If you don’t raise an “electric dad”, you will never know how cold the winter is.

Author | Zhou Jifeng

Editor | Jin Yufan

When winter comes, a large number of electric car owners will suddenly appear on major social platforms such as WeChat Moments, and even a lot of people will appear. Talented jokester:

"The air conditioner of the electric car stopped heating, so I put on a down jacket, hat, gloves, and even a small blanket in the car."

"Electric car It’s not covered. It’s only 100 kilometers long after it’s fully charged! Let’s turn on the air conditioner in this weather. I’m worried that the car won’t be able to drive to the company. If I don’t turn on the air conditioner, I’m worried that people won’t be able to get to the company.”

“Don’t dare to drive on the highway. I’m afraid that the battery life won’t last; I don’t dare to turn on the heater because I’m afraid that the battery life will drop drastically.”

These complaints come from such a group of people. They either took a fancy to some cities' preferential policies such as unlimited number or travel restrictions for electric vehicles, or to save energy and environmental protection, or simply wanted to experience new technology, so they bought electric vehicles.

Electric vehicles can be found all over the world, but in the cold winter months, car owners in areas with temperatures below minus 5 degrees Celsius need to be more patient with electric vehicles. With the Qinling Mountains and Huaihe River as the boundary, car owners in the north will especially understand why electric cars are ridiculed as "electric dads" - a fully charged electric car can lose half of its power if left alone overnight; the cruising range is discounted by 30% or 80%. The price is discounted or even 50% off, so you have to charge it every other day; in order to save electricity, you don’t dare to turn on the air conditioner when the weather is several degrees below zero. The behavior of frequently charging pure electric cars in winter is also called "serving daddy".

What’s terrible is that the winter of 2021 is colder than in previous years. In recent days, the body temperature in many places has generally been below -25, and Beijing even set a record for the lowest temperature since the 21st century. For electric vehicle owners, they once again face a nightmare, and they also use the wisdom of supporting the electric dad family: calculate the actual cruising range and plan the trip in advance based on whether the air conditioner is turned on, the highway is on, and the outdoor temperature. The air conditioner must also be strictly controlled, such as the maximum wind speed and the temperature control...

Xiaoan, who lives in Hebei, is having a bit of a breakdown in this cold winter. It all stems from the new purchase she recently made. After buying a BAIC EX360, she discovered that raising an electric dad has become a Schrödinger-style numbers game.

Xiao An’s daily commute is 20 kilometers, and her car is her important means of transportation. The reasons for choosing BAIC are also very simple. First, it is cheap, priced at 80,000. Second, it has a new energy license plate with no restrictions on travel or number, making it easy to use. But this cheap and convenient car also brought her a series of troubles.

The official website shows that the constant-speed cruising range of this car is 398 kilometers, and the 4S store clerk said that the actual measurement is 360 kilometers. But Xiao An discovered that even when fully charged, the mileage on the car's central control screen reached up to 320 kilometers and never reached 360 kilometers.

In winter, low temperatures significantly shorten the cruising range of electric vehicles. "The current actual cruising range is between 260-280 kilometers. The lower the temperature, the less the cruising range, which is equivalent to a 20% discount on the cruising range in winter. And the more miles you drive, the more power you lose. In summer, you basically run 10 kilometers, if you lose 10 kilometers of battery life, it will be more than 10 kilometers in winter, which is equivalent to actually running 10 kilometers, but the battery shows that it has consumed 15 kilometers."

For this reason, Xiao An has serious range anxiety. , which almost became her daily nightmare. "I panic when I see the mileage number decreasing. So I have bought it for almost a year, and I usually charge it immediately when the mileage is 100 kilometers. If the mileage is less than 100, I dare not go out."

< p> Zhang Ming, who lives in Haidian, Beijing, also discovered that his Geely Emgrand has recently lost too much power and its battery life has been shrinking. When he bought an electric car for commuting, he made some calculations: the distance from his home in Wudaokou to work in Wangjing is only 17 kilometers. In summer, he only consumes 14 kilometers of mileage, and he can charge it up to twice a week; but in winter, it is also 17 kilometers. Kilometers, the mileage displayed by the electric car has become 30 kilometers, and the power is drained very quickly, so it has to be recharged every other day.

One night, the temperature in Beijing dropped to minus 13 degrees Celsius. Zhang Ming fully charged the car. The mileage dropped from 300km to 220km before the car set off early the next morning. "Nearly 100km of electricity is just gone."

