“Car And Driver” Does Its Own Tesla Cold Weather Tests
There’s been a few Tesla cold weather tests performed to debunk myths about electric vehicles following the Virginia highway winter incident that took place earlier this month. The unfortunate accident that left several drivers stranded in the cold opened up dialogue, although mostly misinformation, as to how an EV would fare.
This led to thoughts about how Tesla and other EVs would supposedly fail to keep their owners safe, but a couple of Tesla owners performed their own Tesla cold weather tests. “Dirty Tesla” was the first and he shared his results on his YouTube channel. I wrote about that, and then Darryl Kolewaski, who lives in Canada, where the temperatures are much colder than they were in Virginia during that freeze, reached out to me to share his own experiment. Darryl’s experiment took place in temperatures that sound like pure torture. There was also the following statement from someone who says they were in the Virginia traffic jam:
Distortion vs Reality pic.twitter.com/FFWTdB0Kzb
— Mikey Likes (@mliebow) January 6, 2022
Now, Car and Driver is sharing its own results from a Tesla cold weather test. Car and Driver said that its Tesla Model 3 was able to keep its interior temperature at 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3°C) for almost two days max while losing an average of 2.2% of its charge per hour. This, the article noted, is barely less than a gas-powered car. However, Car and Driver didn’t just test a Tesla. The outlet also tested a 2022 Hyundai Sonata N-Line to compare with its Tesla.
The test took place in Ann Arbor, MI, where the average temperature during the test was around 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-9.4°C). The lowest recorded was 9°F (-12.8°C) and both cars were started in the afternoon when it was 26°F (-3.3°C). Each vehicle’s climate setting was set to 65°F (18.3°C) and did not have any of the heated seats on.
The article noted that in its scenarios, the Sonata could theoretically idle almost seven more hours than the Model 3, but they stopped the Sonata just after 24 hours when it had consumed less than half of a tank of fuel, adding that its average consumption idling worked out to be 0.3 gallons of gas per hour, which translated to a total idle time of 51.8 hours.
In a nutshell, Car and Driver proved what Dirty Tesla and Darryl proved, that during a cold-weather emergency where a driver could be stranded in their car, EVs will keep them safe and warm just as well as gasoline-powered vehicles will. You can read the full article here.
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