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Another point that needs to be made: cold reduces the range of internal combustion cars, too. Quite a bit on shorter trips, in fact. I know my mileage drops by about 20% in the winter vs the summer. Some of that decrease is due to increased aero drag (colder air is denser) and this obviously affects any car, but a lot of it is due to slower warm up time. And if I plug in a block heater, my warm up time would be shortened by enough to save me a fair bit on my mileage.
ICE cars also benefit from being plugged in, is my point.
At 6F (which it apparently was on the night Mr. Broder stayed in the hotel) and say a 4 year old battery or if he left the dome light on or if there was a little water in the tank - what guarantee would Mr. Broder have that the engine would even start; let alone be able to go as far as it would have on the ~1/4 tank of gas?
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