UKH

I got sent an email about the ID4 made by VW, and found that it is rear wheel driven. So presumably the motor is at the rear too? 

I presume that the torque of the motor is good, but rear wheel cars are more difficult in the snow. So will there be a glut of drivers in the future struggling to manoeuvre on slippery roads with snow?

Are all electric cars rear wheel drive?

I'm sure someone will say "no there will be no problem in this respect as there will be no snow with global warming".

In reply to veteye:

The usual criticism of real wheel drive cars in snow ( you need the weight over the wheels) doesn't apply quite so directly to EVs. The motor (and half the battery, usually) _is_ over the wheels.

Besides, my EV is all wheel drive.

In reply to veteye:

Mine is front wheel drive. I presume there are the same ranges of front, rear and all wheel drive EVs are there are ICE?

In reply to veteye:

My Nissan Leaf is not rear wheel drive.

It is pretty good in snow, I stick it in eco mode which limits how much power I can input, try to use regen rather than brakes for slowing down, the combination of which keeps things pretty smooth.

Mr S has recently got a Kia eNiro.  I have no idea whether it’s front or rear wheel drive.  It does have a very nifty device - variable regen which is operated by flappy paddles.  This allow for gradual slowing down without having to use brakes.  I’ve only driven it a handful of times so far and am just getting used to it but reckon it would be pretty decent in snow.

In reply to veteye:

FWD here.  You certainly notice the weight of the battery pack when it comes to momentum effects on sheet ice, and our Leaf’s factory default tyres are not good for winter; I thought about getting some winter tyres but last winter was in lockdown and so far this year, there’s not much winter about and I can use the 3-series with its winter tyres if it snows.  

In reply to veteye:

I think the major issue with EVs and snow if the 50% reduction in range tbh!

In reply to minimike:

Ours doesn't reduce by 50%!! You need to get a better EV if yours does! (Ours is old tech, as these things go. I would be amazed if newer ones drop as much as ours!!) I think we drop just a little over 10%.

In reply to girlymonkey:

As I am in the market as well, what model is yours?

CB

In reply to cb294:

We are van drivers. I have an e-NV200. It's basically a leaf with a van body. Ours is a 2016 model, so teeny weeny battery.

In reply to girlymonkey:

Thanks! Still bit too short range for my purposes, but otherwise I really liked the car when I tested one in December.

CB

In reply to girlymonkey:

I’m (still) looking to go BEV but even manufacturers concede in my research that it’s not much more than half theoretical range in some circumstances. That was based on many stating you should only charge to 80% as a norm and then they say you get as low as 60% of that (in cold conditions, using heater, heated seats, etc and not forgetting that up to 5% of capacity is reserved as not usable for driving); the realistic range to be expected was generally stated as 60-80%.

Also, been watching the Recharged program on tv each week (it’s only EVs they test and comment on) and they mention about half range for some just by driving fast/aggressive, etc!

In reply to girlymonkey:

Yep, my 2014 Leaf drops range by about 10% in cold weather.

In reply to girlymonkey:

our e-Niro: I know it wasn’t all because of the weather but we drove 100 miles to York during storm Arwen at the end of November, but with a roof box on for the first time, and it used 170 miles range to do 100 miles. 

normally it’s nearly bang on the money with its range estimate so I think it was mainly the roof box. 

In reply to elliot.baker:

Moral of the story: Pack tighter and neater, or don't take as much stuff.  (Avoids flying objects, aimed at head).The Kia Niro is fairly roomy inside, but I suppose you cannot use up the upper echelons of space so readily.

In reply to hokkyokusei:

Nevertheless there may on a rear wheel drive be light front wheel steering.

What make is your all wheel drive vehicle?

In reply to veteye:

I'm in the Alps and was driving back home from a race a few weeks ago over a particularly snowy Col (we had 1.2m of snow in 72 hours) and passed a couple of minor crashes. I was following an ID4 however and never felt I was being held up (the driver was being sensible, and I was in a Land Rover so wasn't really out of my comfort zone) but they must have had winter tyres on which would make all the difference to any car (4 or 2 WD) to be honest. 

