Scientists are racing to perfect new battery chemistries for electric vehicles that don’t lose as much energy in cold weather as today’s lithium-ion systems.
Alaska’s rugged and frigid interior, where it can get as cold as minus 50 Fahrenheit , is not the place you’d expect to find an electric school bus.
So longer trips can be difficult in the coldest weather. Transit authorities like Chicago’s, which has pledged to convert its whole bus fleet to electricity by 2040, have to take extraordinary steps to keep electric buses charged and on schedule. In the coldest weather, 0 down to minus 10 F the electric bus costs roughly $1.15 per mile, versus 40 cents per mile for a diesel bus, Blackard said. The cost of the electric bus drops to about 90 cents a mile when it’s warm, but he says the costs make it unworkable and he wouldn’t buy another one.
Some owners, though, didn’t anticipate such a big decline in the winter. Rushit Bhimani, who lives in a northern suburb of Detroit, said he sees about 30% lower range in his Tesla Model Y when the weather gets cold, from what’s supposed to be 330 miles per charge to as low as 230. “They should clarify that one,” he said while charging just south of Ann Arbor on a trip to Chicago.
Temperatures ranged from just freezing to minus 2.2 F during the test, over mountains and along snow-covered roads. The cars were driven until they ran out of juice and stopped. Inside batteries, lithium ions flow through a liquid electrolyte, producing electricity. But they travel more slowly through the electrolyte when it gets cold and don’t release as much energy. The same happens in reverse, slowing down charging.
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