Think EVs Are Bad In Winter? Here’s Where They Have A Huge Advantage

You probably hear this at least twice a year, if not more: “You can’t drive electric vehicles in the winter.” And it is certainly and unfortunately true that EVs lose range when it gets cold outside. That’s because of the extra energy needed to run systems like cabin heaters and defrosters, but also because the chemical reaction inside the lithium-ion battery slows down when temperatures drop. Some EVs are also better at maintaining winter range than others. But on the whole, it’s fairly common knowledge these days that winter may mean shorter road trips with longer pit stops for charging.

Yet there’s an argument for electric driving in the winter that seldom gets traction in the wider conversation about EV adoption—pun very much intended. EVs, on the whole, have vastly better traction in snowy and icy conditions, preventing wheel slip and, potentially, spin-outs much more effectively than internal-combustion vehicles can. 

In other words, you may lose winter range with an EV, but you could be amazed at how well it maintains grip in bad conditions.

I discovered this myself recently when my test of Honda Prologue coincided with a snow dump in my corner of upstate New York. Around Thanksgiving, we got January- and February levels of snow, something I definitely didn’t count on with my holiday errands—complicated by the fact that the Prologue came on Bridgestone Alenza all-season tires. 

In my experience, all-season tires—which come equipped on the vast majority of passenger cars—are not very useful when there’s a lot of snow on the ground. Even all-wheel-drive can do so much when your tires can’t get a grip on the asphalt. It’s why I’ve swapped dedicated winter tires onto my gas-powered Mazda ever since I moved to this part of the country. Snowstorms can come out of nowhere and I don’t like taking chances with my family’s safety.

So I didn’t expect much when I took the Prologue on an emergency Home Depot run to fix a busted kitchen sink and ran into an unexpected mini-blizzard. But I was amazed at how well the electric SUV performed as the snow piled up on the roadways. 

The dual-motor Prologue stayed remarkably stable even as gas-powered cars had to park on the side of the highway with their hazard lights on. I drove slowly and stayed steady on the throttle, but every time the wheels slipped a bit—which happened a few times—the EV’s traction control stepped in with lightning speed. The Prologue immediately, almost seamlessly, stepped in to provide the right amount of power and traction on each wheel, sorting out the slips far faster than any gas-powered car I’ve ever driven before. I could barely even feel it happen and when it did, it was almost too quick to notice. 

How EV Traction Control Works (And Why It Matters)

I used to own a Subaru WRX. I know a lot about all-wheel-drive performance. And I’d take the Honda Prologue over that car in bad weather any day of the week.

There are several reasons why EVs actually have huge traction advantages over gas-powered cars. One example I like to point to is Jason Cammisa’s drag-race video test of the Lucid Air Sapphire and Dodge Demon 170. Even with the Dodge using dedicated drag radials, the 1,234 horsepower Lucid smokes it every time because it just puts power down faster and more efficiently. “The traction control works so quickly you don’t even know it’s active,” he said. “It can adjust power output a thousand times a second on each rear wheel individually, and then once more on the fronts—orders of magnitude quicker than the Dodge’s computer can pull engine power and add it back” to its own wheels. 

Granted, that’s an extreme example with two extreme cars. Most drivers won’t find themselves drag racing other 1,000-horsepower cars on the regular. But they likely will run into snow in colder states, and that’s where an EV’s ability to apply traction much more intelligently and quickly than a gas car can might give them a big edge they didn’t expect.

What An Engineer Says

Wanting to know more, I went to a source who would know: Doug Koons, General Motors’ lead development engineer on the Chevrolet Equinox EV. The Prologue shares the same electric platform as GM’s Ultium EVs. And while he couldn’t speak to the specifics of how Honda tuned the Prologue, Koons certainly knows this architecture and EV performance as well as anyone. 

Koons confirmed the same principle applies to a car like this in the snow as in that drag-racing scenario above: an EV can deploy power much more quickly than an engine would take for its computer to determine the right amount of fuel to use, spark to adjust and so on. 