Living where I do I'm keen to get an AWD electric vehicle but need to be careful not to obsess on buying a car for features you only use 1% of the time (in the same way that so many people obsess about 200 miles being not enough range in a BEV). 

In reply to yorkshireman:

I understand what you say, but I can get 550-600 miles range in my current two vehicles, so getting up to Scotland, which I would like to do on a regular basis in swift time, would not be feasible with an electric car.  One thing that attracts me in small degree to the ID4 is that its range is quoted as being over 300 miles (and yes there is the argument about battery function in the cold, and greater usage of electricity for other things).

In reply to veteye:

I have an e-Niro, FWD only.  It corners very flat - probably the flattest car I've ever known, bar perhaps a mid engined MGF with upgraded suspension I had 20-odd years ago.  So in terms of balance, the weight distribution is very good indeed.

The flipside is that there's not such a concentration of weight over the front wheels, and in damp conditions it's surprisingly easy to accelerate hard enough to break contact.  I've not driven it in any serious snow, but I suspect I would be putting it into eco mode (to dampen down the accelerator response) and taking things quite carefully.

On the range thing (why is any thread about EVs always doomed to descend into range discussion?  We need an equivalent of Godwin's Law for this): 50% is simply nonsense.  You do see a range reduction in poor conditions but it's nothing like that bad, and it's also very controllable.

Remember than an ICE is converting perhaps 60% of its energy into wasted heat and 40% into kinetic energy.  To keep moving, that KE is 'spent' against air resistance and rolling friction.  So in cold and snowy conditions, the air resistance goes up (because cold air is denser) and rolling friction goes up (because you're pushing snow or water out of the way) but this increase only applies to the 40% of the energy that was even getting converted to KE in the first place.  And if you need space heating, you take that out of the wasted 60% and it doesn't affect your efficiency at all.

In an EV, there is much less wasted heat and most of your battery energy goes into KE.  So increasing air resistance and drag is much more significant.  And if you want space heating, that's an additional tax on the battery rather than recycling waste, so that also has an impact.  This is why an EV might see 25% range reduction in poor conditions, whereas an ICE might only see 10%.

However, air resistance goes strongly with speed.  You can get much more range from an EV just by driving slower.

My e-Niro generally gives me about 250 miles on a dry summer motorway at 70mph.  I'm told that its easy to get that above 300 miles if you drive at 60mph.  The worst I've ever seen (extrapolating from the readout) was about 170 miles, when I was hammering it through a torrential rainstorm against a gale with all the heating on full blast because I was soaked to the skin!

In reply to minimike:

 Not sure where you get your info. 

https://www.naf.no/elbil/aktuelt/elbiltest/ev-winter-range-test-2020/

Unless we are pushing through 20cm of unploughed snow, we don't really notice much difference in terms of power required, so I'm thinking most of the 20% quote in the article is related battery efficiency and in car heating. Either way we won't be going back to ice power. 

Op, our kia is front wheel drive, but it also has studded winter tyres! 

In reply to minimike:

Modern EV's have battery heaters I believe. 

In reply to veteye:

We had a ten week old and a two year old with us and all their associated paraphernalia! The moral I took was that if we have any more kids I need one of those airport minibus vans with a huge boot for 8 people's suitcases and carry-ons. 😅

In reply to veteye:

Probably. There's no point running a prop shaft.

Probably not. RWD generally provides better grip by distributing the work the tyres are doing. Modern stability control systems with the ability to produce positive and negative torques near instantly work like witchcraft. If anything the risk is you build too much speed because you don't sense how slippy it is then find the steering and brakes haven't got much better on snow over the years.

My Leaf gives me the willies on slippery roads, it finds whatever grip there is to launch but then the drag braking (which can be switched off when one's thinking) unsettles it when easing off in/for a bend and the lack of a handbrake leaves me feeling a bit short of options when it pushes in slow turns. That's modern cars in general though, not really an electric issue.

No. Fast ones are 4WD, front WD is pretty normal but for runabout types it boils down to packaging, putting the stuff where the space is or where the weight is needed given the desired functionality/shape.