In fact, car owners know very well that the mileage information displayed on the central control screen of electric vehicles is estimated based on the power consumption per 10km or 100km. For the remaining driving range, this calculation method is closer to the ideal state of uniform linear motion and does not have much reference significance for actual driving. In winter, the mileage information on the central control screen becomes even more inaccurate. Car owners must rely on their own experience, such as whether the air conditioner is turned on, whether the car is on the highway, and the outdoor temperature to "calculate" the actual cruising range.

Wang Li bought an electric car in 2017. In her fourth year of driving, she clearly felt the aging of the battery and the driving range dropped rapidly.

"I usually estimate the cruising range. Basically, I discount the displayed mileage by 20%, leaving at least 20 kilometers of cruising range for myself."

Chen Mingmian, who lives in Tianjin Because I bought a new BYD Yuan EV360 with a range of 300 kilometers, I live a budget-conscious travel life: the first thing I do when I get home every day is to charge the electric car; I need to plan my trip before going out every day, and decide whether to turn on the air conditioner according to the distance of the trip; Even if he turns on the air conditioner, he has clear restrictions. The wind speed can be turned up to the third gear, and the temperature should be controlled at around 26 degrees. If the journey exceeds 100 kilometers, or if high-speed travel is required, a gas vehicle is the first choice, and electric vehicles are basically not considered.

Another group that supports electric vehicles is online ride-hailing drivers. They are miserable when facing the shrinkage of battery life in winter, and it is even more difficult to charge. A person in charge of an online ride-hailing franchisee said frankly: "It's too difficult to fully charge now. It used to take almost an hour to fully charge, but now it takes two hours, and it's very difficult to fully charge. Basically, it can only reach 80. %. ”

The owners of electric cars priced under 200,000 yuan are not the only ones who support electric dads. Even if you buy a mid-to-high-end electric car, you still have to face the problem of low-temperature mileage degradation.

An owner of both a WM EX5 and a Xpeng G3 found helplessly that the cruising range of the two cars has dropped to just over 100 kilometers. A NIO ES8 owner also admitted that when the air conditioner is turned on in winter, the cruising range is basically discounted by 40%, but NIO has a battery replacement service, so the experience is quite comfortable.

In previous winters, the weather was not so cold, and car owners agreed not to turn on the air conditioner. But this year is different. Weather forecasts show that some areas in central and eastern my country will experience the lowest temperatures this century. Traveling without air conditioning in the cold winter of minus ten degrees Celsius is definitely an extreme sport. "It's really too cold this year. If you turn on the air conditioner, you can get a 50% discount on the mileage. If you don't turn on the air conditioner, you can still keep 70%. Battery life or 'life-saving' is a question." Zhang Ming said.

In order to save electricity, an online ride-hailing driver came up with some tricks: when the car is not particularly cold, the heater is usually turned on to first gear, and the temperature can be adjusted to a higher temperature first, and then wait until the interior is warm. Later, fix the temperature to about 26 degrees.

No electric vehicle can escape the fate of sharp reduction in cruising range in winter.

The person in charge of the above-mentioned online car-hailing franchisee is in Tianjin. After observing the decay of electric vehicle range for three or four years, he discovered this pattern: In the north, those with a cruising range of more than 500 kilometers are the so-called Generally, in winter, when the temperature drops below minus 5 degrees Celsius, long-range models will lose 200 kilometers of battery power, leaving about 300 kilometers of cruising range. Those with a cruising range of less than 350 kilometers are considered short-range electric vehicles, which are suitable for winter. The power loss is basically around 150 kilometers, which is equivalent to only about 200 kilometers of power left.

The degree of power loss is also different depending on the temperature.

Wang Cheng, director of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Laboratory of the Institute of Nuclear Energy and New Energy Technology of Tsinghua University, told Shenran that electric vehicles can generally achieve a longer cruising range in the spring and autumn (around 20 degrees Celsius), and below zero 5 degrees Celsius is an important dividing line. When the temperature is below minus 5 degrees Celsius, electric vehicles will experience a significant reduction in battery life.

This means that in most northern areas north of the Qinling Mountains and the Huaihe River, electric vehicles are basically unable to escape the fate of a sharp reduction in cruising range after winter. The situation in the southern areas is better.

“In addition, if there is warm air blowing in place (such as traffic jams, waiting in place, etc.), frequent acceleration and deceleration, long-term storage of vehicles at extremely low temperatures, etc., the cruising range will be reduced. The phenomenon will be more serious. "This is not difficult to explain why even if some people fully charge their electric vehicles at night, their electric vehicles will still lose half of their cruising range the next morning after leaving them alone overnight.

