I Drove EVs in the Arctic to See How Good They Really Are in the Cold

Throw away all those misconceptions: Driving an electric vehicle in a wintry climate is as easy and enjoyable as driving a gas-powered car. To prove this, earlier this year I went to the frozen north of Sweden where I spent days driving Volvo's EVs on frozen lakes and down snow-covered roads.

The reality is that all cars, no matter what powers them, struggle more in cold conditions. While EV batteries can be less efficient at lower temperatures, modern EV tech is going a long way to making up for it. 

Most modern EVs allow you to warm up your car and its batteries while it's still plugged in (a process called "preconditioning"), which saves all of your available range for your journey. That's in addition to more efficient heat pumps and modern tech such as regenerative braking (found on most EVs these days), which can put energy back into the batteries when you slow down.

Then there's the fact that the average range of EVs has more than tripled in the past 10 years, while the number of publicly available charge points has also increased. As a result, long-distance electric driving in any conditions is easier today than it ever has been. 

You can read my full experience of EV driving in winter conditions here, and scroll through this gallery to see what I got up to. 

I drove Volvo's EX90 on many miles of country road. Despite the snowbound conditions, the all-electric car felt extremely safe and secure on the road. It felt just like driving any other vehicle, and I had to make no allowances in my driving style for its electric powertrain.

I went deep into the heart of Volvo's HQ in Gothenburg, Sweden. There, I saw many of the ways Volvo tests its vehicles and optimizes them for winter conditions. Here, a car sits on a "rolling road" to allow it to be driven at varying speeds to see how the range is affected. 

Electric car battery packs are placed into these testing chambers and can be cooled down to minus 30 degrees Celsius or warmed up to 70 degrees (minus 20 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit), with varying degrees of humidity, to test how well they will operate in different climates. 

The batteries are recharged and run down while inside the chambers to simulate real-world use in the car, allowing Volvo to optimize the battery structures for different conditions. 

Some of my time was spent driving Volvo's EX90 and new EX30 Cross Country on a racetrack the company had cleared on the surface of a frozen lake. It was immense fun trying to slide the vehicles around on the ice, especially knowing that if I spun out (which I did), the car would simply go into a snow bank, causing no harm to me or the car.

Other times I drove on actual public roads, where I made sure to follow all safety guidance and strict speed limits.

Not that I wanted to go fast -- the beautiful views were such that I was happy taking a more sedate pace and enjoying the scenery.

These weird-looking things are essentially pretend car skeletons that allow all of the car systems -- from the batteries to the AC unit and infotainment system -- to be rigged up like a real vehicle and tested together.

This 9,000-ton machine is part of Volvo's new giga-casting system that casts aluminum into shape for the car body, replacing the older method of pressing and riveting multiple pieces together. The result is not just more efficient construction, but increasing structural strength of the finished cars.

Various Volvo EVs and hybrids inside the company's Arctic workshop, where vehicles are tested in the brutal winter conditions. 

An XC90 hybrid chilling out.

The Volvo EX30 Cross Country is a smaller car but it felt very planted on the ice.

All the vehicles we drove on the ice were fitted with studded tires, which provided much greater traction.

Even with those tires, when I entered a corner on the ice track at speed I was able to put the car into a slide, sending flurries of snow into the air.

In northern Swedish winters, daylight doesn't last long.

Volvo has been building cars in Sweden since 1927. I found this 1970s Volvo 144 Grand Luxe sitting covered in snow on a visit to Stockholm, the country's capital. 

The EX30 Cross Country is the company's most recent car. Volvo has committed to only manufacturing electric drive cars.