I don't think the problem will be people spinning them (as one might an older BMW or Merc) in snow but they will behave in unexpected ways which will catch people out.

jk

In reply to Climbing Pieman:

My 50k mile first gen Leaf delivers slightly over half the stated range when driven without a care in the world on open roads, I get about 2/3rds of the stated range driving normally with an old dog tumbling around the boot. To get toward the full range you do need to put it into granny mode (Eco settings and speed limiter set <50mph). Hills are a killer. The difference between normal UK winter and cold snap has once been enough that I couldn't drive it to work (it was already very discharged), I guess it dropped 20% of the stated remaining range on that occasion, 5-10% is more normal.

Heated seats/wheel hardly dent the range at all (and that's with a tiny battery by modern standards). full power De-mist uses about 1/3rd of it (if you left it on the whole trip) but is only needed briefly.

jk

In reply to Climbing Pieman:

In fairness the range of my golf and van drop to half when I drive fast/aggressive

Cheers

Toby

In reply to minimike:

Are you confusing "snow" and "rally mode"?  Apparently that can happen...

Crap weather might be 25%  to 30% reduction (max) for us, but the lower speeds tend to bring some of it back - making careful use of the heat+AC to keep the windscreen clear (big impact on range) and otherwise using the heated seats (negligible impact on range).

Fully Pre-heating the car on mains power before departure helps as well.

In reply to jkarran:

Thanks for that. Essentially not much different from ICE cars in the real world. It won’t put me off buying an EV anyway; I just like to know what range I can expect in the real world and will try an buy a car with a range that is liveable with for my general driving.

I know with my current petrol, the number of cold starts with short journeys, town drives, drives at 70, and hills all have a significant negative effect on tank range c/w what I can achieve on longer drives in summer in countryside with a 60 max.

I do think for the majority of drivers range will not be an issue in the real world if they buy right.

In reply to Toby_W:

Yes. I’m sure a lot of drivers forget that for ICE vehicles - probably because they don’t actually measure individual journeys usually, but over a longer period of averaging which could be weeks/months. Some times I think talking to some they only remember that long holiday journey and not what their car actually uses on a daily journey basis!

I think by the nature of EVs it is too easy to tune into the range changes on single drives. Indeed, if drivers on many modern ICE cars drove with the car’s computer display of instantaneous and ave consumption on (if it’s available), they would be shocked by the effect of fast driving.

In reply to veteye: Have you ever hears of Norway Lots of snow, lots of electric cars. From my observations the cars most likely to crash are large estates, SUV's (aggressive driving).

My front wheel drive old style Leaf does OK and doesn't suffer a 50% range reduction in the winter though I tend to charge in my garage in the winter.  Ploughing thro' slush hammers it tho'.  Big hills (20 km uphill)  need to be considered as well

In reply to veteye:

It's possible.

It's a Tesla.

In reply to veteye:

An iD.4 will not give you 300 miles real world range other than in perfect summer conditions. More common will be 260-280.

I think worries about range are a bit overstated for most potential buyers as there are an increasing number of charging hubs (4+ ultra fast chargers on the same site) now. You don't need to be able to do every journey without a charge. However Scotland and Wales are poorly served in remote areas.

Re: winter, you should expect range to decrease significantly Vs summer in any EV. The newest ones still see high degradation. It's driven primarily by climate control demands, partly by cold battery inefficiency, and partly by cold battery heating (in some models, incl ID cars) intended to aid battery longevity. Most common rule of thumb is to look at the car's WLTP range, take 10% off in summer and 20% in winter (for 70mph - you'll get better driving slower.) But evdatabase has better data. The most efficient cars still suffer these same issues.

For the ID.3, general consensus from all I've read is that it is fine in most winter driving (some people dislike Bridgestones that come on many of them) but pretty useless in actual snow. RWD has several advantages over FWD in a purpose built EV but driving in snow isn't one of them. I've read a lot and happen to be collecting ours this morning  Most ID.4s will be similar but you can buy AWD options too, if you have the cash.

In reply to Si dH:

What are they, please? I ask out of interest, as an 'EV-curious' person, not to challenge the assertion.

