Electric vehicles have gained a reputation over the years for being unpredictable in cold weather. It’s not entirely undeserved: battery performance does drop in cold climates, after all, and that can have a considerable impact on your overall range. Add to that the power-hungry act of turning up the cabin heat, and it’s no surprise that some drivers in cold weather states have written off an EV from the outset.
Increasingly, though, we’re seeing manufacturers of electric cars offer technologies that actively boost performance in the cold. The most significant of those is probably the heat pump, which is one of those fiendishly complicated things that ends up just seeming magical. In short, though, a heat pump uses similar concepts to how refrigerators get cold, only here it’s to warm components in an EV.
Exactly what’s warmed can vary, depending on the car: some use the heat pump to raise the cabin temperature, avoiding spending battery power on the traditional heaters. Others use the heat pump output to warm the battery, bringing it into a more efficient temperature range. Regardless, the difference can be meaningful: Polestar, for instance, estimates that its heat pump in the Polestar 2 can improve range by as much as 10%.
Unfortunately, though heat pumps are more common than they once were, they can still be rare on more affordable EVs. Neither the Bolt EV nor Bolt EUV offers one; Nissan’s Leaf does, but only on the more expensive SV Plus trim. Similarly, Kia’s Niro Electric has a heat pump, but only on higher-end trims. If you live in a cold weather state, it’s probably worth spending the extra on the option if it’s available.
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