Heater seems wimpy, especially when remote preheating?

Newbie Alex here. Only had the car 4 days... less than 100 miles.

What to check with you experienced hot and cold weather owners if some things I’m seeing (or not seeing) re heating and cooling are design issues,
Or mine is defective, or I’m just doing something wrong.

Finally figured out how to use the remote to turn on heat and air-conditioning.
(Locked myself in the car with car on charger and remote in my hand, and conducted experiments with the remote controller.)

I was/am able to get a decently robust air-conditioning session switched on (and off) with the remote.
I could/can also get the heat to turn on (and off) with the remote.

Thing is, though, during a remote-controller initiated heating session the heat output was very modest (mildly warm air coming out of the vent despite the fact that I was conducting this in a garage with ambient air already about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
I did give it about four(?) minutes to see whether I was just being impatient.
And the only vent heat would come out of was foot vent.
On net based on what I experienced it would seem barely adequate to pre-heat the car on a morning where the garage temp is 30 degrees.
And the remote-initiated heating session would not respond to my manually changing vent director settings (face, feet, window, etc.) Nor (while in this remote-initiated heating session would it respond to manual changes in the fan speed setting.

Also when I test the heater in normal “ready” driving mode (not plugged in of course) I could hardly detect any warm coming out of the vents, although I COULD easily control which vents it comes out of and the speed of the fan.

This is in contrast to running the air conditioner. In remote-initiated cooling and turning on AC while in drive (ready) mode, I can get pretty robust cooling.

Any ideas what’s the story?

Anyone willing to have me phone them or them phone me and both of us sit in our EV’s
and you walk me through manipulating the climate controlls so I can confirm I’m doing this right?
(If so we can exchange phone numbers via a private post here.. Note that I‘m on USA pacific daylight savings time -- posting this at about 2140 my local time)

Also I'm not totally clear if I can do remote preheating and precooling while on the charger without actually having the main battery charging. For example, suppose I want to top the battery off to only 80% (either by manually turning off charging when it reaches about 80%, or by having it charge for whatever hours I estimate will get it to 80% by setting a timed charging session):
The battery is then not charging, but will the Mitsu honor a remote command saying "start heating?"

Help

Alex (in Oregon)

Are you plugged into a 110v charger or a 220? That makes a big difference. I asked about the same thing in the new owner's thread last month. 110v is very unimpressive, although someone said it still helped the battery conditioning.

FWIW, I had more success heating the car using the defrost setting rather than the heater. So far I've been connected to a 110V outlet.

The difference between pre-heating on L1 versus L2 is AMAZING. With L1, my car was kinda warm when I pre-heated it. With L2, it's nearly too warm! :twisted:

Can confirm all of this. L1 slight feeling of warmness, L2 hot. Defrost works best, AC is good for hot days. Turn on your seat heater, all other HVAC controls can be left alone - the car will handle this for you.

aarond12 said:

The difference between pre-heating on L1 versus L2 is AMAZING. With L1, my car was kinda warm when I pre-heated it. With L2, it's nearly too warm! :twisted:

Click to expand...

{this edit inserted here a few minutes after I posted... BEFORE I saw the helpful note saying "...I can confirm all of this...". Perhaps the only thin that leaves outstanding MIGHT be "is the reason I got almost no heat in ready-to-drive mode was I was plugged into the 110v charger?"}
_______________________________________________________
Thanks to each of you three who responded so far!

Yes, I'm on the L1 charger.
So, if I understand right, my Mistu preheating wimpily is normal. Yes?

Still Wondering if the very very wimpy heat output during my last testing-while-plugged-in but with car in ready-to-drive mode is explained by it having been plugged in to 110 V ?

Can anyone confirm that on 110v preheat it only runs fan slowly and only from the foot heater vent?

Do you get decent heat output when driving? (Yes, I realize we try to avoid using heater while driving.)

Do you find that pre-cooling unlike preheating is robust, as I seem to have found?

I'm asking all these perhaps picky details to determine whether these are just characteristics I will learn to live with or I'm doing something wrong or whether I need to take this in to the dealer and get something fixed.