The last RWD car I drove - a loan company car, not my own - I managed to spin 180° on the exit from a cold, wet roundabout on the second or third day I had it. Fortunately no-one else was around, and the only damage was a burst tyre from hitting the kerb. User error without a doubt, but an error that was too easy to make and not at all easy to recover from. To the best of my recollection I've never driven RWD since*. Certainly I've only ever bought FWD or AWD/4WD for myself.

* Apart, now I come to think, from a Lincoln Town Car that I somehow ended being allocated by the Hertz rental desk at San Francisco airport. But that had so many handling, and other, issues that I have obviously tried - but sadly failed - to expunge it from my memory.

In reply to Si dH:

We have done a trip to the Ardgour peninsula in our e-NV200. We have a 24kwh battery. We once had to run and extension with the granny cable into a cafe for a wee top up while we had lunch, but they were happy to do it. We do plenty of pootling around all over the country, and I am happy to drive like a granny so it's no bother. I do tend to put a blanket over my knees in the winter rather than running A/C, but I do that at home too rather than turning on heating (currently wandering around the house in down jacket and wooly hat!) so nothing new for me! 

I'm always amazed when non-EV drivers tell me it's clearly not possible to do big distances in an EV, when we just do them all the time!

In reply to Martin W:

With modern traction and stability control programs the differences between FWD and RWD for most drivers in almost all conditions are totally academic whatever powers the wheels.

For a consumer (as opposed to enthusiast) focussed 2wd EV the motor-drive is going to go where it fits best with all the other competing requirements (space, safety, aero, aesthetics, structural, parts re-use etc). With big batteries you can dump a lot of power back in under re-gen braking, we must be getting to the point where higher power RWD EVs are getting to be traction limited under re-gen braking rather than limited by the battery/inverter. Also having so much re-gen braking available on the 'wrong' axle is going to complicate braking systems which have to deliver consistent performance and feel*.

*a fail for the Leaf IMO which has rather unpredictable brake feel especially at lower speeds.

I have a strong preference for RWD and have none of the common biases against it but I can't think of a compelling reason EVs designed as such (rather than adapted IC designs) should obviously be one way or the other. If I was pressed I'd lean toward FWD for the braking. It's really neither here nor there, both set-ups can be implemented very well or very badly.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

Dumb question - is re-gen braking on the driven axles only as non-driven axles don't have a motor to run as a generator?

In reply to elsewhere:

Not a dumb question. Yes, for the reason you gave.

jk

In reply to Si dH:

Agree - plus most people forget that an EV plugged in at home can be leaving the house with a 'full tank' every time so for most people the need to charge somewhere else is pretty minimal outside planned, long journeys.

Someone mentioned hills - I live at 1100m about 25km outside Grenoble which is basically an 800m descent so I would be putting regen into the battery on the way out but killing the motor on the way back which is the wrong way round. 

I also think a lot of people think about their phone or head torch dying in the cold and think all batteries are the same. They forget the advanced management software in many EV batteries and many have heat pumps to keep it at an optimum temperature to get the best out of it.

In reply to Martin W:

Firstly, EVs don't have an engine in the front and the heaviest component is the battery, which is generally well spread-out between the axles (certainly in anything purpose designed.) This means the weight is much less biased towards being over the front wheels than an ICE, unless you have been driving a rear or mid engined sports car. EVs have a lot of instant torque and some FWD models (apparently - no personal experience) have to use a lot of traction control to avoid wheelspin off the line. RWD ones (at least if well engineered) don't suffer the same problem so can put power down more effectively. They don't suffer from tramping, torque steer etc - handling is better.

Secondly if the motor is only at the back it further reduces the space taken under the bonnet. This gives other advantages. Some cars have a frunk. I really like what they've done with the Id.3 - because the front wheels aren't driven and there is no engine or motor taking space behind them, they can turn to very acute angles. It is about the same size as a golf externally, bigger inside because of the short bonnet, but has a turning circle smaller than a Polo and close to an Up.

(And the other difference is that the disadvantage in a rwd ice car that is the transmission tunnel from the engine to the rear wheels, doesn't exist in an ev.)

(It's also worth saying that many higher performance EVs are AWD.)

In reply to jkarran:

Hah! Try reverse parking an old RWD series 1 BMW on a wet 1:6 hill! Not a chance!

