Most of us choose the color of our electric car based on our personal preferences, what we find attractive. And this of course differs greatly, you do not have to look far to see the multitude of colors that people choose for their EV. But are there specific factors one should consider when selecting a color for the EV? Charge Amps shine a light on the key factors.
What is special with electric cars is of course that they run on batteries, which influence how far you can go. Air conditioning and heating uses a lot of battery and affects how far your EV can go before you need to charge it.
Yes, but it is a slightly complicated issue relating to a tricky word called thermodynamics. All colors are a result of the light they reflect, which means that a blue car reflects all the light except for the blue light spectrum. But there are colors that work in a different way and those are black, white, and silver.
Black absorbs all parts of the light spectrum and transforms light into heat. That means that it captures more energy and releases more heat. That is why you are often sweatier in a black t-shirt in the summer sun. White and silver work in the opposite way. They reflect away all light and thereby captures less energy and releases less heat.
As you know a car also consists of a metal body, apart from the color, which also has an effect since metal transfers and releases more heat than other materials. All in all, we can see that heat to a larger degree is collected in dark metal than metal in other colors. But if we take away the black and white thinking and include other colors the matter becomes less clear. It is hard to see any direct differences between heat absorption when it comes to colors like yellow, orange and red.
In conclusion, choosing a very light or very dark color matters, but apart from that, the color you choose does not really influence the car temperature. Apart from the body color, the color of your interior also influences the temperature, where the dashboard, steering wheel and seating in dark colors releases more heating than lighter color options.
Also, the type of fabric in your car seats can influence the temperature, as for instance leather captures and releases more heat than textile fabrics. That is why you might get an unpleasant surprise when you sit down in your leather seat on a hot summer day. For the same reason it can be good to avoid for instance a leather button to your gear lever. Luckily, we can often reduce the heat by having sun protection on the wind shield, tinted windows and by parking in the shade.
If we add an additional perspective to the issue, some experts state that it would help our planet cool down if more people had white roofs. Apart from that, of course it also matters what climate your current place has, as more cool climates might make cooling less needed and the opposite.
So, the color you choose on your EV can influence your EV battery range, but there are also a lot of other factors to keep in mind, not least which color preference you have yourself, since you probably will see it every day for a long period.
