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The next time a polar vortex pbades through the United States, electric vehicle owners should be prepared to be frustrated if they do not take special care of their battery-powered trips.
Winter has come for Tesla Inc. and its army of car owners, who grew up last year. And some of these customers have cooled the company with icy temperatures.
Model 3 owners turned to social media and online forums to share the problems they had with their sedans because of the cold weather of last week. The cold conditions weigh on the battery, regardless of the brand of the car. But other problems are unique to Tesla.
Ronak Patel, a CPA auditor from New Jersey, bought a model 3 last August. He drove about 150 miles in the cold in recent days. "My biggest concern is the cold weather that drained my battery 20 to 25 miles overnight and another five to ten miles to get to work," he said. "I paid $ 60,000 not to empty my battery so quickly."
Tesla is not the only one to face this flaw.
"Panasonic makes the Tesla batteries," said Salim Morsy, an badyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "It's not something specific to Tesla. It happens to Chevy with the Bolt and Nissan with the Leaf. "
Tesla delivered over 245,000 cars last year, a volume three times that of 2017. Much of its growth took place in the second half, after overcoming what Elon Musk called "l & # 39, hell of production.
"What is specific to Tesla is the quality of the workmanship," Morsy said.
Tesla has made a decision about the design of the door, which is to bite some buyers. Model 3 handles are flush with the outside of the car and require customers to press one side and then the other to open them. The ice makes this maneuver difficult for drivers who have posted photos of their frozen grips.
Some just go out and others write to Tesla or Musk himself to ask for a solution.
Andrea Falcone, a computer engineer from Boston, tweeted a picture of her frozen grip, commenting, "I can not wait all day for this stupid car. and a picture of her posing with the new car.
Cold temperatures came even earlier to Canadian customers, resulting in educational videos suggesting ways to defeat the frozen grips. A nearly 7-minute YouTube video shows how a homeowner had glued a dental adhesive film to the door handles to protect it from freezing.
Another New Brunswick owner tweeted a video in December. He was more direct.
Musk tweeted on January 25 that Tesla was preparing live software updates that would improve the resistance of its cars in cold weather.
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