In reply to AndyC:

A couple of years back I coaxed my old Compact up the polished snow to the Nevis ski centre on end of life summer tyres. Past dozens of stuck, abandoned and crashed cars, FWD and 4WD alike. Got a clap and a cheer as I passed the exasperated cop trying to deal with the mess. It's not RWD at fault.

There's a Top Gear clip of what traction/stability control can do climbing on steep snow, it's bonkers. 1st gen One series is a Dinosaur tech wise.

Jk

In reply to jkarran:

I'm assuming you didn't go up in reverse? Going forward is no issue, but lack of weight over the rear wheels means not enough friction when the rear is end is pointing uphill. The solution is just to park facing the 'wrong' way.

Agree - the biggest obstacle to driving in snow is other people who can't! 

WRT electric cars in snow - just saw a headline that 9 out of 10 new cars sold this month were electric... here in Norway. 

In reply to veteye: hardly any mention in this thread of the importance of winter tyres for driving in snow! They take away the need to worry about how much weight you have over the driven wheels 

In reply to kevin stephens:

Isn't that the case, unless you get intermittent patches of ice in same stretch of road, or rather intermittent patches of lack of ice.

I know that in the past there was a theory about putting a bag of sand/coal etc in the rear of your rear wheel drive car vehicle. It did not seem to make that much difference with a lot of weight in the back of my old BMW 5 series estate (touring) car.

I'm often amazed how many 4 wheel drive vehicles I overtake on the A66, when there is a couple of centimetres of snow or less, and I'm in my front wheel drive van.

In reply to veteye:

I presume you mean winter tyres?

In the days of my dad's 70s cortina he'd put a bag a metal pellets in the boot right next to each suspension mount tops. Seemed to help, or at least he claimed so. 

In reply to veteye:

I'm a regular driver of a 4x4 in winter conditions and 4WD is great for getting moving, or going slowly up snowy hills (in 2WD you're much more dependant on not losing momentum), but doesn't make that much difference when it comes to stopping so overtaking someone in the snow might just mean you're going too fast and were lucky.

I was driving back from Lyon airport at 3am along the motorway to Grenoble during a huge snowstorm in November 2019 and watched in front of me a recovery vehicle with a car on the back loader slide off into the central reservation, followed by a bus and another car - all because they were braking (too hard and too late) to avoid an already crashed vehicle on the central reservation/outside lane.

The bus and the recovery vehicle had plenty of weight over the wheels. I was fine with my winter tyres but the 4WD came into its own going up the mountain - we even rescued a woman with a car stuck in a snowdrift half way up and drove her home through 30cm deep fresh snow that hadn't been ploughed. No amount of driving skill or sacks of coal in the back would have helped there.

Indeed I'd rather take out my VW Passat with winter tyres on than my Land Rover without winter tyres (it has winter tyres btw) if that was my only choice choice as they make the single biggest difference.

In reply to summo:

I can remember (late 60s) my father getting us to sit on the back end, legs dangling, with the boot open to get it up the hill between Willington and Crook or sometimes near Tow Law.  It definitely worked

In reply to yorkshireman:

That was my point. There are seldom that many cars on such roads, as cross pennine A-roads, and you can plan ahead somewhat, as it is dual carriageway and traffic is thus spaced out both laterally and longitudinally/distance-wise. In such conditions where the snow is fresh, then the tyres will get through to the carriageway or modestly compacted snow to some extent. You mostly can slow down steadily by taking your foot from the accelerator, and changing gear: And occasionally a more straight-forward cadence breaking.

In reply to veteye:

I don't have direct experience from driving an EV myself however I live in Norway; just over 1 in 5 cars here is electric and driving on snow is the norm for most of the county for ~four months of the year. 

If there was any significant difficulty for EVs on icy/snowy roads you should definitely notice it here but I've never heard anyone mention it. Market share for EVs in new cars has been growing rapidly the last 5 years and is now above 80% which suggests other people don't see it as a problem either...

Edit: Just read some more of the thread and of course everyone here drives with winter tyres so that might make any fwd/rwd irrelevant. I still think that Norway shows that a lot of peoples concerns about EVs turn out to be unfounded