Curious about owning an electric car in very cold weather and bad/snowy road conditions? Let me provide some answers and perspective. Note: From the time I arrived at 7:00 a.m. until leaving at 11:00 a.m.,
have addressed some aspects of winter driving in electric cars. I am covering other aspects here. To start with, I’m going to discuss using Tesla Full-Self Driving in such conditions.So, your car looks like mine in Figure 1, what do you need to do to let it drive automatically on clear roads?
Second, you make sure that none of the cameras are covered with snow. On the Tesla Model 3, there is a flush-mounted forward-looking camera behind your windshield right in front of the mirror. There are two flush mounted forward-looking cameras on each side pillar at the vertical midpoint of the windows behind a pane of glass. There are two rearward-looking cameras on protruding trim just in front of the doors. There is also a backup camera just above the license plate.
I thought the main range reducer with winter driving would be the loss of energy from the battery. When skiing inor colder weather at Brighton, my cell phone goes dead in less than 60 minutes. Your EV battery will fare better, but you get the point — it will lose power. Furthermore, with my old Nissan Leaf, we would seldom run the heater in winter because we would lose 20% of our range. Newer Model 3s have heat pumps which are more efficient.
Bottom Line: Take all these winter driving factors into account if you don’t have ample range for a given leg of your trip.described a huge traffic jam in Virginia where drivers had to spend the whole night on a blocked freeway in freezing weather.