Battery pre-conditioning technology (available on most EVs) allows you to heat the cabin of your electric car in advance.
And calculations by GRIDSERVE suggest this innovative technology could save you up to 15 hours of defrosting each morning during the winter months.
UK drivers spend an estimated 15 minutes before work everyone morning de-icing their car, and with around 60 working days between the start of December and the end of February, that’s almost 1,000 minutes – or 15 hours – spent in the cold and dark scraping and brushing snow and ice.
Meanwhile, electric car drivers who make use of cabin pre-conditioning are tucked up in bed, or enjoying a cup of coffeescrolling on their Insta or TikTok feed.
So how does cabin pre-conditioning work?
Pre-conditioning allows you to schedule your departure time in advance and select the optimum temperature you want the interior to be when you get in. It’s relatively simple to set up and is often controlled via a smartphone app or through the charging screen on your in-car infotainment system.
Ahead of you leaving the house, it’ll increase the cabin temperature, defrost and demist your windows and boost your battery temperature so it’s operating at its peak. This also helps maximise your driving range if you’re pre-conditioning while plugged in to your home charger. If you get into a cold car, you have to use the battery to power the climate control to warm the car up on the go, which’ll reduce your EV’s range.
Pre-conditioning also stops you making some of the common (and expensive) mistakes that UK drivers make each year to defrost their car in cold temperatures in a hurry: for example, using boiling water from the kettle which can crack your glass or using wiper blades to clear the windscreen only to wear out the electronics because they’re frozen stiff.
It’s also not great for your neighbour’s health, or the planet, if you’ve got the engine idling for 15 minutes.
For more of the best hacks on driving in the winter with an electric car, check out our complete guide here.
How pre-conditioning your EV can help avoid a winter driving fine
Better still, pre-conditioning can prevent you falling foul of the law. Often drivers don’t want to wait for the whole car to defrost so will set off with just a small portion of the window clear – this is known as ‘portholing’.
‘Portholing’ carries an on-the-spot £60 fine and three points on your licence, and that includes if your screen is fogged up. And if you have an accident because your vision is obscured and you’ve failed to clear it properly, then you’ll face more serious punishment.
With that in mind, it really is worth doing it properly. De-icer spray and a plastic scraper or brush are your best bets if you’re not lucky enough to enjoy the pre-conditioning lifestyle.
How much EV battery range does climate control use?
Climate control – whether that’s heating the cabin in the winter or cooling the temperature when it’s hot in the summer – is the biggest drain on your electric car’s battery other than driving your EV.
We’ve crunched the numbers in our explainer here – but the top line info is that air conditioning will reduce your EV’s range by around 7 miles for every hour of driving. In the cold, heaters will reduce the driving range of an electric vehicle by just under 6 miles per hour.
It’s not much, but if you’re in a pinch on the way to your next charging stop, then we’d recommend switching to heated seats and heated steering wheel. These use less energy and put less demand on your battery, and combined reduce your driving range by just half a mile every hour.
