Striving to reduce concerns about electric vehicles in Alaska
ACEP summer intern Ajey Moses observes an electric vehicle maintenance intensive at the University of Alaska Anchorage, which is part of the NSF-funded Electric Vehicles in the Arctic project. Moses analyzed EV data for the project.
September 25, 2025
Electric vehicles, or EVs, are quickly gaining popularity across the globe and Alaska is no exception.
Knowing which vehicle would best suit an individual's needs in the harsh winter conditions of Alaska is crucial.
University of Alaska Anchorage computer science major Ajey Moses worked this summer as an ACEP intern under the mentorship of Michelle Wilber and Cam Dolan to help provide communities across Alaska with information to help answer questions about EV performance.
Moses created maps and graphs of the data gathered from electric cars and trucks. This project could help Alaskans know when EVs could reduce costs or emissions.
Moses analyzed data collected from 10 EVs operating between Anchorage and Fairbanks in the last year. He collected weather data and plotted trip energy use against outdoor air temperature to increase understanding of vehicle performance in cold temperatures. This extends ongoing work with crowdsourced Alaska EV data to more types of vehicles, including a number of pickup trucks and a plug-in hybrid. This analysis will be used to refine the model behind the .
Though Moses was born and raised in Alaska, there were a lot of unknowns for him about EVs in Alaska. The internship experience was educational for him.
ACEP summer intern Ajey Moses poses for a photo in Anchorage, Alaska.
鈥淚 learned that there are factors like cold temperatures, precipitation and driving speeds that affect an EV鈥檚 driving range,鈥 he said.
He also appreciates the opportunity to learn about other projects during his internship. By being embedded in the Grid Edge research group, he saw firsthand the work researchers and other student interns were doing to understand such things as heat pump performance, building level energy use management and the combination of solar power and agriculture in Agrivoltaics.
He enjoyed his internship, including the freedom Wilber gave him to learn, guidance Dolan provided from data analysis to debugging code, and the camaraderie he shared with his fellow interns during outdoor adventures and summer fun.
This internship was part of the research project, funded by the National Science Foundation鈥檚 program. View the on ACEP鈥檚 YouTube channel. For more information on this project contact Michelle Wilber at mmwilber@alaska.edu.