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| I’ve heard both sides of the fence on this one. Lots of people say you’re totally out of luck if you are in a Tesla and you get stuck in traffic or slide off the road into a snowdrift or whatever.
Other people say better in an EV than in an ICE.
I guess if that ever happens to me I’d take whichever one will keep me warm longest and hopefully I’ll have warm clothes in there that I can throw on to make it longer.
But still, I wanted to see for myself what the Model Y would do. So when I got home earlier today I had 50% battery at 2:47 PM. I did NOT plug in. Instead I hopped out and went inside and left the climate control off. My intent was to watch the app as the cabin temp came down to 60° F. Then I would remotely restart the climate control to maintain the temp at 60° F and see how quickly the battery would run down. By the way, at that time the external temp was -1° F.
So I made a mistake right away. I left Sentry mode on which basically leaves a bunch of cameras and electronic control modules running which does take maybe 5% per day or something like that (can’t remember for sure).
Then I made a second mistake. Totally forgot about the task at hand until the cabin temp was down to 40° F inside.
I realized my mistake 32 min later at 3:19. I remotely turned sentry mode off and I turned the climate control on and set it for 60° F. At this time the battery was at 49%
So now the climate control had some work to do to get it back up to 60°. I don’t know when that happened exactly but I do have a screenshot of my app that I took at 4:21 PM. Interior temp was 59° F and battery was at 44%. I failed to check external temp at that point but I would call that the beginning of the true test.
It is currently 7:43 local time. Exterior temp is -10° F. Interior is 61° F. Battery level is 22%.
I have made other mistakes. Every so often it wants to shut the climate control off because it has been running too long with no one in the car. It sends me an alert when it shuts the climate control down so I immediately restart it. What I forget though is that when I restart it, it immediately turns on two seat heaters and the heated steering wheel. I don’t know how much that uses but that kind of thing would not happen if you were actually sitting in the car.
I also wonder about the effect of your body heat as you’re sitting in the car. Probably negligible but I assume it would help some and I wasn’t in the car for this test so that likely negligible help was not there.
If the exterior temp averaged -5° F during that time and I lost 22% in 3 hours and 22 minutes that means even with 100% battery you would only have a little over 15 hours before you hit 0% battery.
I have never done that sort of experiment in an ICE. I think our minivan would run for 6 hours at 65 miles per hour. I don’t know how many gph it burns at idle compared to gph at 65 mph. Maybe 20%?. So a half tank on the ICE might last around 15 hours? Just guessing here but it seems to me that the EV stranded in a storm at -5° F will likely keep the occupants alive about half as long as a comparable ICE. Honestly seems about like what a guy would expect given their usable range relative to ICE vehicles being around 50%.
Other thing to consider is having a more comfortable temp in the ICE than 60° will have a negligible effect on how long the ICE will last whereas going to a higher temp on the EV will likely greatly reduce the time it would last so the ICE would provide more comfort as well.
The final thing I can think of is that the EV is going to use 40% more energy than normal getting home if someone’s comes along and pulls you out in that environment so you’ll run out of range to get home probably quite a bit sooner than an ICE.
I’m likely more than halfway through my life and I’ve driven more than the average by a fair amount and I have never been stranded in a vehicle for more than maybe 30 min. I also take heavy gloves, overalls and coveralls in weather like this so I could probably last quite a long time by turning the temp way down. So I don’t know how relevant all of this is but if a guy ever was in that situation I would say he’d be better off in an ICE as long as he didn’t have any exhaust fumes getting into the cabin.
Edited by dpilot83 1/15/2024 20:31
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Trapped in a Tesla in cold weather
