A Bulgarian January is when an electric car surprises its driver most. The same trip that left you 40% in July can leave you 15% in winter. That's normal, it's predictable, and most of it you can plan for.
How much range you lose
As a rough guide, compared with a mild summer day:
| Outside temperature | Range you keep |
|---|---|
| 20 °C | all of it |
| 0 °C | about 80% |
| −7 °C | about 70% |
A car with a heat pump does better: at −7 °C it keeps closer to 75%. A car without one keeps about 65%. Your car's spec sheet, or a search for its model and "heat pump", will tell you which you have; in Europe it's often an option.
Speed adds to it. Driving at 130 km/h instead of 110 uses roughly a fifth more energy in any season, and in winter cold, dense air makes it a little worse.
Why the cold costs range
Mostly, heating you. A petrol engine heats the cabin with waste heat for free; an electric car has to spend battery on it. On short trips, warming the cabin from cold takes a big share of the energy.
The battery itself matters less than people think while driving. But a cold battery charges much more slowly, which matters a lot on a trip: a fast charger that gives 120 kW in summer may give half that to a cold battery.
How to get range back
- Warm the car while it's plugged in. Set a departure time in your car's app and it heats the cabin and the battery from the grid, not from the battery. You start warm with a full charge.
- Use seat and steering wheel heating. They heat you directly and use a fraction of the energy of heating all the air in the cabin. You can then set the cabin a degree or two lower.
- Navigate to the charger with your car's own navigation. Many cars warm the battery on the way to a fast charger they're navigating to, so it charges at full speed when you arrive. Check whether yours does.
- Charge on arrival, not before setting off. A battery is warm after driving. If you want to top up, do it at the end of the drive, not on a cold morning.
- Keep the tyres at the right pressure. Cold air lowers it, and soft tyres cost range.
- Leave more margin. In summer, arriving at 10% is fine. In winter, aim for 15–20%, especially in the mountains or when the next charger is far.
How PlugNest plans for winter
PlugNest's route planner doesn't use a fixed range for your car. It works out how much energy each stretch of the trip needs from the speed of the road and the temperature outside along your route, and it knows whether your car has a heat pump. So the same trip gets more stops in January than in July. If you know your car's real winter consumption, you can enter it, and the planner will use yours.