[Tedktis]

Does your EV sit outside in the driveway or is it parked in a garage 7 nights a week? Do you live in a dry climate or deal with cold snowy winters? How does sitting outside effect the components? I would like to keep mine in the driveway, but I want to protect my investment.

[Ziggythewiz]

Garage when I can, but that's rare. It sits in the driveway usually. 2-3' of rain in the last 2 weeks. Components have never been affected much by anything. Bunch of corrosion on one contactor terminal that I should clean off someday.

[Ace_bridger]

Outside of the drive. Not finished yet so I can't comment on effect on components but I'm expecting any problems. All my contactors, etc will be in a IP44 box anyhow!

[dladd]

usually in the garage, sometimes in the driveway. Right now in the summer it really doesn't matter either way, but in winter when we were dipping below freezing at night it made a huge difference! Left outside, my batteries would start the day at 30Degrees F, and sag tremendously under load. In the garage (not heated, but protected from the direct elements) the cells were closer to 45-50 degrees F, and acted better.

I have no battery heating.

The biggest issue I have with leaving it in the driveway is that my charger has a rather noisy fan, and I worry about annoying the neighbors.

[Ziggythewiz]

Dang! what kind of turboprop do you have on that thing?

[dladd]

Originally Posted by Ziggythewiz

Dang! what kind of turboprop do you have on that thing?

ha. I have two chargers, one charges at ~10a and is very quiet (two small fans mounted on the outside of the case), the other charges at ~6a and is LOUD! It has one internal fan. Anyway, it's not crazy loud, but I can clearly hear it out in the driveway when I'm in bed with my window open, so I'm sure my neighbors can too...

at the moment my 10a charger has a blown internal pcb mounted fuse (the whole fuse holder melted!) so I'm only able to use the loud slow one.

[dragonsgate]

My cars are housed better than some people. The garage is not air conditioned but the heat from house furnace keeps the garage at about 70 degrees in the winter. The cars have sat in the driveway the last two nights because I needed the garage space to build some shelves for my wife. As soon as I wash off the bird poop the electric will be back inside. I over heard two birds talking last night….One said “did you see that cute little yellow electric car?” The other one said “yeah! I spotted it yesterday!”

[Woodsmith]

My EV tractor lives inside my house, in the hallway.

[Tedktis]

Nice! haha!

[madderscience]

Open carport. Keeps most of the rain off and keeps the charging station (an RV sub-panel) dry.

I drive in all weather (rain and also the few times when it has snowed). Range is reduced in these driving conditions (especially uncompacted snow) but components have all done OK, though I did go to some pains to make sure they were positioned in the well protected areas of the car.

Seattle winters rarely get too much below freezing for very long. However my lead-acid MR2 does lost about 1/3 range in colder weather. Not insulating the batteries was my biggest mistake in the build.