Charging an electric car is simple, especially since most EV owners charge overnight at home. However, things get a bit more tricky when it comes to fast-charging on road trips. You have to know where to charge, how much to charge, how to pay, and when to charge. Yes, WHEN to charge.
Wait, don't you just charge your electric car when it's getting low on range, just like you would stop for gas when your fuel tank is getting low? Certainly. If your EV is getting low on juice, and you're anxious, you should find a place to charge. However, as Kyle Conner points out, you can maximize road trip charging by doing a bit of simple planning, and this is especially true when you're dealing with .
EVs have less range in cold weather, and they charge more slowly. In this video, Conner admits that the outside temperature is 19° F, which may not be considered that cold by some folks, but it's cold enough to do the experiment. Kyle talks about Supercharging his Tesla Model 3, as well as a mistake he made and learned from, and how to deal with DC fast-charging in colder weather, in general.
It's important to note, Kyle goes out of his way to set this unscientific test up with a worst-case scenario so he can teach us how to solve the problem.
He notes that he woke up and went to a Tesla Supercharger to charge his Model 3. After doing so, he realized that it would have made much more sense to stay up a little later the night before to charge the car before sleeping. Then, he could have gotten on the road in the AM, driven for a time, and let the car precondition itself for the next charging stop.
An electric vehicle's battery pack takes a good amount of time to precondition, especially in the cold. And, if it's not adequately preconditioned, you'll be waiting much longer for it to charge quickly.
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Conner also provides some other helpful cold-weather EV tips. Check out the video to learn more. Then, head to the comment section to share your cold-weather tips with our readers.
Source: InsideEVs US (YouTube)
