Tesla Owners Complain of Cold Weather Affecting Cars

According to recent reports, the cold weather across the country has begun to affect electric vehicles, much to the annoyance of many Tesla owners.

CNBC reports that a new AAA study has found that colder temperatures are having a negative effect on electric vehicles such as the Tesla Model 3, Chevrolet Bolt EV, Jaguar I-Pace and Nissan Leaf Plus. On average, these vehicles can drive for between 200 to 300 miles on a single charge, depending on the vehicle; but as winter storms picked up around the country many electric vehicle owners found their cars suddenly not performing up to standard.

According to a recent study by AAA, a 20-degree drop in weather can decrease the performance of electric vehicles by an average of 41 percent. Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of automotive engineering, said in a statement “We found that the impact of temperature on EVs is significantly more than we expected.” Brannon continued:  “It’s something all automakers are going to have to deal with as they push for further EV deployment because it’s something that could surprise consumers.”

A 41 percent decrease in performance in a vehicle such as the Chevrolet Bolt would bring the cars mile range down to just 140 miles per charge — but the Volt has a backup gas engine. Brannon stated that part of the problem is that “lithium-ion batteries like the same sort of temperatures that we do, around 70 degrees.” Many Tesla owners began reporting issues with their Model 3 vehicles, Bloomberg recently published accounts from a number of Tesla owners that faced range issues during the recent cold weather.

Ronak Patel, a CPA auditor in New Jersey, discussed his issues with the Tesla Model 3 he purchased in August stating: “My biggest concern is the cold weather drained my battery 20 to 25 miles overnight and an extra five to ten miles on my drive to work. I paid $60,000 to not drain my battery so quickly.” Boston software engineer Andrea Falcone tweeted a photo of her frozen Model 3 door handle stating:  “I can’t wait all day for this silly car.”

On January 25th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated in a tweet that improvements to Tesla vehicles ability to deal with cold weather would be fixed in an OTA software update:

No updates relating to cold weather issues have been issued to Tesla vehicles so far.