How electric vehicles handle the North Dakota cold

BISMARCK, ND (KFYR) – Projections for electric vehicles estimate that 43% of cars on the road in the United States will be electric by 2030, according to Bloomberg.

The biggest question about electric vehicles in North Dakota is how they’ll handle the North Dakota cold. There’s plenty of cold in place right now and more on the way this week.

Your News Leader got the perspective of someone who owns an electric vehicle on how it’s performing in the winter months. He says he’s having to charge his car more often, but he doesn’t need to let his car warm up as you would a gasoline-powered vehicle.

“Right, and it’s actually because it’s more efficient. You’re actually turning almost all of the energy into what you need, whether it’s moving the car or heat in the car, versus you’re losing a lot of that in the gasoline engine because first up, you need to warm it up before you can get heat out of it,” said Tesla driver Brian Kopp.

Eide Ford in Mandan has an all-wheel-drive electric vehicle on display in their showroom. They expect demand for electric vehicles to increase, and as the vehicles become more available, they also expect prices to decrease.

“Yeah, I think we’ll get more as parts and microchips and all that stuff becomes available. Ford, for example, is building a new plant in Tennessee, I believe, and so we’ll see more electric vehicles coming down the shoot. If not this year, then probably the next year,” said Adam Griffith, sales manager at Eide Ford in Mandan.

As far as how electric cars handle on ice, Kopp says EVs will win every time due to their advanced computer systems being able to respond more quickly than a gas vehicle.

“So, your traction is almost identical breaking versus acceleration, whereas in a gas car when you hit the throttle it has to spin first to know it’s spinning. The electric car can barely slip one tire a little bit and the power is immediately put back to where there was traction,” said Kopp.

When it comes to charging your vehicle, there are plenty of useful websites and apps to help plan any long or short-distance trip. The sites will consider cold weather and wind when calculating stops along your route. Drivers say the cost to charge their cars is still less than filling with gas, but dealers speculate as demand for electric cars increases, so will the cost to charge them.

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