Fortunately, the Tesla class has servants to send out for food and supplies. (UPDATED)

/

Chicago-area Tesla charging stations lined with dead cars in freezing cold: 'A bunch of dead robots out here'

Desperate Tesla owners in and around Chicago were seen trying to charge their vehicles with no luck amid frigid temperatures that have gripped the Midwest.

Charging stations have essentially turned into car graveyards in recent days as temperatures have dropped to the negative double digits, Fox Chicago reported. 

"Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent," Tyler Beard, who had been trying to recharge his Tesla at an Oak Brook, Illinois Tesla supercharging station since Sunday afternoon, told the news outlet. "And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday."

Beard and several other Tesla owners were trying to charge their cars amid long lines and abandoned cars at other Tesla charging stations in the Chicago area, the news station reported. 

…

Kevin Sumrak told the Fox station that he landed Sunday night at Chicago O'Hare International Airport and found his Tesla dead and unable to start. He was forced to hire a flatbed tow truck to haul the vehicle to a working charging station. 

One expert told the news outlet that cold weather can impact the ability of electric vehicles to charge properly. 

"It’s not plug and go. You have to precondition the battery, meaning that you have to get the battery up to the optimal temperature to accept a fast charge," said Mark Bilek of the Chicago Auto Trade Association.

Out in the Cowboy State, things are no better:


Frozen Batteries: How Do Electric Cars Hold Up In Wyoming Blizzards?

A 2019 study by AAA found that when temperatures drop to 20 degrees and the heat inside the car is on, driving range is decreased on electric vehicles by up to 41%.

Taking A Charge

The cold not only degrades the power output of EV batteries, it will also prevent them from taking a charge. 

Patrick Lawson, owner of Wild West EV and an EV enthusiast, was pushing the limits of his first Tesla Model S just to see what it could do. On a day when it was around minus 25 degrees out, he was driving home and ran out of charge. 

He didn’t want to get it towed and wasn’t far from his house. So, he took a generator out to the vehicle and hooked it up to the car. 

“I left it out there all day, and it didn’t do anything,” he said. 

Teslas have a system to warm the battery so it can take a charge, but 120 volts at 10 amps isn’t enough to heat up the battery. 

As it so happened, there was a guy nearby who had a 240-volt charger. Lawson pushed the Tesla to the guy’s garage. After 10 minutes of charging, Lawson was able to drive it home. 

Reduced Range

The batteries in Teslas and other EVs also lose range in wintery weather. A 2019 study by AAA found that when temperatures drop to 20 degrees and the heat inside the car is on, driving range is decreased by up to 41%. 

That means a 400-mile range, which is the upper level for EVs, is reduced to 236 miles. Older EVs with lots of miles on them have ranges around 250 miles when it’s warm out. The 41% reduction in range on one of those can leave a driver stranded, especially if the car leaves without a full charge. 

Consumer Reports did a more extensive study this year on 70 hybrids and EVs in temperatures around 16 degrees, which is still considerably warmer than some winter days in Wyoming. 

A Ford Mustang Mach-E, which has a range of 270 miles when it’s warm out, is reduced to 188 on a cold day. The Tesla Model Y drops from 326 miles of range to 186 miles. 

Mandates Versus Demand

“I think it’s widely understood that cold climates and EVs don’t coexist well right now,” said Vince Bodiford, owner of the auto enthusiast website The Weekend Drive. 

In Wyoming, with long distances between services and a cold climate, EV performance in cold is another limitation to their appeal among Cowboy State drivers. 

“It’s certainly not going to make it easier for them,” Bodiford said. 

And here’s an account by some Canadian beaver about taking an extended trip in a KIA EV. Sounds like absolute hell, even with a gas-powered truck supplied by his editors to ride shotgun. Four stops to travel 500 miles, including an overnight stay at a motel to take advantge of its charger, heat turned off to conserve battery life (at -37 degrees), and the little Greenie takes away a lesson his indoctrinators woukld be proud ofL

That got me thinking about how spoiled gas-powered cars have made us, how dependent we are on energy—whether it be petroleum or electricity—and how much of it we mindlessly consume without ever wondering if we’ll run out. 

See? That’s our problem: we’ve become adjusted to traveling where and when we wish, havig abundant food and warm houses. These must all go, Comrades, for the good of The People!

UPDATE: Here’s a story from our neighbor up north about the joys of EVing in the cold. It would be nice if Maine’s regulators — they claim to be independent of the legislature — viewed it before resuming their final meeting, suspended because of a snowstorm, ironically, that will prohibit sales of gasoline powered cars after 2034.

But they won’t, because “science”.