You Can’t Sell a Car That Looks Like Crap 184
for only four hours each day.^246 The area is favored by
car manufacturers from around the world for cold weather
testing. Not only cars must be able to survive a cold climate,
military personnel from across the globe travel to this
region to learn how to endure extreme winter conditions.
“It was minus 55 degrees Celsius [minus 67 degrees Fahren-
heit],” the British survival expert, Ray Mears, said when he
was in the area. “At that temperature you cannot make a
single mistake – if you make a mistake you’re going to end
up with frostbite. So you have to be very, very careful.”^23
The ironic part of testing an electric vehicle in Arvidsjaur is
that the area has become warmer, most likely due to global
warming, so several car manufacturers have moved on to
colder proving grounds in China.
A harsh winter climate is a problem if you are driving
an electric vehicle. When the temperate drops to minus
ten degrees Celsius [minus fourteen degrees Fahrenheit],
the range of a Tesla will decrease by ten percent. This is
primarily due cabin heating that requires more energy the
colder it is. “The battery actually loses very little energy
when cold,” Elon said. “Keeping batteries cold is actually
the best way to preserve them. It only loses energy when
keeping the pack warm for the convenience of the driver –
so you don’t have to wait long to drive.”^224
Other tests the Roadster had to endure included the
Belgian Pavé test, where the car was driven over a harsh
cobblestone road at high speed. Almost any car will break
after 4 000 [6 400 km] to 5 000 miles. “We finished that test
and actually did quite well on it, had a very small number