But why does low temperature become a range killer? Many industry insiders said that the problem mainly lies in the battery.

Wang Cheng also agrees with this view, "The decline in the cruising range of electric vehicles in winter is caused by a combination of factors. The main reason is the performance degradation of power batteries under low temperature conditions."

Many reasons can cause the performance of lithium batteries to decline at low temperatures. He gave examples, for example, the concentration of the electrolyte will increase at low temperatures, the diffusion coefficient will decrease, and the charge transfer resistance (Rct) inside the battery will increase significantly; For another example, the precipitation of the negative electrode of lithium batteries in low-temperature environments will become serious, and the precipitated metallic lithium will react with the electrolyte, and its products will be deposited, resulting in an increase in the thickness of the solid electrolyte interface (SEI).

The electrode materials and electrolyte materials have a great impact on the low-temperature performance of the battery, and therefore will also affect the winter cruising range of electric vehicles.

At present, the power batteries of electric vehicles are mainly lithium batteries, which are divided into lithium manganate, lithium iron phosphate, lithium nickel cobalt manganate, that is, ternary lithium, lithium cobalt oxide, etc.

Among them, ternary lithium batteries combine many advantages of ternary materials, and the addition of nickel greatly increases the battery capacity and energy density of the battery. They have rapidly occupied the market in recent years; lithium iron phosphate started earlier and the technology development is relatively mature. The safety performance is outstanding; the other two materials have less application range than the first two; in addition, BYD has also researched and launched blade batteries.

An expert who has long studied batteries analyzed Shenran. Generally speaking, ternary lithium batteries have better low-temperature performance than lithium iron phosphate batteries. Although blade battery technology is the latest battery technology launched by BYD, it is essentially a lithium iron phosphate battery. It is just that BYD uses technology to make the energy density of blade batteries close to ternary lithium batteries, but the safety and cost are compared to ternary lithium batteries. Better batteries.

Judging from the recent actual situation, the performance of blade batteries is not satisfactory. Recently, a Shanxi netizen broke the news that he had driven the ultra-long-range BYD Han EV for a month and a half. After many tests in winter, he found that its actual range after a single charge was only 230 kilometers, while the officially promoted test mileage was To 600 kilometers, the cruising range has been reduced by two-thirds.

However, lithium iron phosphate batteries are relatively cheap, and many car companies still choose them as power batteries. Take Tesla as an example. On October 1, 2020, Tesla officially announced that the price of the domestic Model 3 would be reduced. An important reason for the price reduction is that the power battery of the standard range version was changed from ternary lithium to lithium iron phosphate.

A Beijing-based lithium iron phosphate Model 3 owner has realized the difference between the two: in winter, the actual cruising range of his electric car drops from 468 kilometers to 220 kilometers, which basically means it’s gone. 50% off; and his friend who bought the ternary lithium version of Model 3 only got a 20% discount on the winter range of his electric vehicle.

In addition to batteries, turning on heating and air conditioning is also one of the important culprits of power consumption.

"In winter, the heat source of fuel vehicles comes from the preheating of the engine. The conversion efficiency of the engine into power is only 40%, and the remaining 60% of the heat conversion is enough to meet the heating needs of our passengers. But electric vehicles Without engine preheating, all heating requires an energy source." Dai Kangwei, deputy director of BAIC New Energy Research Institute, once expressed this to the media. To put it bluntly, electric vehicle owners consume more electricity when they turn on the heating and air conditioning in winter.

There are currently two types of pure electric vehicle air conditioners on the market, one is PTC resistance wire air conditioner, and the other is heat pump air conditioner. An industry insider said that the former is widely used because of its price advantage, but the efficiency coefficient of the latter is 2-3 times that of traditional resistance heaters and is more energy-saving. Among the models currently on sale in the market, only some high-end models are equipped with the latter. High-end cars such as Weilai ES6 and BMW iX3, as well as Model Y, which has recently been desperately reduced in price, are also equipped with heat pump air conditioners.

In extremely low-temperature environments, the efficiency of vehicle-mounted power electronic devices, motors and other equipment may also decrease.

All in all, in winter, the cruising range of electric vehicles in the north is not as good as that in the south; in terms of models, SUVs, MPVs and other models have larger windward areas and heavier bodies. When equipped with batteries of the same capacity, , the cruising range is generally not as good as that of cars. In addition, electric vehicles equipped with ternary lithium batteries are slightly better at shrinking battery life in winter.

When winter comes, the cruising range is often discounted by 20% or even 50%. The number of charging times is forced to increase and they have to be charged every other day. Many car owners have to rush for this every day.

