First winter driving with 2020 Clarity in Canada

We still run EV mode through the winter. Our climate is mild compared with Canada. Overnight lows are often in the 30sF (-1C), daytime highs 40-60F (4.4 to 15C). Even with the milder winter our Clarity range drops to the high 30s which is right on the edge of not being enough for our daily commutes. On days when we vary from our usual routine it is possible for the gas engine to kick on for 5-10 minutes to get us home. Fortunately that is rare.

We like to remain 100% EV if at all possible. So we may not run the heater, just relying on the heated seats, if we know we may not have enough juice for EV on a particular trip around town. the heater really requires quite a bit of power. I'd say it consumes 20-30% of the battery charge.

We have roof solar to charge the car which greatly impacts our decision to drive in EV mode only. Even in winter, with clouds, rain, and the sun low in the sky, we still can get quite a bit of power from the solar system. The house is the reverse of the car in that running the house air conditioner in the summer is what really demands power. In the winter the house natural gas heat does not demand much power so there is more for the car.

Without solar we might make a different decision. It would depend on the cost of electricity vs the cost of gas/petrol.

 

I drive all year round in EV with ECON Mode. I've read the Clarity limits heating in ECON Mode but it keeps me warm. I also use the heated seats, of course (I've never had a car with heated seats before--a true luxury). If my drive is long enough to use up the charge in the battery, I still leave my Clarity in EV until that happens and the automatic HV kicks in. If you have some big hills on your drive, however, it would make sense to select HV earlier to preserve some battery charge for those hills.

 

I just wear my gloves and keep the heater off if it’s not much colder than upper 20s.

 

It depends on what you are trying to achieve. Are you able to complete your daily driving in EV, with the reduced EV range? Are you able to heat the interior, prior to departure, while still plugged in?

Many Canadians report low electricity rates and high gasoline cost, so it is probably more cost effective to operate on electric rather than gas, even with the reduced range.

The cold temperatures are the main cause of the reduced range. A 40% reduction is not uncommon. The climate settings are contributing some as well. Getting the car nice a toasty while plugged in, might get you a few additional kilometers.

 

I'd like to clarify that the climate settings are by far the single most range-reducing factor in the winter, as opposed to an innate reduction in battery capacity and efficiency (though that is definitely a considerable factor at -2C). As Landshark said, if you are able to precondition the vehicle while plugged in to a 240V EVSE you can mitigate this somewhat by decreasing the overall need for climate control while driving. It is also noted that, while the heated seats are also resistive heaters, they tend to be more favourable to range than the internal heating core as the direct seat heating will feel more effective than blowing warm air. You may find that preconditioning and using heated seats provides the best balance of range to comfort in the winter months.

Personally, I turn the climate control on anyway to defog the windscreen and provide more comfort, leaving my temperature setting at 70F (21C) as well. This is not an issue for me because my round trips rarely go above 35 miles, which is about how much I can drive in EV mode with the aforementioned climate settings (and preconditioning). If I am driving for a longer journey where I know I will significantly exceed the ~35 miles of range, I will switch to HV mode to allow the engine to heat the cabin instead of the resistive coil and save my EV range for when I am off the freeway and driving around town.

Cheers

 

We are into winter here in Illinois with temperatures not getting much above freezing during the day. Most of the time (unless my wife is with me) I don’t run the climate control. I just wear gloves. And the range-o-meter still shows greater than 48 miles when I get in the car in the morning after charging up during the night.

One time with the heat on, I drove maybe three miles and the range-o-meter decreased by almost ten miles!

 

I can attest to a similar experience driving with and without climate control turned on, though my climate is much more temperate in the winter than Illinois.
I know that the Canadian Clarity has a dedicated battery heater that is used during extreme temperatures (-20C) but I'm not sure if it will drain battery power under more (relatively) mild conditions. Perhaps someone on this forum that has done testing on a Canadian model could tell us more.

Cheers

 

Some further clarification. There are a number of factors at play that could make either of the above statements true or false.

Some cold weather road tests have shown EV range reductions of 10-30% where no cabin climate controls are used. The average was ~18%. EV’s with battery warming systems can see a reduction in range of another 12%. One test observed these decreases between test temperatures of ~60F and ~32F. So there is considerable loss from cold temperatures alone, 22-42%, with 30% being average.

Using cabin heat will also have an impact. The amount will depend of the source of heat. Resistance or heat pump? What is the interior temperature setting?

The battery warming has variables as well. Did the car just come off a charge prior to beginning the drive? This will minimize the amount of energy required to warm the battery, as they will still be warm. Energy allocated to warming cold batteries will be highest upon start up. This is why a driver may see a fast and substantial reduction in the first few miles. The same principle applies to warming a freezing cabin. Two 10 mile trips in freezing temperatures, separated by an 8 hour work day, will burn more energy to warm the cold batteries and the cabin, twice, than a single 20 or 30 mile trip.

Ultimately, it is cold weather that causes the reduction in range. Depending on the circumstances, some of the loss can be minimized by starting the drive with warm batteries and a warm cabin.

 

This is a curious study that you are referencing. The one I am familiar with is the AAA's Electric Vehicle Range Testing Report which shows that with an ambient temperature of 20F, using climate control set to "Auto" 72F had a far more considerable impact on range than the cold weather itself.







Specifically, their conclusion was:

I would be very curious to see the study that you reference because your average numbers seem far off even when taking into factor the variance between testing methodologies. If you would like to know more about the AAA's testing methodology, you can click the attached PDF link for more details. It really is a very fascinating study and goes into more detail about the impact on fuel economy as well.

Cheers

 

One was an Autoblog report on a 20 car road test in Norway. That one had the cabin heat set to 70F and seat heaters on low in all test vehicles. Temps were around freezing.

