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Do electric vehicles work in cold weather?

Answer: Yes.

Closeup of an electric vehicle covered in snow while plugged in to charge.
Shutterstock/Kaca Skokanova
We really shouldn’t be having this debate in 2022, but alas, here we are. The Financial Times recently published a story claiming that electric vehicles “are still a luxury in a cold climate.” They say it’s because the batteries don’t perform well in cold temperatures.

Fortunately, TechCrunch’s Haje Jan Kamps is here to tell us all the reasons why that is untrue. Yes, batteries don’t like the cold, but neither do other machines like gas-powered cars. Many parts of the world where it gets truly frigid have created all sorts of ways to keep their combustion engines running happily in the cold, so it’s not unreasonable to suppose that the same can be done for battery-powered ones. Most EV batteries can be preconditioned when it’s cold, in which the car warms up the batteries, usually while it’s plugged in, before driving.

There’s also the fact that in Norway, definitely a cold-weather country, 91 percent of cars sold these days are reportedly electric. If a country that cold can still sell that many EVs, it’s hard to believe that frigid temperatures are a roadblock to adoption. If anything, a better argument would be that electric vehicles are still a luxury because of their price tag, or the lack of charging infrastructure. But it’s definitely not because of the cold.
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