Naturally, cold weather makes the battery even colder than normal, so charging without preconditioning will be slower than normal. Once earned up, the battery should charge just as quickly as it does in warmer weather – so long as the charge station is also working inside its optimum temperature window.
Battery range dropped 25% from spring to winter and 30% from summer to winter, with the researchers looking at temperatures near zero Fahrenheit for the coldest conditions and around 80 degrees in the summer. An electric vehicle charges during a snowstorm in Austria in 2020. K M Krause / Shutterstock
Yuasa, a producer of 12-volt car batteries, says: “Cold temperatures directly affect the performance of car batteries. In fact, at zero degrees celsius a battery will lose about 30 per cent of its cranking performance. If your car will not start it’s usually because there is an issue with your battery.”
Cold temperatures adversely affect EV batteries because they rely on chemical reactions to store and release electricity. Lithium-ion batteries – the most common cells used in electric and hybrid cars – work when lithium ions move from the anode to the cathode; cold slows this process down and restricts battery performance.
A battery charges when lithium ions stored in the cathode transfer back to the anode. On cold charging conditions, the ions flow less efficiently through the anode and the battery's capacity diminishes. 1. Preheat your battery Most EVs today automatically pre-heat their batteries when they know they’re heading to a charger.
Because batteries perform less well when cold, electric cars generally have less range when temperatures fall through the winter months. EV charging company Pod Point says: “Electric vehicle batteries operate via a complex chemical process.