There's a clip going around of Jordan Peterson threatening to use his Bronco to splash someone with cold slushy water.
I rode a bike everywhere in the frozen north for several years (and not somewhere like Vancouver, somewhere it actually gets cold like -40 for weeks at a time) and he's talking about the difference between the fantasy of electric vehicles or other alternatives to current transportation being touted and the reality that when it's cold and icy out you want a dependable and warm vehicle.
EVs in cold conditions charge more slowly, and don't have as much energy available (or the battery can be conditioned, meaning energy is required to keep the battery in the ideal temperature range), and to heat the cabin you presently use resistive heating which is a pure burning of energy which directly impacts your vehicle range, and if it's so cold you can die if your vehicle stops, vehicle range stops being a mere anxiety and becomes an existential threat. It either brings you warm to your destination or there's a good chance you die.
The whole rhetorical device was dumb and the delivery was bad, but the core point is correct as long as we're thinking about how to actually successfully achieve a thing instead of just proclaiming the problem solved and yelling louder than anyone who says anything differently. EV sales are way down at the moment and I think that this is a core part of the reason, because a lot of people don't trust that they're going to work when they need it.
I rode a bike everywhere in the frozen north for several years (and not somewhere like Vancouver, somewhere it actually gets cold like -40 for weeks at a time) and he's talking about the difference between the fantasy of electric vehicles or other alternatives to current transportation being touted and the reality that when it's cold and icy out you want a dependable and warm vehicle.
EVs in cold conditions charge more slowly, and don't have as much energy available (or the battery can be conditioned, meaning energy is required to keep the battery in the ideal temperature range), and to heat the cabin you presently use resistive heating which is a pure burning of energy which directly impacts your vehicle range, and if it's so cold you can die if your vehicle stops, vehicle range stops being a mere anxiety and becomes an existential threat. It either brings you warm to your destination or there's a good chance you die.
The whole rhetorical device was dumb and the delivery was bad, but the core point is correct as long as we're thinking about how to actually successfully achieve a thing instead of just proclaiming the problem solved and yelling louder than anyone who says anything differently. EV sales are way down at the moment and I think that this is a core part of the reason, because a lot of people don't trust that they're going to work when they need it.
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