People have been asking how our electric vehicle performs in the cold … well today (Dec 18) was the perfect day to put things to the test. We started out at around minus 42 C in the morning and got up to minus 37 by early evening (according to Env Canada).

I picked up the car at about 11am and drove it over to the famous Yellowknife temperature sign.

This sign always shows a slightly higher temperature than actual conditions - it was minus 40 for sure!

Our Spark EV is a 2016 model year and has a fairly small battery compared to cars that are available now. In the summer we were getting up to 130km range on a full battery, but winter driving has cut that down to about 65km. 65km is still plenty for what we are using the car for - it is only 10 km from Old Town to the Airport, so most trips will be less than 10km and the car will have some time to re-charge between trips.

I drove the car back to our house and then left it unplugged for half an hour to see if it would restart. There is a charging cable in the back that plugs into a standard 110V outlet and we usually plug it in just like our other car. The plug-in charger only draws about 1kW of power - so 1 hour of charging costs $0.30. In this case it was not plugged in and we then drove it over to the Kam Lake side of town and back with no issues.

We next wanted to see how long we could leave the car unplugged. So from about 1pm until 5pm I checked it every hour. The car started each time and I drove it back to the City Hall charging station at 5pm.

At minus 40 no car will continue working forever - but 4 hours at minus 40 is longer than I would expect our VW Golf to start. And remember that we unplugged the car at 11am, so it was actually 6 hours total without being plugged it and still going strong!

The YK Car Share still suggests that Sparky be plugged in during the winter if there is a plug available - I’ve noticed that a number of stores have 110V plug-ins available for customers to plug in their cars - these plugs will work fine for Sparky as well. As I mentioned the charger-cord only draws 1kW so the cost to the businesses is only $0.20 per hour (at commercial power rates).

Sparky charge cord plugged into an outlet for 30 minutes at Walmart - thanks for the $0.10!