A Check Of Camper Mode In A Blizzard In One Of Denmark’s 200,000 EVs

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My watch for the 2023 numbers for auto gross sales in Denmark bought interrupted by a blizzard so violent in my a part of the nation that I’ve personally by no means skilled something prefer it. In a matter of some hours, hundreds of motorists bought stranded on highways and motorways and a few didn’t get going till 24 hours later. My spouse and I settled for 15 hours.

Going residence from work within the afternoon we have been stranded in a small city only a handful of miles from residence, and after getting caught within the snow as soon as, we determined it was too harmful to maintain going. It was just like the blizzard was closing in from all sides, however we managed to discover a gasoline station with a charger, and despite the fact that we weren’t acutely working out of energy, it was very good to have the ability to high up. We set the automotive in “Camper mode,” which we had by no means tried for actual earlier than (solely used it as soon as earlier than on the drive-in films), and it was a pleasing expertise. Exterior gentle is off and we may management inner gentle, temperature, infotainment, and locking manually. We had sufficient foods and drinks, so now there was time to seek out the EV gross sales numbers!

The affiliation of Danish car importers had the numbers, and I used to be stunned to seek out that on the final day of 2023 the overall variety of EVs on Danish roads reached 200,000! That’s fairly a speedy bounce from when the quantity reached 100,000 on October 12th 2022. That’s 7% of the overall variety of passenger vehicles in Denmark (with 54,000 of them break up evenly between Tesla Mannequin three and Y). On the gross sales aspect, the numbers get even crazier. Of the just about 173,000 vehicles bought within the nation in 2023, virtually 63,000 of them have been battery-electric, and of them greater than 22,000 have been Teslas! Mannequin Y alone is now the perfect promoting automotive in Denmark, ever.

With the numbers famous, we stuffed up our battery to 90% and with no purpose to panic, we tried to get some sleep, which isn’t simple in a automotive seat, however it may have been worse, like an intercontinental flight (a mattress within the again would have been good). Other than the violent wind exterior, it was calm and heat contained in the automotive. Whereas making an attempt to sleep, I contemplated the truth that right here we have been in a contemporary EV with the consolation to maintain us protected in a blizzard.

I remembered the document blizzards of my childhood within the 1970s when my dad and mom have been struggling by the snow in a Citröen 2CV with no heating or consolation of any type, and clearly no technique of communication. Nevertheless, this specific mannequin was an ace within the snow, gentle weight, slim tires, and front-wheel drive. Solely as soon as did we surrender, having only some hundred meters of crawling by the dunes of snow to get residence.

Whereas dozing off, I believed in regards to the hundreds of individuals on the roads caught in visitors this evening, hoping the authorities would quickly have the ability to do away with caught semi vans blocking the roads. We heard that a number of army automobiles had given up already.

After periodically with the ability to sleep, eight hours later, nonetheless darkish, we noticed a plow coming by and we determined to observe it. The final handful of miles to get residence took three hours, as a result of so many vehicles needed to be pulled out of the snow on our route. Lastly residence, I shoveled snow for two hours to have the ability again as much as our charger. Rear-wheel drive on all-season tires — properly achieved Colin.

Late that afternoon, we heard the final folks caught on the roads had been in a position to transfer themselves or had been rescued. Welcome to 2024! In all probability a brand new 12 months of EV data, and perhaps climate data too…