With its two more expensive products, the Models S and X, Tesla recommends motorists “Turn on Range Mode…to limit power used by your climate control. This will decrease energy used per mile and maintain range.”
While not all battery-cars have a range mode, two other recommendations are good for any BEV owner to keep in mind:
- Turn off, or at least down, the cabin heater if you can get warm enough using its products’ seat heaters.
- And, Tesla urges owners to keep their vehicles plugged in at all times, pointing out that even in optimum weather they will lose about 1 percent of range every day due to normal resistance within its batteries.
Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to advise owners “Many cold weather improvements coming via OTA software,” OTA shorthand for over-the-air updates, like those used with smartphones. What those might be, Tesla isn’t saying, but manufacturers are clearly looking for ways to counter range-sapping cold weather, possibly by tweaking the way their onboard hardware operates.
The good news is that automakers may have something coming in the form of next-generation batteries alternatively known as “solid state” or “lithium-air.” These will replace the liquid slurry inside today’s lithium-ion cells with a solid ceramic material that, researchers believe, will speed up charging, improve range, reduce costs — and better handle cold temperatures.
The bad news is that next-generation batteries have largely been demonstrated, so far, just in the research lab. While some energy experts predict we could see solid state batteries ready for production as early as 2022, others fear they won’t be market-ready until closer to the end of the decade. That leaves BEV owners facing the range anxieties of a lot more winter storms.
Be the first to comment