The cold truth about EVs: Freezing weather slashes battery mileage

You shouldn't be traveling much in the winter anyway. You want to get stranded and freeze to death? Stay inside and read a good book.

The cold truth about EVs: Freezing weather slashes battery mileage

Innovation in China and Norway makes strides, but in most markets EVs can lose almost half their driving distance when temperatures drop.

By Arsalan Bukhari and Kinling Lo, Rest of the World

11 September 2025 • Srinagar, India

Battery range drops as much as 40% in freezing temperatures.

Kashmir farmers are abandoning Chinese EVs after losing a quarter of their income.

Norway and China are pioneering solutions that have yet to reach developing markets.

Kashmir's capital Srinagar experiences snow for more than four months of the year.

Bashir Ahmad sold his wife’s gold jewelry to buy an electric three-wheeler that would revolutionize his apple business in Kashmir. Until winter arrived and killed it.

On a freezing morning, he pressed the ignition button once, twice — nothing. The Chinese vehicle’s battery had lost 60% of its charge overnight in minus-five-degree Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) weather, leaving tons of fruit stranded and customers impatient.

Ahmad found a diesel truck to transport his apples to the wholesale market in Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, some 56 kilometers (35 miles) away. By then, however, the fruit had lost its just-picked freshness that commands premium prices, with every hour of delay eating into his profits.

Ahmad’s dead battery is part of a global crisis nobody anticipated when governments started subsidizing electric vehicles. From Kashmir to Kansas, EVs can lose almost half their driving distance when temperatures drop, and the billions spent on improving technology have failed to fix this fundamental limitation.

I thought this would change my life. Instead, it has only caused me to lose.”

In January, Seattle-based Recurrent, a company that tests and analyzes EVs, found an average range loss of 20% in extreme cold. In 2019, the American Automobile Association had first documented a 40% drop.

“I thought this would change my life,” Ahmad told Rest of World, pointing at the three-wheeler now permanently parked in his courtyard. “Instead, it has only caused me to lose.”

Ahmad is among the many early EV adopters who discovered the technology sold to them doesn’t work where they live. While the Indian government covered 40% of his vehicle’s cost of 300,000 rupees ($3,400), it forgot that the lithium-ion batteries — designed for India’s warm plains — would freeze in the Himalayan valley.

Lithium-ion batteries rely on chemical reactions that slow dramatically in cold weather. When temperatures plunge, the electrolyte thickens, ions move sluggishly, and charging becomes not just inefficient but potentially dangerous. Charging in cold weather has been identified as a primary cause of thermal acceleration, which can lead to fires.

“They thought only of the purchase price, not the environment where these vehicles would operate,” a renewable energy researcher at the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, a public technical university, told Rest of World, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media. “Without heating systems or reliable charging, failure was guaranteed.”

The failure pattern repeats globally wherever cold weather meets inadequate infrastructure. Manufacturers, too, have acknowledged the problem. Chinese EV maker BYDi

’s user manual, for instance, advises drivers to charge indoors, with the heating on. That advice is useless for farmers parking in open courtyards.

“Two-wheelers and three-wheelers are more commonly deployed in warmer countries, so there is certainly less motivation for producers to develop cold-weather solutions compared to four-wheelers,” Max Reid, head of battery costs at CRU, a London-based consulting group, told Rest of World.

An electric three-wheeler owner in Kashmir keeps the battery, wrapped in cloth, inside his home to protect it from freezing. Irshad Lone

Kashmir’s crisis exemplifies how cold-weather failure hits hardest in places least equipped to handle it. The valley’s $2 billion apple trade, employing nearly half the state’s workforce, depends on moving 2 million tons of fruit each autumn when temperatures start dropping.

“We would charge them fully, and in the morning, only 40% was left before even starting the first journey,” said Sajad Ahmad, a Baramulla-based orchard owner, whose cooperative bought four EVs.

The vehicles now sit unused in his courtyard. Ahmad called them expensive “decoration,” as he kicked a flat tire.

