Energy Used - Ontario Winter

Even though I'm in Canada, I keep my car in US units. It's just a personal preference. 260 Wh/km equals about 418 Wh/mi which is actually not bad for this weather. I have a round-trip commute of about 90 miles (145 km) and it is mostly freeway. I think I'm seeing numbers a bit north of 418 Wh/mi whereas last summer I could easily achieve 300 Wh/mi on the same trip.

On the weekends when I'm just doing short trips in town, I'll get numbers around 800 Wh/mi in the cold between charges. This is because the shorter trips means the battery keeps having to be re-heated after it sits and cools down.

The best thing you can do is slow down. I know 100 km/h isn't easy on the 401, but if you stay in the right lane it is doable.

I have had mine 3 weeks now and I am averaging 287 w/km, but I do a lot of short trips.

@mcfadyena - I posted some results of an experiment I ran over the the New England forum (Effects of Winter on Energy Consumption). I tried to put some number to what we've been experiencing.

mcfadyena said:

My average energy use is sitting at 260 w/km ....
Is this the same average other Ontario travellers are seeing?

Click to expand...

I have to say the winter has been quite brutal on my range (amongst other things). I usually even out around 370-380 Wh/km. I think this car is meant for people that can park the car inside a garage out of the chilling overnight winds. My car doesn't typically see indoors, unless I'm going through a car wash, which hasn't been good with these -35 days.



I usually start the cabin heat about an hour before I leave in the morning and sometimes I still get a message that regen is disabled. When I leave from work (open Vinci parking lot with no 110V), most of my ride home I don't have regen braking (even with range mode off and the battery heating). I usually get about 1/3 of my rated and that's what I bank on when planning out a day. I've been caught a couple times when having to run around a lot during the day with stops just long enough to have the battery chill again.

I've learned to work around the range issue. I also pull out my trusty charge port opener (bank card) when I get home. I'm definitely looking forward to my next place with a garage

When I'm on the 401 rolling in sub 0 temperatures my challenge to myself is to try to keep my car (a 60) in the range of 200-210 w/km. To me that is the magic number to have some confidence that any range degradation related to cold temperature won't be too sudden. I use my car mostly on the highway and have done quite a bit of driving this winter. In December, I had an experience letting the magic number get up to 250-280 w/km as a result of the triple threat of extreme cold (-18), snow and wind...and this was with me still doing my standby trick of lowering my speed right down into the 60-70 km range. It was frustrating because of my own self-imposed expectations, based on past highway experiences with the car. What I mean by that is that, until this experience, I had found that I could always get back to my magic 200-210 w/km by simply lowering my speed almost no matter what it was like outside. So, in effect, I kept 'hoping' the car would get back down to 210 from being up in the 250-280 range and it just never did. The end result had me rolling into an emergency charge stop with only 2 km charge left. Basically, it was all my fault, and I was dreaming, but expectations can be hard to break...and I have learned from it.

What Doug said. I find that in extreme conditions where everyone is forced under 60kph, the pack heater is on full time and you never get full regen back. Speeding up to 70-80kph allows the motor heat to offset the pack heating needs. Range dies in a hurry when the cabin and pack heaters are both on and you are moving slowly, despite the efficiency of the slower speed. I can still make all of my ordinary trips on an 85 in -25c, but I can't do two long runs in one day if both involve cold soak, whereas in warmer weather both in the same day are easy.