weather trying to heat itself and the cabin, even with the cabin thermostat set to 65. For short trips around town I get MPGs in the teens while in the summer I would normally expect 50+ MPG.

In addition to the points made by others, winter gasoline blends lower fuel economy

Mostly this because you can easily tell when the switch occurs on your mpg gauge, but also increased friction from higher viscosity of lubricants, denser air and subsequent drag increase, increased tire rolling resistance etc

Decreased efficiency of a cooler engine too?