As temperatures plunged below freezing for much of the country this week, there have been numerous reports of electric vehicles (EVs) failing to charge and having heavily reduced ranges.
The impact of cold weather on EV performance is especially relevant for Maine, where the Mills Administration is considering rules that would mandate that EVs comprise a set and increasing percentage of new vehicle sales in coming years.
A state-mandated increase in EVS combined with Maine’s low winter temperatures could cause serious headaches for Mainers, especially those who rely on their vehicles to commute long distances for work.
According to a report by NPR, many Chicago area Tesla drivers had to wait in long lines to charge their vehicles, as many vehicles ranges were heavily reduced.
This is due to the lithium-ion batteries powering the vehicles becoming markedly less efficient in freezing temperatures. Also, while traditional gas-powered vehicles can warm passenger cabins using excess engine heat, EVs must draw power from the primary battery in order to keep passengers warm.
The diminished ranges prompted more frequent visits to charging stations, overwhelming the EV infrastructure in place in the city.
According to data compiled by the National Weather Service Caribou office, the mean average temperature of the Bangor area is below freezing from December through March.
Due to the poor performance of electric vehicles in freezing temperatures, EVs would have reduced ranges in Maine for approximately four months of the year.
In Maine, EV charging stations are also few and far between, especially in the more rural northern part of the state.
But Gov. Janet Mills and Democratic lawmakers are looking to change that with taxpayer-funded projects.
At the same time EV owners in the midwest were dealing with poorly performing vehicles, Gov. Mills touted Maine’s receipt of $15 million in federal grants to install over 500 new electric vehicle chargers statewide.
Last June, Mills wrote a letter addressed to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in support of the grant money that was just awarded to Maine.
In her letter, Mills wrote that the project will “assist Maine in meeting its goal to decrease greenhouse gas emissions 45 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050 — and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.”
From the beginning of her tenure as Governor, Mills has considered an increase in EVs to be an important part of reaching her emissions reduction goals stated above.
According to the Governor’s Energy Office, “49 percent of Maine’s carbon emissions come from the transportation sector.”
The Governor’s Energy Office has never reconciled their view of EVs and carbon emissions with the fact that much of Maine’s electricity, the power that would supply EV charging stations, comes from the burning of natural gas in New Brunswick.
Despite drawbacks of relying on EVs in nothern New England, the Maine Board of Environmental Protection is set to vote next month on a proposal that would mandate that 82 percent of new vehicles sales be EVs by the 2032 model year.
The Maine Board of Environmental Protection is scheduled to decide the fate of this proposal on Feb. 5.
The original date for the vote was December 21, but the vote was delayed due to widespread power outages and travel disruptions due to a massive wind storm.
ALL Democrats should be banned from driving gas powered vehicles.
All Maine state police, including the governor’s detail, must be mandated to exclusively use EV’s if this nonsense prevails. No ICE vehicles allowed for them.
At this time, I’m third to comment. The first 2 are excellent.
I live 64 miles off grid in Maine’s Great Northwoods for the past 25 years. I charge my EV how???
Completely delusional libtards. Google “lithium mines”, child labor, high death rates of miners and the complete destruction of the environment.
I drive an EV………..Dumbass!
This bit** is stupid. Batteries and Cold weather don’t mix. She needs to get the f*** out of Office. I’m hoping a who ever comes in to office after her has a Brain.
https://www.reddit.com/r/elonmusk/comments/198l2v1/in_texas_right_now_there_are_some_abandoned/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
This is all because we have a bunch of ignorant people trying to act like they know something – Climate change? Go to an area where there is an expanse of concrete or asphalt – quite warm compared to the green countryside. Go to a solar installation, or your own solar panel – warmer than the surrounding green area isn’t it. Carbon dioxide is needed to grow plants, so they can produce oxygen for us to breathe. There is ongoing research into where the “fossil fuels” come from and it is leaning toward carbon dioxide being part of the mix needed deep in the oceans and land in order to produce our fuels. You see, if that is the case, we are recycling what we are using! The sun has a HUGE impact on our climate also. It depends on the activity on the sun as to what our climate is doing. IT IS NOT our use of fuels we get from the earth that is causing these changes. Now, somebody real smart about electrical distribution, please figure out the line losses, losses charging the vehicle, losses running the vehicle, losses converting the power from the solar panels to usable AC voltage and more. Get the government OUT of telling us what to do – NO more subsidies of any kind for EVs – If YOU want one, THEN YOU buy it, NOT me.
Mills is an example of the incompetent leading the inept [democrat legislators] who follow in lockstep without wanting to get educated to real life experiences. The democrats have all drunk the Koolaid of “global warming” and are too stupid to realize the error of their ideas.
…yet we continue to s-elect these morons to dictate our lives! It’s mind boggling to watch the denigrating of America with people who cannot see past the end of their grifting noses! Absolutely ZERO common sense! Disgusting!
That’s alright…. Let them keep doing this kind of thing and eventually the morons that lock step vote democrat in this state might actually have some introspection the next time they vote.
Any Maine carpenter, like myself, can tell you that batteries don’t charge in cold temperatures. And if you use a cordless tool in Winter, the battery drains twice as fast.
Selling EVs to Mainers is like selling a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves.
Mainers know what works in Maine. We don’t need 150 petitioners telling us how to live.
Any Maine carpenter, like myself, can tell you that batteries don’t charge in cold temperatures. And if you use a cordless tool in Winter, the battery drains twice as fast.
Selling EVs to Mainers is like selling a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves.
These democrats are dangerous! I do not believe they are this incompetent. Climate change initiatives are a money laundering scheme used to line the pockets of dems and their supporters and to pay for election rigging.
These democrats are dangerous! I do not believe they are incompetent at all. Climate change initiatives are a money laundering schemes used to line the pockets of dems and their supporters and to pay for election rigging.
Our democrat/communist governor does not have the brains of a salted slug in your garden. She is going to have her personal “politburo” known as the BEP force all of us into the electric debacles. Ain’t going to happen lady, no matter how hard you try to get bureaucrats who do NOT answer to the voters to make “laws” that govern the rest of us. Before this pipe dream of green utopia comes to pass there is going to be a blow back that nobody will believe. The Founders would be horrified by all of this. They would put the gov and all her unelected bureaucrats in stocks on the town square to “we the people” could come by and stone and spit on them.
I almost laughed my backside off last night when looking at all those dead worthless Teslas (That the taxpayer helped them buy) laying there looking like a 22nd century junk yard. I really have laughed at the stupid fools who actually bought that worthless junk for at least half an hour. Here in Maine they should give worthless EV’s to the homeless in Portland to live (squat) in. I bet they are at least better housing than a blue tarp.
But Dale she is an attorney One of the best and brittest of her party. Put the masks back on!