Upstate New York winters are no joke. Up where I live, we started getting bombed with January- and February-style cold weather as early as Thanksgiving, sending the high temperatures down into the low 30s most days if we were lucky. There are lots of ways to deal with this. One method I highly recommend is to invest in some high-quality wool socks; an even better idea is to get a plane ticket to somewhere warmer.
But if you’re an electric vehicle owner and you need to leave your car alone for a few weeks at a time, and you know it’s going to be parked somewhere very cold, what sort of range can you expect when you return? We know that cold temperatures in particular are the enemy of lithium-ion batteries. While they don’t perform especially well in extreme heat, they do even worse when the temperatures get low.
So when my wife and I planned out a rather ambitious holiday schedule—we’d spend nearly a month in our native Texas traveling the state and seeing friends and family, all before I would head to Las Vegas to cover CES 2025—we had the chance to run a little experiment with our Kia EV6.
We would be gone from Dec. 15 to Jan. 10. (Yes, the holidays were a lot for us, in case you’re curious.) Before we left, we charged the EV6 to 80% as we do most days unless we have a long drive ahead to preserve the car’s battery life. Then we’d leave it unplugged, in our cold detached garage, while temperatures were in the 30s on average—sometimes as high as 54 degrees Fahrenheit, sometimes as low as 12 degrees. (Weather is weird.)
There’s a common fear among those who aren’t familiar with EVs: that they’ll have to leave their car parked for several days or weeks for a trip, then come back to the airport to find a completely dead battery. After all, any battery will lose charge over time, even if it’s not being used. So if we left the EV6 unplugged, and in not particularly EV-friendly weather, what would we come back to? What a great opportunity to find out.
Photo by: Patrick George
For context, my EV6 is a Dual-Motor AWD Wind model. It’s officially EPA-rated at 282 miles of range, though its onboard computer’s projections vary more widely depending on the weather than many other EVs I’ve driven. In moderate fall and summer weather, the car read as having more than 300 miles of range many times. Lately in winter, it’s been quite a bit lower than that. I’m working to translate those projections into real-world range results, so stay tuned there.
So when we left for Texas we made sure the Kia was charged to 80%, which read as 183 miles of range. Then the car sat there for 28 days, completely unplugged from my home ChargePoint Level 2 charger, and never checked using the Kia smartphone app (which briefly powers on the car and its 12-volt battery to see what’s going on.)
And when we returned, the EV6 had… 180 miles of range at a 78% charge.
And then when I came back a few minutes later to get photographic proof of this, the car’s computer read slightly higher, up to 183 miles of range yet again.
Photo by: InsideEVs
In other words, we basically didn’t lose any range at all. Maybe 2%, if the car’s range calculator is to be believed, but that clearly didn’t translate into any lost miles. So, yes: You can leave your EV unplugged for a while and the battery—including the crucial 12-volt battery—won’t completely die while you’re gone.
It’s here where I should note that above all else, you should consult your owner’s manual to know exactly what to do if you need to store it long-term. Most manuals recommend you do leave them plugged in, if possible, because the cars will then be automatically able to maintain a proper charge level as needed. But as our friends at battery health startup Recurrent note, some EVs are different than others; it recommends you leave a Hyundai (which is essentially the same vehicle as my Kia) plugged in, but Ford recommends leaving a Mustang Mach-E unplugged starting around 50% with the 12-volt battery disconnected if the car needs to be stored for more than 30 days. Tesla also recommends leaving your car plugged in when it’s being stored and not disturbed too often with the app, and you can also disable features like Sentry Mode to keep power consumption down as well.
Here’s what my manual recommends for longer EV6 storage: If the vehicle will not be in use for an extended period of time, charge the high-voltage battery once every three months to prevent it from discharging. Also, if the vehicle battery charge is insufficient, immediately charge the vehicle to fill capacity and service the vehicle.”
So if I really were to be gone from my EV6 for three months, I’d probably leave it plugged in at my garage, then check on it periodically via my smartphone app, including scheduling charging as needed.
Photo by: Patrick George
Here’s where I would also remind people that it’s not great to store an internal combustion vehicle for months at a time, either. A 12-volt battery can die, gasoline can evaporate, fluids can go bad and so on. But quite frankly, my EV6 handled being parked for weeks better than many older gas-powered cars I’ve owned would have done. It acquitted itself very well during our long trip.
So here’s the lesson: Consult your owner’s manual, but leaving your EV parked in the cold for a long time probably won’t be that big of a deal.
Got other cold-weather driving and storage tips? Drop them in the comments below.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
