It's not just us low-tech DIY electric car drivers experiencing reduced winter performance from our lead acid machines. Some blog-happy BMW Mini-E owners are seeing & reporting the effects too.
I saw this headline and laughed out loud:
Who chilled the electric car?
Quote:
Timothy Gill, a software engineer from New Jersey, made it just over 80 miles before his car broke down during a cold spell, he wrote on his blog: “Towed! After only 87.8 miles … Sheesh!” --- (source)
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Aside from the fact they should win an award for the clever title, I have several problems with the language in that article. Permit me to digress from the actual topic at hand while I enumerate them.
First, is 87.8 miles "just over" 80 miles? Sheesh, indeed.
Second, if your car gives you
multiple separate warnings that it is about to run out of "fuel", is it fair to say it "broke down" when you keep pressing on? If you drive a regular ICE car out of gas, did it "break down"?
BMW is undoubtedly learning some really interesting things from having these cars in the hands of "regular" drivers. (Of course early adopters don't really even count as "regular drivers."
Two related blog posts from Mini-E owners experiencing cold weather performance drops:
1) Towed! After only 87.8 miles… Sheesh! My Year with an All-Electric MINI
The guy is used to getting 100+ miles in warm weather. The most interesting thing is the driver thought there was something wrong with the car (in terms of range reduction indicating a fault of some kind). Seems a bit of physics education is in order.
2) Robert's MINI E Field Trial: Cold weather Range Anxiety
"Well after over 4 months of driving, I was feeling like I understood my Electric MINI E ... But my sense of normality has been shattered in the last week as Temperatures have plummeted, so has My MINI E's range."
May I suggest:
From:
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post147243