But the problem is, charging is difficult. Generally speaking, electric vehicle charging is divided into fast charging and slow charging. Frequent fast charging will quickly shorten the battery life. Nowadays, the common wisdom is that "slow charging is the main thing and fast charging is the supplement", but slow charging requires fixed charging piles.

A reality is that some people have bought a car but do not have a parking space, so it is difficult to have an exclusive private charging pile. BAIC New Energy spokesperson Lian Qingfeng disclosed a set of research data to the media: about 70% of car users in China do not have fixed parking spaces, and only 40% to 50% of new energy car users can install dedicated charging piles.

Without private charging piles, there are not many choices left for car owners. Yaoyao from Hangzhou is facing such a dilemma. Because the parking space is too expensive, she can only choose to rent a parking space. Her original plan was to install a detachable charging pile in the rented parking space, but after all, it is a rented parking space and the electricity bill is unknown. Who cares? I have to give up in the end. "Now I charge at the neighbor's charging station every day, or run around with the charging station on my back." Yaoyao didn't know what to do next.

Many people choose to take desperate risks in order to charge their electric dads. Chen Ming lives on the first floor, so he chose to run the charging cable from the house to the ground for charging.

Even if you choose fast charging, it is not that easy to grab public charging piles.

Sun Yihang works in Beijing Financial Street. There is a shopping mall nearby and there are only six charging piles. He often cannot get a charging pile.

"There are more and more electric vehicles now, and there are obviously not enough charging piles. We often have to queue up. The longest time I waited for a charging pile was 40 minutes. In addition, charging is slow in winter. It usually takes an hour to fully charge." It takes nearly two hours to consume electricity. Charging is now Sun Yihang's biggest headache.

Expensive electricity bills are another issue that needs to be considered. Xiao An, who has been driving an electric car for a year, has never charged for electricity outside because he thinks the electricity bill is too expensive. "Public charging piles charge both electricity and service fees, and the electricity fee starts at 1.2 yuan/kWh. And the charge for home use is only 50 cents per unit. For an ordinary worker, I can only choose to save electricity. Turn on the air conditioner less."

Why do we still need to raise an "electric dad" if he is so difficult to take care of?

If you ask this question, some electric car owners will give out a wry smile. For those who need to face the plight of electric vehicles in winter, the label is basically like this: for the sake of a green card and no restrictions on traffic and numbers, they rely on electric vehicles for commuting. They don’t have enough money to replace long-range electric vehicles, and they don’t have fixed charging piles. .

In fact, with the development of technology, more and more models with a driving range of more than 600 kilometers have appeared on the market. However, the driving range is directly proportional to the cost of the vehicle. The longer the driving range, , the price will inevitably be higher. Most electric car owners who can afford high-endurance configurations also have their own independent charging piles, and even buying electric cars is more of a taster. In addition to electric cars, they also own fuel vehicles.

But for most users who really need electric vehicles for transportation, Weilai, which costs 300,000 to 400,000 yuan, and Tesla, which costs more than 200,000 yuan, may be out-of-reach luxuries. Most of the spending power is less than 200,000. "Weilai and Tesla are sky-high prices for me. As a newly graduated worker, I just wanted to buy an electric car for transportation, but I didn't expect to encounter so much trouble." Xiao An smiled bitterly.

Fortunately, the country is carrying out relevant infrastructure construction. In April 2020, State Grid launched a new round of charging pile construction. It plans to invest 2.7 billion yuan in charging pile construction and add 78,000 new charging piles. The projects are distributed in 24 provinces (cities) including Beijing and Tianjin, covering public* **, dedicated, logistics, sanitation, community and port shore power and other types.

Technology is also gradually making breakthroughs. Wang Cheng said that in order to solve the problem of power battery performance degradation in low-temperature environments, a number of studies are already underway, such as the development of electrolytes, electrode materials, electrode structures, and heat pump air-conditioning technology that can adapt to low-temperature environments.

Wang Cheng is also promoting the concept of hydrogen batteries. He believes that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be a better choice for northern regions in the future, and there will be no obvious reduction in cruising range in low temperature environments. "Under the current technical conditions, fuel cell vehicles can basically achieve cold starts at minus 30 degrees Celsius, and fuel cells currently generally work at around 70 degrees Celsius and are a heat source, so they can provide power to the cockpit in winter without additional power consumption. Heating. ”

*The title picture and the accompanying pictures are from Pexels. At the request of the interviewees, Xiaoan, Zhang Ming, Wang Li, Chen Ming, Yaoyao and Sun Yihang are pseudonyms in the article.