Outside Srinagar, not a single public charging station exists, forcing drivers to rely on household outlets. These can take up to 10 hours to charge — assuming there are no power cuts, which happen daily during winter. Local mechanics without EV training resort to YouTube tutorials for repairs, leaving vehicles idle for weeks over minor faults.

We became mechanics, engineers, and fools all at once.”

Desperate drivers have formed WhatsApp groups, such as “EV Apple Transporters” and “Battery Help Kashmir,” sharing increasingly absurd workarounds. Some have wrapped batteries in quilts; others have hauled power packs weighing 90 kilograms (over 200 pounds) into their homes for the night. One driver parked his battery in the living room.

With no authorized service centers outside Srinagar city, EV rickshaw drivers share repair guides and tips through a WhatsApp group.

“The blankets caused overheating on the road; water bottles leaked into the circuits,” Sajad Ahmad said. “We became mechanics, engineers, and fools all at once.”

EVs are also not considered cost-efficient. “Diesel vans are expensive, but they can do four or five trips a day,” Mohammad Yaseen, a driver based in Shopian, told Rest of World. “With EVs, one half-trip and you’re stuck.”

Norway, where winter temperatures average minus 7 degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit), achieved 89% EV market share with its comprehensive infrastructure. It offers more than 200 models for year-round usage.

“The ability to preheat batteries upon fast charging in winter is by far the most important improvement we have seen in the past five years,” Christina Bu, secretary-general of the Norwegian EV Association, told Rest of World.

These features are standard in Norway’s mature market, but remain absent from basic models exported to developing countries.

China demonstrates another path, with coordinated government action and working groups of executives, battery makers, and academics pushing improvements since 2021. New guidelines have tightened requirements for battery performance in low temperatures while subsidizing charging infrastructure even in remote regions.

The approach has yielded measurable results in China’s coldest areas. Northeast China, where temperatures remain below freezing, had EV sales rise to more than 33% of total car sales in 2024. The market penetration rate was under 10% in 2022, according to auto research company Gasgoo.

“The majority of infrastructure relating to EV adoption in these regions, including charging stations and electricity, are government-subsidized,” Jiayang Gao, a professor at South China Normal University’s School of Economics and Management, told Rest of World.

Chinese battery giant CATL announced sodium-ion batteries that function at minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit).

Similar advances haven’t reached markets like Kashmir, where farmers bought EVs that stopped working when they needed them most.

During apple harvest season in Kashmir, delays mean spoilage and financial ruin. Bashir Ahmad estimates losing a quarter of his income this year.

“What if it fails?” his wife had asked when he suggested selling her gold. “I told her it would change our lives,” Ahmad recounted. “Now she doesn’t speak about it, but I see it in her eyes.”

Cooperatives in Kashmir have already abandoned electric ambitions for next year’s harvest. “We cannot gamble with farmers’ crops,” said Shabir, a cooperative president in Baramulla, who oversees 15 sidelined EVs by mid-harvest.

“[The government] gave us discounts to buy, but nothing after that — no charging stations, no mechanics, no training,” said Sajad Ahmad. “What are we supposed to do with these toys?”

The pattern extends beyond Kashmir to any cold region lacking in wealth or infrastructure. Successful EV adoption, too, raises sustainability questions: Research across 293 Chinese cities found that many drivers in colder regions buy EVs only as supplementary vehicles, while still relying on gasoline-powered cars during winter.

“If people are not actually using EVs as much in winter times, whether pushing for EV adoption universally means building a more sustainable future appears to be a question mark,” Gao said.

The observation challenges assumptions that electrification automatically equals environmental progress.

Battery technology continues improving incrementally, but CRU’s Reid warns that cold-weather performance lags behind other metrics including cost and energy density. For millions in cold climates, promises of an electric future mean nothing when batteries die overnight.

Bashir Ahmad has already made his choice for next season: renting a diesel truck. The electric revolution will have to wait for technology that works when the mercury drops.

“Diesel is costly,” he said, pulling a tarpaulin over his now-silent electric dream. “But at least it moves.”