“The benefit with EVs is that we can generate almost near instantaneous torque,” Koons said. “We don’t need to let the engine spin up to get the right torque, and the right gear state, and all that. It enables more seamless integration for control of things like traction control.” 

But there are other benefits to EVs too, like weight distribution, Koons said. On an EV, the heaviest single component is the battery, which is why basically all of them are mounted low and built into the floor of the car. This keeps the center of gravity both low and even, which helps with stability across the car—not unlike the old trick of throwing sandbags in your trunk for more equal weight distribution.

“When you’ve got an internal combustion engine, it’s usually in the front” of the vehicle, Koons said. That means a big chunk of the car’s weight is up front, “and not as low as it could be, either,” he said. This means the car is weighted almost like a scale tipping in one direction—not ideal when you’re trying to remain stable in the turns on icy and snowy days. 

Another benefit I noticed when driving the Prologue in the snow: one-pedal driving. By lifting off the throttle on an EV, you’re enabling regenerative braking that puts energy back into the battery and allows you to control forward movement by using the brake pedal far less than you would on a gas-powered car. I found this gave me a much more precise degree of control over how much power the car was putting down so that I could accelerate smoothly and evenly without accidentally causing my wheels to spin. 

“On an internal combustion vehicle, usually when you let up off the accelerator pedal, you’re opening up a torque converter and you’ve got to wait for a downshift—all that type of stuff,” Koons said. 

Interestingly, because the cars are tuned differently and have some different software features, the Prologue does not have a dedicated “Snow Mode” or “Ice Mode,” while the Chevrolet Equinox EV and Blazer EV do. That mode further slows acceleration and torque response to keep the wheels from slipping in bad conditions, but I think the Honda did just fine without it. 

When To Get Snow Tires

There are a few caveats to my experience. First, it’s worth remembering that this Prologue was a dual-motor AWD version (and most EVs for sale in the Northeast tend to go this route.) If the Prologue was a single-motor, front-wheel-drive car—or if it was another EV that was rear-wheel-drive—it would likely have the same traction advantages but at a reduced level since the other wheels would be unavailable to put power down. So if you live in a place with tough winters, going dual-motor may be your best bet unless you can’t live with the reduced range. 

Even so, many of the attributes unique to EVs mitigate the traditional drawbacks to RWD in winter conditions, as we’ve seen lately with cars like the Volvo EX30. 

But, as with even the best gas-powered cars, AWD is no substitute for the right tires. This was confirmed to me by Jake Fisher, the Senior Director of Consumer Reports‘ Auto Test Center. He confirmed that many EVs that the publication tests tend to have impressive snow performance due to dual-motor AWD, better weight distribution and so on, but said owners need to be cognizant of what tires came with their cars.

“Many of them are performance-oriented tires,” Fisher said, like if someone got a Tesla Model 3 Performance—a dual-motor EV, but one whose Pirelli P-Zero 4 performance tires are meant for fast driving, not conquering the elements. 

“Snow tires also give you an advantage in cold weather,” including the kind without snow, Fisher said. ” if you have a car that has performance-oriented tires, those aren’t going to be very effective at lower temperatures. That compound may be designed for going around a race track, but they’re not even heating up right at those temperatures.” Fisher added that CR tests tires extensively, so owners should look up what came standard on their cars or look to their research when shopping for new ones. 

Still, he said that some of CR’s EVs tested, like the Mercedes EQS, performed admirably in bad weather even with a set of not-so-great all-season tires. If you frequently deal with deep snow, consider getting the right rubber for the job and don’t just count on dual-motor power to save the day. 

But if you haven’t gotten around to that yet, or you’re just dealing with the occasional spate of winter weather, going electric will likely mean better performance than you’ve experienced in almost any gas-powered car. And as EV sales continue to grow, more and more drivers will likely add that to their list of reasons for not going back. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com