Electric vehicles drain batteries faster in the cold - that's a problem in Alaska
March 15, 2023

AP Photo/Mark Thiessen
Stretch Blackard, owner of Tok Transportation in the Interior Alaska town, with an electric school bus on Feb. 2. The temperature stayed below zero much of the day.
Alaska's rugged and frigid Interior, where it can get as cold as minus 50 Fahrenheit, is not the place you'd expect to find an electric school bus.
But here is Bus No. 50, quietly traversing about 40 miles of snowy and icy roads each day in Tok, shuttling students to school not far from the Canadian border.
It works OK on the daily route. But cold temperatures rob electric vehicle batteries of traveling range, so No. 50 can't go on longer field trips, or to Anchorage or Fairbanks.
It's a problem that some owners of electric passenger vehicles and transit officials are finding in cold climat...
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