So much for electric vehicles in brutally cold weather in Chicago. Temperatures left EVs dead, and as Fox Chicago reported, “Charging stations have essentially turned into car graveyards in recent days as temperatures have dropped to the negative double digits.”
Tesla owners had no luck in charging their vehicles after leaving their vehicles out in the cold. One businessman returned home on a flight to Chicago O’Hare airport to find his Tesla totally dead in the frigid weather.
It was a hard lesson to learn about the inability of some EVs to handle such cold weather. Fox Chicago quoted Mark Bilek of the Chicago Auto Trade Association as explaining, “It’s not plug and go. You have to precondition the battery, meaning that you have to get t he battery up to the optimal temperature to accept a fast charge”