Summary
Norway is on track to become the first country to eliminate gasoline and diesel cars from new car sales, with EVs making up over 96% of recent purchases.
Decades of incentives, including tax breaks and infrastructure investments, have driven this shift.
Officials see EV adoption as a “new normal” and aim for electric city buses by 2025.
While other countries lag behind, Norway’s success demonstrates the potential for widespread EV adoption.
Norway… Who’s primary exports are crude oil and petroleum gas.
Also Norway is cold and EVs do not do well in the cold. Especially with current battery technology.
This thread is so fucking funny. Its not like we started driving EV’s in Norway this fall, and then in winter they all stopped working . I am telling my EV it’s not working, but god dammit, it just won’t listen to me.
HOLY SHIT WHY HAS NOBODY SAID THIS BEFORE OR ADDRESSED IT IN ANY WAY!!!
They work fine in the cold. This old, blatantly wrong, myth needs to die soon.
Source: we use them every damn day all year, including winter.
Sincerely A Norwegian with an EV daily driver.
https://www.redarcelectronics.com/us/resources/chargers-isolators-faqs/do-not-charge-lithium-battery-below-32-degrees/
Charging lithium batteries below a certain temperature is very bad for them.
It also reduces capacity and charge cycles significantly.
Yes they still technically function, but they wear out much faster and output much less as you go colder.
That means you need to replace the batteries much more often.
The batteries are the least environmentally friendly part of the whole EV.
Which is why they are heated before being charged, either by the on-board heater if it’s been parked, or naturally by just driving the damn thing.
You said EVs don’t work well in the cold. That is a demonstrably false statement by the fact that Norway has over 500 000 of them rolling around all year. You can post as many misinformed links supporting it as you wish. If it had any merit, we would not be at 90%+ adoption rating.
Either you are the biggest genious in the world and we are half a million morons, or you are just wrong.
The fact that I drive mine in weather spanning from -30 C to +25 C makes me suspect the latter.
Have a good one, mate.
Brother what are you talking about. I said they function in the cold. They don’t work well in the cold. They have recommended temperature ranges for a reason. I am simply pointing out the significant hit to battery performance and lifespan that the deep cold adds.
I havent posted any “misinformation”. You can literally verify every statement I’ve made with a number of scientific papers and studies on the effects of temperature and batteries. We have known they don’t work well in the cold for years. I have had to stick an untold number of cellphones into my inner layer pants pockets to prevent them from completely shutting off or refusing to charge because they got way too cold to safely operate.
By owning and driving fully electric cars in the significant cold they are absolutely lowering of the lifespan of those batteries meaning they need to be replaced more often. The batteries are far and away the biggest source of pollution in an EV.
You can call me names and whatever else you want but at least be scientifically accurate.
The misinformation is that they don’t work well in the cold. Truth be told, they are fantastic in the cold. I’d argue better than ICE. That’s a different topic for a different day though.
You are, rightfully so, claiming batteries don’t like cold temperatures. What you fail to add are the mitigations companies make to solve these issues. That feels disingenous, unless you just didn’t know.
If your phone had the capacity and function to heat itself up during outdoor use, it would also work brilliantly.
So while I’m sure the scientific papers are great, without having read them, I’d guess they don’t include the whole picture either as if they would, we’d be in agreement.
I tried finding where I called you any names and failed, but if you felt attacked then I appoligize for that. I have nothing against you or think you deserve that. We are just disagreeing on this one topic.
Have a good night!
What you posted is irrelevant, the other guy gave you an answer in the first sentence: you heat the batteries up if needed. Problem solved.
Hey super genius if your have a car that only has batteries inside it as an energy source what do you use to heat up the batteries so the batteries are working inside their correct temperature range? The batteries. Which are cold because you parked it outside in a place that averages close to zero degrees depending on the region and time of year. Sure if you park it in your heated garage and then park it at work at a heated garage and you only ever drive it between those locations the cold will basically hit matter but if you ever leave the car anywhere that it will drop down to ambient outside temps then it will be causing damage to the batteries when they use their own cold juices to get warmed up enough to do their job right.
I know that when charging they will sip power to heat the batteries to the proper temperature for charging (and they heat up a tad naturally when charged), but anyone who isn’t always charging it while parked or leaving inside a heated garage that will not be the case.
This is true, but the batteries do not suffer any harm by being used when cold, just charging which we by now agree is not an issue as long as the car heats them up first.
They also expell heat by being used, so they are nice and toasty for when you reach you destination and can plug in.
And that’s why they’re capable of heating themselves up.
The entire EV has less impact than just the petrol in the most efficient small engine car ALONE. You’re not even counting the pollution caused by the ICE car being made, yet the likes of Volvo announces the entire lifetime of what the polestar will consume with the current market pollution of energy, which is only going down.
You’re spewing myths and are straight up wrong.
I’m gonna need a source on that one chief. If you account for the extremely unclean energy used to mine, process and ship the raw materials for EVs they are absolutely not cleaner for the environment than current efficient ICE vehicle production. To be clear they both create a ton of pollution during production but this claim that EVs are magically cleaner is a crock of shit.
The main difference is we have been producing ICE vehicles for a long time. We have (mostly) ethical mining for the resources required and the whole process has been streamlined over the last 100+ years.
Just because you’ve shifted the pollution from on your street to some poor kids in the congo doesn’t mean you’re suddenly “clean”.
I’m not saying that we need to stay using ICE forever or that EVs are inherently evil. Simply that as the EV market currently sits they are not the clean green machines people often want to pretend they are.
