Electric cars in traffic jams: A test for the cold winter

Where there is no electricity, there is no heat, at least in an electric car. Author Thomas Geiger tested what happens if you get caught in a winter traffic jam that lasts for hours in a cold chamber.

bIn mid-January, thousands of drivers in East Hesse had to wait for 16 hours on the A 5 and A 7 motorways because trucks stuck in ice and snow were blocking the road. Even in conventional cars, this is a test of patience that pushes the limits of comfort, even if the tank is reasonably full and emergency services help out with tea and blankets. Anyone who finds themselves in such a situation with an electric car also worries about their battery level. After all, every time you charge them in winter, you can see how sensitive the batteries are to the cold. And while diesel and gasoline engines can be re-floated with a canister if necessary, electric cars simply run out of juice at some point. But when is this sometime? And is the concern even justified?

Because such traffic jams are difficult to plan, we recreated the ice age for electric cars and stood in a huge refrigerator in the Wolfsburg development department with a Volkswagen ID 7. Where the prototypes normally drive through all the earth's climate zones, we simulated such a hardship from everyday life and let ourselves be locked in at minus 10 degrees for eight hours after the electric sedan had been warmed up a bit, corresponding to the route from the garage to the Highway. After a quarter of an hour, the ID 7 rolls into the climate chamber between camouflaged prototypes with a charge level of 97 percent and a range of 524 kilometers. An engineer closes the steel door and the experiment can begin.