Stats from a Cold Weather EV Drive
It’s been damn cold here in New England lately. After a snowstorm that dumped up to two feet of snow in most of the area early in the week, the temps struggled to get above 15F.
Friday was the coldest day with the temperature around 9F (sunny and windy) when I left for a trip to New Hampshire. I was driving about 60 miles away and it was mostly going to be highway so this was definitely a great way to see worst-case scenario for efficiency of my Polestar 2 (2021 LRDM).
Other cars won’t have these exact same numbers of course, but they will likely have a somewhat similar drop in range.
Here is what the trip computer showed when I arrived at my destination:
When I left my house, the temperature was 9F and it was 11F when I arrived in New Hampshire. The total drive was 60.6 miles with about 50 miles of that on the highway.
42.7kWh/100 miles was actually better than I expected in these conditions. Using a more useful rate, that comes out to 2.34mi/kWh1. I arrived with 62% battery (and I left at 100%, pre-conditioned), so that first part of the trip used 38% battery.
The Polestar 2 has about 75kWh usable battery, so that efficiency comes out to a maximum range of about 175 miles, not that I’d want to push things down to zero in such cold weather.
For the trip back, the car had been parked outside and was not pre-conditioned. Here is the total data when I arrived back home:
I did not take the exact same route back, which is why the drive home was more miles. I was routed to the highway sooner, but it was a slightly longer drive.
I arrived home at 124.7 miles with an efficiency of 42.0kWh/100 miles (2.38mi/kWh). By this point the temperature had warmed a bit more, reaching a whopping 16F!
I arrived with 24% battery, so the trip back also used 38% battery. Nice to see the consistency! I’d also note that when I left, Google Maps predicted I would arrive home with 24% battery. In my many drives with Google Maps, it is has always been very accurate with its battery estimations.
Since the overall trip ended up with higher overall efficiency than the drive there, apparently the drive back was also more efficient for some reason. Perhaps the wind was at my back!
Using this final efficiency number, that puts total possible range at about 178 miles.
As far as driving speeds, on each leg of the trip I set the automatic cruise control on the highway to the speed limit. In Maine this was typically 70mph and between 60 and 65mph in New Hampshire. I had the climate set to 68F and had the heated seat and steering wheel both set to level 2.
Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of data from a trip to that area in the summer. The most similar warm-weather drive I have stats for is a 106 mile trip in 70F weather from late May last year. On that trip, which was partially highway, I got about 3.27mi/kWh and a maximum of range of 245 miles.
That’s a difference of 0.89mi/kWh, which doesn’t seem that big, but it does work out to about a 27% drop in efficiency from summer. Alternatively you could say range in summer improves by 37% over the winter.
My Ioniq EV had a similar drop of about 25% in the winter, although I didn’t have as direct a comparison or specific data so it was likely a bit worse than that.
Newer Polestar 2 models are more efficient than my 2021. Starting in 2022 a heat pump was added (to models with the Plus pack), which can improve efficiency in cooler (above freezing) weather, although it would not had helped at all in these cold temperatures. 2024 and later models had more efficient motors and the ability to shut down the front motor on highways drives, further helping with efficiency.
I’ll be sure to do this specific drive again in the summer to have a direct apples-to-apples comparison.
What are you seeing for cold weather efficiency and range drops?
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I really wish the Polestar 2 used mi/kWh instead of kWh/100 miles.