Hello all, I own a 2012 iMiev in Montreal Quebec.
For reference the car has a 16 KWH battery and a 5KW heater. The first winter I owned it I was on L1 charging only and it was a chilly winter in the car. I had to use the heat sparingly because of the long recharge times. The second winter I had L2 charging at home and that was better. I used the electric heater more but still had times when I had to sacrifice heat for range. It was less chilly but still not really warm in the car on longer rides. I did all kinds of things over those 2 years to stay warm in the car (heat lights, heated seats, propane tent heater in the cabin, 12V 250W heater) All this helps but very incrementally and it really clutters the car interior. The most effective thing I did was using 12V heated insole in my boots but this did nothing for passengers. Also resisting turning on the fan to bring in outside (cold) air in order to keep cabin heat creates window fogging and is real problem. The A/C clears the windows but does not add heat to the cabin. Heat is a real issue (for us) when it's very cold. Basically you need to bring in outside dry air to the cabin and you need much more of it when you have 3 passengers in the car. A bit of a challenge. For this winter (my third) I installed a diesel water heater. The OEM electric heat system is hot water based so the plumbing was pretty easy. This diesel heater outperforms the electric one in terms of peak heat output. It consumes between 200-500 ml per hour depending on if it's on high or low. Up to now I found that running it 50% of the time heats the cabin very well. It has completely transformed the car in terms of winter range. It saves cycles on the battery, harmonizes winter/summer range a lot and provides a much more "normal" driving experience in the winter. All this and the fuel burn is more then an order of magnitude better then a very efficient diesel car. I still preheat the car and use the electric heating when I don't need the range but for me the DH is the best way to go. Don..... <snip> Message: 1 Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 21:24:12 -0700 From: Jan Steinman via EV <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: Rick Beebe via EV <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [EVDL] Heating system Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Perhaps this is a sacrilege on this list, but I'm planning to provide cabin heat in my 1981 Electranagon with... diesel fuel! I got hold of an old Webasto hydronic heater. You can find them used among boat people, bulletin boards at marinas, etc. They sip a tiny bit of diesel fuel, and turn it into fairly large quantities of hot water, which I plan to run through my Vanagon's heater core. Electricity is (as HT Odum would put it) a "high transformity fuel," meaning it is highly refined and contains a lot of embedded energy. Why waste it heating up resistors? A 3kW electric heater running for an hour uses up over ten percent of a typical EV battery, whereas one tank of diesel will last me all winter. Anyway, just a thought... Jan <snip> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
