Tesla Drivers in Chicago Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather »

In the New York Times (unlocked article):

In a painfully chilly parking lot in Chicago on Tuesday, Tesla drivers huddled in their cars waiting for a charge.

I understand that I’m privileged that I live in California and that I’m able to charge my EV at home. However, for people who live where it gets to below 0 temperatures and who can’t charge at home, they have to rely on Tesla’s supercharger network or another DC fast charging solution.

We had to do this with our first EV. Since we lived in an apartment, we had to top off at DC fast chargers.

“It ends up being very difficult to make battery electric vehicles work in very cold conditions,” Mr. Brouwer said. “You cannot charge a battery as fast or discharge a battery as fast if it’s cold. There’s no physical way of getting around.”

There’s no way to get around the way how a battery works in cold weather. But we do need to have better access to level 2 charging so people can charge at home overnight.

This is an infrastructure problem, not an EV problem.

The 2022 Mazda MX-30 misses the market, but does it matter? »

We reported before that Mazda made the MX-30 slower “to feel more like a gas car.” Throughout the drive, we did not find acceleration and power delivery to be particularly inspiring. Mazda told us that its reason is that EVs with instant torque can be too “herky-jerky,” which can ruin the passenger experience. So Mazda muted the “jerkiness” of acceleration to follow the same curve as an ICE car.

This is absolutely baffling. The instant torque is one of the benefits of owning an electric vehicle.