Yes, but if I have more batteries I'll already factor that into my planning so I'll make fewer stops. If I have to always maintain X% battery when I'm driving in cold temps (to be able to survive N hours in case of a cold weather traffic jam) then it effectively just shortens the range. Adding X% battery to compensate this has to be very expensive compared to having a burner space heater and a gas/kerosene bottle for emergencies.
There are other ways to survive in the case of an emergency. Blankets, food, candles and whatnot should be in your emergency kit regardless of what you're driving.
Besides, how is this different than a gasoline-powered vehicle? In your situation, you'd still be reducing your range by X% in order to survive N hours in case something happens- your gas tank is not infinite, after all. I suppose you could make the case that you currently have more refueling options than recharging options, but I don't think it will always be that way, and it's not currently that was in some locations, such as Norway.
> Besides, how is this different than a gasoline-powered vehicle?
My gas car has a 700mi range so its simply not an issue as I tend to not drive that long on a day trip. I have the X% fuel spare for N hours of emergency heating so long as I do say < 600mi/day. I can drive indefinitely in my gas car while keeping the fuel meter over half tank and that doesn't cause any inconvenience in terms of extra stops. Doing that with an EV (never going under say 50% charge) would be inconvenient.
The same would be true for battery cars once the range is enough. And the problem of course would exist for an ICE car with a shorter range.
Doing a few simple searches online, most gasoline cars do not have anything close to that kind of range, unless you're "hyper-miling" or something. What the hell do you drive?
Range is range, your space heater idea is just a less useful plug in hybrid. Spending less money on batteries to add another system that you use a few times a year results in a generally less useful car.
It depends on the relative cost of "N hours of heating in the form of more batteries" vs "cost of a burner heater capable of N hours of heating". If the costs are even nearly comparable (if they aren't 10x apart) then I agree with you there is no point.
The heater also can't be as complex as a plug-in-hybrid, requiring expensive serveice etc. It needs to be cheap, dumb, optional (so you only waste the cargo space on extreme long journeys and in cold weather) etc.
What I'm picturing isn't a complex system. It's a camping burner with a hose to the car's ventilation system. Think < 1cubic feet and sub $1k.
3-4h 1kW heat sounds reasonable. If that's less than say 3% of total range, or less than $1k extra battery then I'm confident it's a sufficient solution.
Model 3 users report using about 240 to 300 watt-hours per mile. So I think that means a 1KW heater for an hour is equivalent to about 3 or 4 miles of range.
So a 1KW heaster for 4 hours would lose you 16 miles of range.
