Opinion | Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One

Hell, COL, if we agreed all the time, what would be the purpose of conversation? ;-)) ;-))
Our home HVAC is a heat pump system, gas backup. Works great here in Tucson where temps rarely drop below the twenties. Our motorhome HVAC is a heatpump system with propane backup. We generally travel spring and fall so we use it and like it. By the Coleman-Mach manual, and observations camped in snowy conditions, the 45 to 35 slide is on the mark. The folks who installed our home system and continue to provide spring/fall coil cleaning and checkups also coil clean our moho system. They (Trane) explain the efficiency is affected by sgft of condenser. Home, 2300 sqft. Moho, under 400 sqft slides extended. Moho condenser is single layer 2.5ft by 3.5ft. 8.75 sgft.
Home condenser is four, double layer panels 4ft x 3.5ft, 112 total sgft. The condenser area was sized to our home and climate. Admittedly, the Car and Driver article did not get into the weeds, just that heat pump uses less electricity than resistive heaters. Also, "near zero" is my comment reflecting that at 35° in the moho, the gas furnace automatically comes on line. Our home system gas backup starts when we program it to. Trane suggests 32° to maintain 68° home temp. I grabbed a random Google source which also mentions 32°. Having said all that, our system works with ambient air temps. My sister's home in ShowLow, AZ has its condensers embedded about three ft under soil surface where there is much more heat available even under snowy weather.
So I suppose the question is, how large is an EV condenser and can it be rigged to extract other than ambient air, i.e. motor waste heat etc.?
https://mspplumbingheatingair.com/blog/will-a-heat-pump-work-in-cold-weather

The efficiency is fairly straightforward - If you use X kWs of electricity to create Y kWs of kWs of thermal energy, then you have a Y/X efficiency ratio (i.e., use 1kW of electricity to produce 4kW of thermal energy than it's a 4 Coefficient of Performance (COP)). You can do all the calculations to plan for the COP of a system, but obviously measuring an operational system gives best data.

The COP for heat pumps is all over the board depending on the pricy ultra-efficient models to the low-temp models that have sub-zero temps before they start having a marked impact on efficiency.

However, the digging around I did when I had to replace my system last year is that you'll get an AVERAGE around a 4 COP when above 55°F. That drops to below a 3 COP when you get below freezing and goes to about a 2 when you're at 0°F. That's why I did the eyebrow raise on when you said it goes to about 'near zero' at freezing.

Doing a heat pump in an EV ... have to look more into that. I mean, it makes sense to reuse engine and battery heat if you can do it efficiently. Just don't know much about it. A random Google search turned up that Nissan actually was the first to put it in an EV 10 years ago (the Nissan Leaf) and that BMW, Volkswagen, Kia and Hyundai soon followed suit.

COL Randall C. Won't argue with anything there, COL, especially with one finger and an S22 keyboard. Your equations are concise, I've seen related in fuel vs electric comparisons before AND I'm likely to regurgitate down those at Famous Sam's Friday depending on who shows up.
Like you, we spent much time researching and listening to sales pitches (never the latter w/o the former) before we replaced our aging HVAC. Primarily on the condensor end, our system here in the Old Pueblo is worlds apart from my sister's up in the pine country.
I'm not even totally against EVs. I just dislike being forced into anything. I'm such a proud tightwad, would prefer to let others do the expensive beta testing. :-))