TomMoloughney

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  • NJ EV owner with 50,000 miles logged dispels myth of cold weather battery woes

    by 
    Tim Stevens
    Tim Stevens
    02.02.2011

    We see you in comments, chiming in on every EV post about how worthless they are in the cold. Charles Lane from The Washington Post recently did the same, saying things like "A change of ten degrees can sap 50% of a battery's output" and speculating that the EV industry is "just one well-publicized malfunction away from disaster." Not so, says Tom Moloughney, and he should know. He's spent the last 49,500 miles of his commuting life in an all-electric Mini E, an average of 2,500 miles per month. Now, this car is a prototype and a fairly early example of the modern electric vehicle, meaning it has no preconditioning tech to let you warm up the battery packs before you go. Despite that, Tom has logged every trip he's made in the car and indicates he rarely sees more than a loss of about five percent from the vehicle's usual range. More importantly, he's made his way through many a cold commute without getting stranded -- or freezing to death.