Sure, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31joJUU4X-g fairly early in the video.
I’m not even going to start debunking your arguments because they’re such assumptions it’s laughable. What are you even on about? Kids in Congo? Get a grip mate.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara
Feel free to do your own research at any point. The materials required for the massive batteries in all those EVs have to come from somewhere and they generally are obtained through slave and child labor in third world countries.
Also your “source” is a privately run show from a former actor and comedian who really likes EVs and he gathered an audience that donate money to him through patron to keep the show going. That’s a biased source if I’ve ever seen one. Of course the guy who makes a living in the EV space is going to do nothing but sing the praises of the Almighty EV.
I feel it bears repeating I am not even again against EVs. I simply do not care for how the EV super fans talk about their stuff. They always seem to pick and choose whatever information is convenient for them and their favorite tech while conveniently leaving out anything negative.
I do believe electric will be the future. We just have some problems to sort out on the energy density side of things. Battery technology still just isn’t quite ready and even if we sick with lithium we need to find a better way to get the materials required.
Edit: spelling
Isn’t that for pretty much everything?
Yes and no. It depends on what material you are specifically looking for.
For the grand majority of materials needed in an ICE vehicle we have had “ethical” sources for everything for awhile now. Which makes sense the industry has had 100 years to clean up its image as much as they cared to.
The materials needed specifically for large lithium batteries are still currently gathered primally in places where human rights aren’t even considered. People are working on getting that changed, but last time I checked it was still really bad.
LFP
Rightttt, if only we had literal millions of these cars work in freezing temps. They’re better in cold that ice cars.
If that’s the case why are all of the vehicles in the Arctic diesel? The south Pole is all diesel.
Anywhere that spends time regularly in the negatives does not use electric vehicles.
Because there’s not enough electric capacity in remote locations and fuel is more energy dense. But 99.9999995% of people are not living in the south pole, you don’t need a spaceship to go buy bread.
Diesel straight up doesn’t run when it gets cold enough. Diesel fuel becomes jelly in the negatives. They have to mix it with avgas to keep it liquid enough.
Reminds me of an oilfield… Town? Region? Camp? My uncle told me about called “Dead Horse, Alaska”. It gets so cold there they need to keep the diesel equipment fueled and running constantly or it doesn’t come on again without major intervention.
Sounds absolutely nuts to me, but I guess spreadsheets say the black-gold more than pays for burning nasty fuel 24/7 just to be there.
My apologies I should have been more specific. It’s a special diesel fuel they call AN8. Generally still referred to simpy as Diesel. The vehicles they put it into are diesel vehicles.
They do work slightly worse when it’s very cold, but it’s fine.
See my response to the guy above. I don’t think you can say it’s only “slightly” worse.
About 20% less efficient, so still 60% more than ICE.
While there is no hard rules involved with the word “slightly” when used to describe a change in percentage it is generally used for changes of 5% or less.
Yes this is getting pedantic about the English language but a 20% change would be more accurately referred to as a “moderate” change.
And you are absolutely correct ICE engines are always less thermally efficient than EVs. Your average standard gasoline engine these days is somewhere in the ballpark of ~25% efficient. Some of the more efficient diesel ICEs are up to 50% efficient these days. EVs tend to be around ~90% thermally efficient.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667141723001088#:~:text=Typically%2C most Li-ion battery,]%2C [21]].
Also it’s not a 20% loss at 0°C. It’s closer to 50%. Which would be most accurately described as a “significant” loss of efficiency.
https://ev.aaa.com/articles/are-electric-cars-good-in-winter/#:~:text=How much of a,car’s heating system is on.
Even AAA did research that shows it’s anywhere from 10% loss in range to 40% loss as you get colder and colder.
I’ve read through your all of your arguments on this thread and it looks like you’re reading lots of papers, looking at a particular finding under specific circumstances, then using that as a blanket answer as to why EVs aren’t viable. The problem is that these are mostly devoid of real world usage of EVs where viability is ultimately determined. Here’s one example:
If an EV driver is only using a fraction of their range to accomplish 100% of their driving needs, then the temporary reduction in battery capacity is completely irrelevant. I can’t say I know any EV drivers that have a 80 mile commute and only buy an EV capable of driving 80 miles under perfect conditions. Would that person exist, you’d have a valid point, but I would guess that person would be a statistical anomaly and shouldn’t be used to derive policy or guidance for the majority of people. Most EV drivers are driving EVs with 200+ mile range and only using a small fraction of that for daily usage, so even with the most extreme temporary reductions its little to no impact on their driving ability.
In another post you called out that EV batteries use Cobalt which is typically derived from questionable human rights locations. Again, true on paper, but not all EVs use NMC or NCA chemistries which use Cobalt. Many EVs today use LFP and many in the years ahead will be Sodium based, neither of which use Cobalt at all in the batteries. So again, you found one particular finding and applied it to all EVs.
Any arguments you have about how dirty the extraction and transport methods used for EV materials fall apart immediately when the alternative is petroleum exploration, extraction, refinement, and distribution which need to occurr on an ongoing basis to keep fueling ICE vehicles.
I don’t think anyone is claiming EVs are completely perfect from a user experience or environmental impact, however, compared to the alternative of ICE vehicles and the ongoing environmental and geopolitical impacts of the needed petroleum extraction needed to continue their use, EVs are a dream come true.
What is the efficiency of an internal combustion engine in cold weather, for comparison?
At least the EV starts every damn time.
Batteries don’t stay at 0C very long… Because you heat them up. It’s a known and solved problem.