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A simple solution would be to warm the battery to a reasonable temperature but I don't know if that's feasible for such a large battery. It's not as easy as keeping a phone in an inside pocket vs an outside one. The car should be built with heaters around the battery. The power must come from the charger at charge time (but maybe the battery self warms itself while charging,) then from the battery. What's more: power for the heaters or power to move the car? Probably the latter.


All electric cars already do this, either with resistive heaters directly on the batteries or with water heaters in the coolant loop.


Presumably once going the internal losses keep it warm?


Depends on the car. My Bolt battery takes a LONG time to get warm just from driving, even with the battery heater running. You can speed it up a bit with yoyo driving (speed up to use power, then regen brake to dump power back into the battery, repeat as necessary) for about a half hour.


They already do this, but it tends to turn off at low states of charge. I'm guessing that people saw the lines and tried to put off charging as long as possible.

If everyone does that and shows up to chargers with cold-soaked batteries, the only result can be chaos.


Simple huh? I know the Chevy Volt has an engine to warm the battery. With a massive battery like Tesla's, I don't see heating the battery as "simple".




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