First Winter - Battery Questions

[Struja]

For those living in the GTA, we got our first taste of winter weather last night.

My car is garage parked and when I woke up this morning the garage temp was +12c even though it was -9c outside. I got in my car and the energy gauge did not have the dotted line so I drove 25km to Brampton where I parked outdoors for about 1.5hours. When I got back in my car I had the dotted lines on the energy gauge. I drove home 25km and the dotted line stayed the same.

I garage parked for about a half hour and still the same. Drove around for another 30 minutes and again, no change. Temp stayed close to -7 the entire time. I figured my battery would have “warmed” somewhat but that never really happened.

Is that normal and are there any techniques for warming th Battery?

 

[Lon12]

Schedule your charging to be finished just before you plan on driving. That will help warm the battery. Warm up the cabin using the App or turn on the scheduling feature (if you have a predictable departure time every day.)
Make sure range mode is not turned on.

 

[Struja]

Schedule your charging to be finished just before you plan on driving. That will help warm the battery. Warm up the cabin using the App or turn on the scheduling feature (if you have a predictable departure time every day.)
Make sure range mode is not turned on.

Thanks @Lon12 - I did a lot of that and like I said, when I left home, no dotted lines. I was surprised that after a 25km mostly highway drive that only took 1.5hours to make the battery cold and I couldn’t warm it up again.

 

[Lon12]

Thanks @Lon12 - I did a lot of that and like I said, when I left home, no dotted lines. I was surprised that after a 25km mostly highway drive that only took 1.5hours to make the battery cold and I couldn’t warm it up again.

That’s a very slow highway drive! Oh wait. I see you live in Toronto.....

 

[SmartElectric]

Drive it like you stole it.

Hard to heat a battery in 25 km, unless you are getting above 50 kW of sustained power draw, which equates to high speed, or hard acceleration.

I once tried to heat the battery by accelerating and braking so I would arrive at an upcoming supercharger with a warm battery to get a higher charge rate. Problem : made my passengers sick. Didn't do that again... not fun with kids with woozy stomachs in the back seat!

 

[MorrisonHiker]

 

[Doug_G]

I'll just link my Cold Weather Driving blog post.

 

[Dax279]

I think you just get used to it and don't let it bother you. For me it works well in that I never turn down my regen breaking because of it, which is what some people suggest for cold driving in bad conditions.