The other was a Car & Driver report on a Bolt.

 

Oh dear, no wonder they were reporting such numbers. They were comparing apples to oranges, driving around arbitrary cities and highways instead of following the WLTC Class 3b test cycle.

What would have been more apples-to-apples, even if not scientifically rigorous, would have been to test the same vehicles over the same path during a warmer time of the year. Trying to extrapolate useful information from comparing their own (winter) test to a normal 23C WLTP cycle is quite useless as there are far too many independent variables to make the data useful. Regardless of whether you feel that such an apples-to-oranges comparison is appropriate for off-the-cuff advice, I would still hold the AAA study with magnitudes more authority.

This report is less egregious than the previous 20-car "test" because they are comparing mostly like-for-like, comparing the difference in range of one vehicle between 56F and 36F. As the study notes, the reason for the non-linear relationship between temperature and driving range is due to the 1.8kW battery heater kicking in at temperatures under 37F, so this is not an effect isolated to the inefficiency of the battery chemistry at lower temperatures.

Indeed, as noted in a previous post, the Canadian model of the Clarity PHEV also features a battery heater, but I am unsure at what temperature threshold the resistive heater will engage and drain power from the battery under normal operation, apart from the -20F threshold to start the vehicle. If the Canadian Clarity's battery heating also kicks in around the freezing point, I think that it could be useful to use the Bolt as an example of how a battery heater can impact driving range. Again, perhaps a user more familiar with the operation of the Canadian Clarity can chime in and provide more information about the impact of its battery heater on range.

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

 

Batteries do have significant role in range reduction. Although not the actual cell used in the Clarity, this is from a spec sheet on an LG 21700:



Even without heat, cold batteries along with the higher rolling resistance and denser air that often accompany winter contribute to the range hit.

Vehicles with heat pumps are more efficient until it gets really cold. Some PHEVs (Hyundai/Kia) have no source of heat other than the ICE, so EV range can be effectively zero in them when it is very cold.

 

The 2 biggest flaws I see in the AAA test are that Page 2 says, “This page intentionally left blank” when clearly it is not. How can we accept anything as credible after that?

Second, actually first, while the batteries were charged at each ambient test temperature, the testing began within one hour of removing the batteries from the charge. Batteries coming off a charge will be warm and it is extremely unlikely that they will drop to 20F within one hour. This creates questionable results, in particular, for the cold temperature tests.

The scenario is what I explained previously, if you start with warm batteries you minimize the impact that cold temperatures have on the batteries and you minimize or eliminate the use of energy to warm the batteries.

Third, actually second, while laboratory tests are controllable and repeatable, I’m not convinced that any of the standards utilized actually represent the driving habits of any human on the planet. Or, that averaging them together does either. And, while theoretically equal for each vehicle, a dynamometer does not accurately represent the rolling and aerodynamic forces that would occur on a vehicle being driven on the road.

I’d also like to hear an explanation of how 40% of say, the battery in a Tesla 75 D, which would be ~29kWh’s, could be consumed by cabin heating while the car drove 148 miles, presumably in just a few hours. That’s roughly my daily (24 hour) winter power consumption to heat a 2500 sq/ft house with a heat pump, run a well pump, a refrigerator, chest freezer, a 425W ceramic plate heater in one bedroom for ~12 hours, washer, dryer (propane) dishwasher, power gobbling plasma TV for a few hours, lights, etc.

Whichever flawed test results we choose to accept, it is clear that EV’s lose 30-50% of their range when temperatures dip below freezing. This makes me happy that I don’t own one.

 

PHEVs also lose their range during cold weather making it even harder to drive in EV mode.
A BEV with 150+ miles of range (all but the Mini offer at least that) can easily handle a 50 mile commute in any weather. Even the longest range PHEV (the Clarity) would have trouble doing that year round.
The limited space for batteries in a PHEV and the resulting low range are emphasised during cold weather.

 

Of course they do. It isn’t any harder to drive in EV mode, there’s just less range.

Not true. If I lose 40% of the ~50 mile EV range, I’ve lost 20 miles of range. The car has a claimed range of 340 miles in HV, so it is theoretically good for 320. At the very least, 275. If a 300 mile EV loses 40% of its calmed range, it has lost 120 miles of range. It’s down to 180 and the 75D in the test only managed 148.

Sure, that’s plenty for a 50 mile trip. It would be a complete PITA for anyone who drove longer distances, even occasionally. They would be looking to charge at ~120 miles. A quick charge to 80% would have them charging again after ~100 miles.

So I can do 250+ in one shot. The 300 mile EV may need to charge twice. I can do 500 with one 5 minute stop, whereas the EV may have to make 4 or more stops. Again, glad I have the PHEV.

 

Hi guys, I don't use heat a lot since I live in California. But I assume, if you run in HV, I would imagine the Clarity would use the "free heat" from the ICE engine, no?

 

2019 Clarity PHEV. Warm weather ~ 60F+ we get about 55 EV. Cold weather ~ 35F we get about 41 without running climate, about 35 if we do. So 25% drop just due to temperature.

 

The majority of people I talk to about PHEVs are interested in using EV for as much of their driving as possible with the ICE as a backup. They need to be just as aware of the drop in winter range as a BEV driver.
BEVs are not significantly affected by reduced winter range for daily driving because their range far exceeds what is needed on a daily basis. If they plan on using them for extended road trips, reduced range and charging options do come into play. Many have other vehicles available if needed. In your old tech example of a 75D, very few people need 148 miles on a daily basis. For those that road trip in the winter, a PHEV or ICE might be a better choice, but with higher ranges and faster charging it is becoming less of an issue.