Make sure your electric car gets the range promised

Are you thinking about buying your first electric car? Congratulations. It's the way of the future regardless of what some of your friends are saying about it. But I bet you're shopping really hard for the right range right on the sticker on the rating. I want you to know that a significant part of that range is actually up to you. And here are four reasons why [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Really cold weather can reduce your ease range noticeably. A recent study at the Idaho national labs found that in freezing temperatures on electric cars battery might lose up to 25% of its posted range. It depends on which car you're driving and they get better every year. Obviously, but it's a substantial risk or they found that a DC fast charge in freezing conditions can be up to 35% less fast, making it a DC kind of fast charge. Now, of course, if you keep your electric car in a relatively temperate garage while it's stored and charging, you'll largely moderate out that ladder risk, but then you're going to take it out on the freezing weather and drive it and now it's going to have to fight that with its temperature management system to try and get as little of a freezing range reduction is possible. It's a battle no matter how well that system works. Here's another way to visualize it. Take a look at this chart. This shows the performance of the single cells that are usually made to build an Eevee battery pack. The red and green lines show optimal everyday temperatures, but look at the 14 degree line in blue and the minus four degree line in magenta. See how much they reduce the voltage available on the vertical axis. And the energy capacity on the horizontal axis. Bottom line cold weather is a real range risk factor. [MUSIC] Conditioning the air in your ease cabin is not energy trivial. Now unlike cars that use big old combustion engines like this one. Your Eevee is that a bit of a disadvantage in a sense, combustion cars have tons of waste heat. In fact, up to three quarters of every gallon of gas in your conventional car goes to making waste heat, not motion down the road. Not very elegant. However, all that waste heats pretty damn handy on a cold morning when you want to heat up the cabin, right? Your electric car has to do it some other way, typically by using some precious electricity. Another key thing is this, combustion engine cars have these belts that EVs do not have. These serpentine belts are pretty inelegant, but they do have one advantage, you can use these to drive something like an air conditioning compressor to cool the inside of your car. In your EV since you don't have these kind of parasitic drive belts, you've got to run that compressor on some of that precious electricity. In one early 2019 study, the triple A found that in 20 degree weather, pretty cold, EVie driving range could be shortened by 41% with the heater on. That's gonna vary by the EV you're driving. And of course, on the other end on a sweltering 95 degree day, they found that range could be reduced by up to 17%, because you had the air conditioning running. Now of course, EV are progressing rapidly in terms of efficiency and ability to reduce those numbers. But bottom line is when you're driving an electric car climate control is not free. Protip, precondition the cabin air in your Eevee before you disconnect it from the grid charger. Let the grid do the heavy lifting of running heat or air conditioning before you unplug and drive off leaving much less Of that energy sapping job to the car's battery. [MUSIC] This is not stop and go traffic per se, but how you stop and go your electric car. Now of course like any other car, you have to use the brakes on an [UNKNOWN] once in a while or do you. Electric cars have something called regeneration. I'm sure you've heard about it in your Eevee. Buying research, and some cars are more aggressive than others. Region switches the electric cars motor from a device that carries the vehicle forward into a generator that puts substantial slowing drag on the car, want to generate energy by reducing its forward momentum. That resistance during regeneration can also function is braking, meaning you may never or seldom have to touch the brake pedal. This is a good thing. Learn to drive the car this way. Learn to use the more aggressive region mode on your electric vehicle. It may feel weird at first But a lot of people who drive ATVs with a certain passion are very proud of their ability to touch the brake pedal as little as possible. While therefore putting the maximum amount of their energy back in the battery, every time you accelerate to get more speed or drive up the hill in your electric car, you are spending some of your electricity. If you use region wisely, you're getting a lot of it back. You're almost turning a lot of that spend into a loan, though at a high interest rate because region is certainly not 100% efficient, but master region and you will really see a difference in your everyday day to day week after week range. [MUSIC]. And older use dv may look like a bargain. But that older battery lurking inside it may keep it from really being one. with electric cars, you've got an aging factor in the battery. The older the battery and the more times it's been charged cycles charged up and depleted down, the less it's going to hold each time more or less. This is like every other rechargeable thing in your life, your phone laptops, tablets, They don't hold the same charge their entire life. Combustion cars are different. I got to admit, you can take a 10 year old car put a full tank of gas in it and get about the same mileage as you did when it was a year old. They don't age that way. But electric cars do. But here's the reality check. Take a look at what the car is posted at getting shave off, I don't know 20 or 30%. If it's a handful of years and relatively high miles, and then say do my real needs fit within what's left of the range calculation. If your needs do, you are a candidate to go steal an electric car at an incredible bargain price. I mean recently we've seen handful year old Nissan leafs sell for less than a nice electric bicycle. But that doesn't work for everyone depending on your real world mileage needs, but be sober about it and balance screaming used deal versus range that will keep you from hating the car in everyday. Use. So I hope these four tips give you a better idea of what kind of range you really need. One more pro tip, don't think about electricity as directly replacing gas. Break your mind free of the range and time involved in running the car down and then getting a fillip think instead about how you can opportunistically snack charge, whether it's at work at home at the mall. shedding the old gas station mentality is a big part of really embracing an Eevee. They're a different game. Think about how you'll actually use one.