First published on Tech Skeptic Goes Electric, December 20, 2025
Throughout this Substack I’ve been chronicling my day-to-day life with an electric car. One of my goals has been to help others know what to expect and perhaps offer some insights into how to navigate the the unexpected differences of an electric vehicle. Alas the fact that I live in the Arizona desert means that I’ve missed an important topic:
What happens to electric cars in the cold?
I apologize that I don’t have much firsthand experience with this question. Right now Phoenix is having a heatwave. We have been setting record temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s. Not only does that make afternoon walks lovely, the temperatures are practically perfect for EV batteries. In that temperature range EV batteries are at their most efficient, which means my car’s charging times are low and its “miles per kilowatt hour” traveled are high.
But I do understand that many people in the northern hemisphere are having a very different experience at the moment. The temperatures are cold, snow is in the ground, and wind only makes things worse. And yes, those conditions affect electric cars differently than gasoline powered cars.
Let’s start with the downsides. Simply put, while EV batteries don’t like hot temperatures, they really don’t like cold temperatures. Batteries are only as good as the chemical reactions going on inside of them and as hinted at above, these reactions happen most efficiently around 75 degrees Fahrenheit / 25 degrees Celsius. When batteries get significantly colder than that, the reactions slow down. Slower reactions mean it’s harder to both get energy into and out of the battery.
Thankfully engineers have designed today’s advanced EVs with this in mind and most cars have systems that heat up the battery packs so that they can work reasonably efficiently. Of course, the heating systems are powered by the EV’s batteries, which means that in the cold EV batteries have to do triple duty: heat themselves, drive the car, and run all the other systems including the heaters and the seat warmers (ahhhhh…… that’s nice). The result? In the cold it can take a lot longer to charge your EV and take more energy per mile to drive it.
The differences can be pretty dramatic. An Idaho National Laboratory study found that EV batteries charged 36 percent slower at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (i.e. the temperature that water freezes) than at 77 degrees. If you charge your car overnight on a home charger you probably wouldn’t notice any difference. But if you were driving across the country in the winter and charging along the way, you are going to have more time to sip your hot cocoa during your refueling stops.
The more immediate concern for many, however, is the decreased range of EVs in the winter. Kris Rifa, a Norwegian who spends a great deal of time posting videos of himself testing EVs, decided to see how far some high end luxury EVs would make it in the cold. He ran his tests at -5 Celsius (23 Fahrenheit) at 75 mph and found that the Porsche Macan’s range dropped to 63% of its official range, the Audi Q6 E-trim dropped to 64%, and the Polestar 3 dropped to 57%.
I’ve found that my car’s range drops a fair amount at highway speeds, so the weather impact on these cars might not be so extreme in city driving. But the cold is definitely playing a role in these reduced ranges. Consumer Reports estimates that on average the range of an EV drops 25% when the temperature changes from 65 degrees Fahrenheit to 18 degrees.*
But the news isn’t all bad for EVs in the winter. There’s a lot of evidence that electric cars actually drive better through the snow and over ice than internal combustion cars. Experts point to at least three technical advantages that electric cars have that make them particularly stable in slippery conditions.
First, EVs have a lower center of gravity than most other cars. Most of the weight of EVs is in their batteries, which designers have positioned as low to the bottom of the car as possible. With all the weight at the bottom, EVs don’t roll as much when driven through a turn. This lack of body roll means that the wheels of the car remain more firmly planted on the ground. The better the wheels connect with the road, the less likely your EV will slide.
Second, EVs typically have close to a 50/50 weight distribution, i.e. the front half of the car weighs about the same as the back half of the car. Getting a balanced weight distribution is difficult with an internal combustion car because engines are really heavy and they have to go somewhere. Over the past several decades, designers have usually put the engine in the front of passenger cars. This makes it easy to access the engine for maintenance and gives plenty of room for passengers and cargo in the middle and back. The downside is that this puts extra weight on the front wheels and that can make a car’s handling a little awkward. EV designers don’t have a big heavy thing that that they have to find a place for, so its not hard for them to carefully distribute weight from front to back. This even distribution enhances the overall stability of EVs.
Finally, there is electronic traction control. This technology, which has been around since at least the 1970s, uses sensors to tell a computer how fast each wheel is spinning. If a wheel starts slipping the computer can reduce the amount of power sent to that wheel to regain traction. While most cars on the road today are equipped with traction control, EV traction control is extra effective because the power coming out of an electric motor can be adjusted much more quickly and precisely than the power coming out of a gasoline engine. Precise control means less slipping on ice, snow, and mud.
OK, so I can go on and on about technical theories, but the ultimate question is whether this actually translates to the road? Again, I haven’t driven my EV much beyond the desert yet so I can’t speak from personal experience. But there are a lot of EV drivers out there who love to talk about their time in the snow.
A couple of years ago siouxu wrote this post about his winter experiences in an Audi EV in a reddit thread:
My fat E-tron is outstanding in the snow. I drove it in a two foot storm and passed about everything else that high centered while it just acted like a little plow. I got my 4Runner stuck twice in our country driveway while the E-tron just happily made it’s way along the same spots.
As you can see, at least this owner is convinced that EVs are great in the snow. Alas, as mentioned above, there are definitely drawbacks with a cold electric car and siouxu had that experience as well. After explaining the benefits, he offered this caveat:
However I had a rather harrowing experience in a freak storm that dropped temperatures to -15F with a 40mph headwind. That thing had no business making it but it did with 1% left at 1.3mi/kwh.
For the record, 1.3 mi/kwh is an incredibly low efficiency for an EV. I usually get at least 4 mi/kwh in my car in city driving. But I can imagine that wintery conditions, like the incredibly cold temperatures coupled with serious winds that siouxu describes, could have that effect. The result could be a car that is “supposed” to get 300 miles per charge only being able to make 100 miles.
So should you be afraid of owning an EV because you live in a place with frigid temperatures? I don’t think so. Even after that scary drive, siouxu was still happy to brag about their successes and seems ready to plow on through the snow with their EV. And let’s not forget that the country adopting EVs faster than any other is Norway. I’m pretty sure most Norwegians aren’t going to park their EVs every time it snows.
As with most other aspects of EV ownership, there are a few changes to your daily practices that might help you maximize the benefits and reduce the drawbacks of winter weather:
1. Put winter tires on your car. There’s a clear consensus amongst experts and regular drivers that snow tires can radically increase your traction in bad weather regardless of the type of car you drive.
2. Keep your EV in a warm garage. If you can start your car with batteries that are already at a comfortable temperature, your car will charge easily and you won’t waste extra energy warming the batteries up.
3. You might want to focus on driving around town rather than cross-country. The range of your EV is likely to be less predictable in the winter than the summer. If you hit an unexpected snowstorm you’ll experience a lot less charge anxiety if you aren’t too far from home.
After you’ve made a few winter adjustments?
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
*In a previous post I noted that high temperatures can have an impact on EV range. Based on these studies it seems that most EV drivers are likely to suffer worse range problems in the winter than the summer.