Battery Capacity in Cold Weather

[Ewan555]

has anyone had a major issue with the battery capacity with the ZS EV in cold weather? At times I was getting as low as 260km at full charge when the maximum stated range is 320km.

 

[Coulomb]

It's a well known issue that range reduces in cold weather. But is it really that cold in Melbourne at present? I'm thinking that you might have an unbalanced HV battery.

Are you occasionally charging to 100% and leaving the "charger" on after it reaches 100% SoC?

 

[hmadsen]

The cold affects every car, no matter the "fuel"

The reason it seems to impact electric cars more is quite simple.

An ICE car only has an efficiency of 25%

So for every 4 gallons you put into it, only 1 is used for moving the car, the other 3 are lost as friction.

EV's are more in the range of 80/90% efficient.

So if the temperature makes the car use 10% more "fuel" to move, then the EV loses 8/9% of range, but the ICE car only loses 2½%

Or atleast this is how, someone explained it to me.

Another factor is heating....The EV uses electricity to heat the car, while the ICE car uses the abundance of waste energy the engine produces, so in winter this also further impacts the energy usage.

Especially on cars without a heatpump.

The ZS EV uses maybe 3-4 times more energy on the heating, than a car with a heatpump.

 

[Tim Green]

One advantage of resistance type heating over a heat-pump is the warm-up time which is considerably longer with the heat-pump as the system takes much longer to become operational. Thus for short trips or where the heating can be turned off after a short time, the resistance heater will be better than a heat-pump.
However, on long trips the story is very different....

 

[hmadsen]

One advantage of resistance type heating over a heat-pump is the warm-up time which is considerably longer with the heat-pump as the system takes much longer to become operational. Thus for short trips or where the heating can be turned off after a short time, the resistance heater will be better than a heat-pump.
However, on long trips the story is very different....

While you are offcourse absolutely correct, this is only an advantage if doing an unplanned short trip.

My other car has a heatpump and it is quite easy to go to the app and tell it to be ready at X o'clock, then it will be ready, warmed up and have the battery warmed as well. If leaving for work at the same time every day, this can be programmed one time and then it just does it every day

 

[Tim Green]

But not at the price of an MG ZS!

 

[hmadsen]

But not at the price of an MG ZS!

No and this is offcourse something to remember.

Even before we got the ZS EV, we reminded eachother NOT to try and compare it to our Tesla Model Y, but instead compare it to the car it replaced, which was a 2012 Corsa 1.0

If i were to compare it to the Tesla it would fall short in most things (Except radars reversing sensors and Android Auto ) but that is a car that cost almost double of what we paid for the ZS EV while, on sale here.

Compared to the Corsa, it is better in 100% of all categories.