How much do external conditions influence the performance of an electric car

Timothy

Historically, one of the most important data sought from a new car that came onto the market was its displacement and power. But times change and now, with the emergence of electric cars, the first thing you look at to know what type of vehicle it is about is the battery and the number of kilometers that that battery will allow it to reach. It’s a new language. Before, there was talk of cubic centimeters and CV or HP, depending on the time. Now we talk about kWh and autonomy.

In fact, since 2019, a new method has been established to measure consumption, and also emissions from cars, called the WLTP cycle, an acronym that stands for the words World Harmonized Light-Duty Vehicle Test Procedure or to put it in Spanish, the World Harmonized Test Procedure for Light Vehicles.

Consumption of electric cars
The WLTP cycle was approved in 2019 and measures not only the consumption of a car but also its emission of polluting gases

The first concern with regard to consumption was related to the cost of a liter of fuel, but as people and countries became more aware of the need to take care of the environment, that concern extended to greenhouse gas emissions that cars emitted for that consumption.

Now, with the arrival of electric cars in people’s lives, the concern of users is the number of kilometers they can do without having to charge, and that is why so much emphasis is placed on autonomy, because if it does not reach the battery, in a car that only works by electricity, you have to stop and lose at least an hour to continue traveling.

Consumption of electric cars
Charging the batteries of an electric car takes at least 45 minutes, depending on the car and the speed of the charger

But accurately ensuring the consumption of an electric car depends on many factors. The most important is at what speed you drive, then how much you accelerate at each exit from zero, the wind from the front or side, the ups or downs of the route, and of course, how much energy can be regenerated during the ride.

But that is not the only data. Atmospheric conditions also play a role. And this is true to the point where some plug-in hybrid cars, for example, disable the battery if the temperature is too low or too high. When it comes to low temperatures, shortly after running with a heat engine, the electrical system manages to enter temperature because the car radiates heat, and it becomes available again.

One of the forerunners of electric mobility is Tesla, and perhaps because they started earlier than the rest, they have achieved a level of evolution and knowledge of this technology, which allows them to make an interesting update of their software today, which because they have a remote system to install them, does not require that users take the car to a workshop to have it available. The novelty of this update, which bears the number 2022.8.2, is that it has taken into account temperature and humidity parameters to more accurately determine the consumption of its cars.

Consumption of electric cars
Tesla has updated the software to optimize range estimation, based on current atmospheric conditions

How do they do it?

For the North American brand, it is not very complex, since the electric cars produced by Elon Musk are famous for the quality of their indoor environments thanks to the multiple sensors that obtain information on the state of the air in order to apply better filtering before it reaches the passengers. Those sensors will be the ones that take the samples so that the central computer of each car can calculate the range and consumption level with much better accuracy, something that is still an “Achilles heel” of most electric cars.

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