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gucci-on-fleektoday at 12:05 AM4 repliesview on HN

> Most notably, air is about 28% denser at -40°C than at 25°C, so drag is about 28% higher. So you would expect roughly 28% less range at high speeds even if the battery has no capacity loss whatsoever.

With my gas car, I haven't noticed 30% worse fuel consumption at –30°C compared to +30°C [0]. To be fair, I haven't closely measured the fuel consumption at different temperatures, but I probably would have noticed such a big difference. This is just anecdotal of course, so your values may actually be correct.

[0]: It does occasionally get down to –40°C here, but my car won't usually start then, so I've slightly shifted your temperature range to the values where I've driven most.


Replies

randomname93857today at 3:28 AM

I drive long distance weekly on my gas car. Full tank in summer (+20C) gives me 520 km, while in winter (-20C here) I get 430-440 km. I noticed it on my current and previous cars. Maybe it's thicker oil and worse car efficiencies in winter ? And that's despite that full tank of gas has more gas in winter comparing to summer, gasoline is denser in cold temps.

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rootusrootustoday at 12:11 AM

It won't be as noticeable on a gas car because it is probably starting out around 30% efficiency (as compared with ~90% for an EV). This is a major advantage of gasoline, in a sense, because it means we have already engineered the package to account for a lot of wasted fuel.

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Aspostoday at 12:12 AM

Air drag energy losses are tiny comparing to other losses when burning petrol so you don't notice the difference.

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layla5alivetoday at 12:48 AM

Gas cars produce more power at lower temperatures - more oxygen gets into the combustion chamber, and the engine also can run more advanced spark timing without as much worry of detonation. This is why turbochargers have intercoolers.