Alex

The object of preconditioning the car's interior is to provide you instant comfort when you get in AND to save you energy so you'll still have maximum range available for your trip. So . . . . preheating is pretty much limited to whatever you have the car plugged into, so you're heating off that power and not using battery power. The OEM EVSE is only 960 watts (120v@8 amps) so it's much like using a little 120 volt auxiliary heater, but turned on LOW. A 12 amp L1 EVSE would provide about the same amount of heat as that auxiliary heater turned on HIGH - 1440 watts

L2 of course can provide up to 3300 watts, so it's the better choice for use in winter, since (as you found out) preheating using L2 can almost drive you out of the car!

The A/C uses less energy, so it performs pretty well even with L1 - But then, A/C is usually only trying to create a small temperature differential (20 degrees or so feels good) and dehumidify the car, whereas preheating is probably trying to create a 40 degree temperature differential

Don

Alex, your newbie concerns are understandable, but not to worry...

Even with L1, in your climate the iMiEV will get plenty warm (even hot): just activate the Remote heating 20-30 minutes before you need to leave home (it takes a while for it to heat up the car), and don't forget to have the seat-heater switch turned on ahead of time. All winter long when driving I rarely used the heater (primarily for defogging) but always used the seat heater. When driving, that car heater draws serious power and I'm unwilling to use my stored energy that way (the seat heater power draw is negligible).

Go back and read some of the winter-driving posts by our NorthernUS/Canadian friends who have a seriously-cold climate: if they can do it, then we sure-as-heck can!

I wouldn't go back to the dealer and let them touch the car unless something was fully confirmed as being a problem.

acensor said:

I did give it about four(?) minutes to see whether I was just being impatient.
And the only vent heat would come out of was foot vent.

Click to expand...

One other thing you need to realize, Alex - The heater heats up water and pumps it through a heater core in the cabin, much like any ICE does, so just like an ICE, you're not going to see much heat for the first 5 or 10 minutes

For preheat, the heat coms out near the floor - For pre defrost, it comes out by the windshield. I think most folks who use preheating prefer the defrost setting. You have your choice of heat or defrost on the remote

Once you get the car good and warm, you can drive away with the heater only one click above the OFF setting on the temp dial and the heater will continue to blow air through the warm water you made when you were plugged in at home . . . . eventually, it turns cooler of course

Another energy saving method I use is to shut off the heater/defroster several miles before I get to my destination and just recycle the heat already in the system - No point in getting there in a toasty warm car (with the energy provided by your battery) and then get out of the car and waste all that energy

Don

Don said:

acensor said:

I did give it about four(?) minutes to see whether I was just being impatient.
And the only vent heat would come out of was foot vent.

Click to expand...

One other thing you need to realize, Alex - The heater heats up water and pumps it through a heater core in the cabin, much like any ICE does, so just like an ICE, you're not going to see much heat for the first 5 or 10 minutes.....
Don

Click to expand...

I DIDN'T realize that. I imagined it was just an electric heater element as in a small home plug-in-the-wall electric space heater. So that suddenly makes what I'm seeing make MUCH more sense.

Seems to me like a rather oddly complex and convoluted way to generate heat considering the power source is always electricity. Aye?
Also brings up what I think I saw in the suggestion to Mitsubishi section -- where someone was, I think, suggesting that they use any heat drained away by the battery cooling system (and I guess the batteries do get warm in charging) to heat the car cabin.

And, thanks; all the strategies you suggest for heat management make sense.
Alex

I believe the batteries only get cooled during charging on very hot days - Not much heat there to be recovered, and probably none during the winter when you actually need it. The noise you hear when charging the battery pack is a pump which circulates coolant through a small radiator to cool the electronics. When charging, it cools the battery charger. When driving, it cools the inverter and (I think) the drive motor too

These cars are quite popular in Scandinavia, owing in part I think to a hefty government incentive. Anyway, over there, some owners add a very small aftermarket kerosene powered water heater in the water hose between the stock heater under the car and the heater core in the cabin. They make tons of heat for hours and hours on very little fuel, and it's an easy mod since it splices into the stock water heating system

It reminded me of the old gas fired heaters GM installed in the front trunk of some Corvairs in the early /60's - Remember those?

Don

Don said:

It reminded me of the old gas fired heaters GM installed in the front trunk of some Corvairs in the early /60's - Remember those?
Don

Click to expand...

No. Although I loved the Corvair (almost purchased one in 1968) and think it got shot down unfairly by Ralph Nader (and scared Detroit out of daring to do Anything innovative for the next 40 years), I did NOT know they had gas heaters.

But when I was a 10 year old I saw a Pontiac (approximately 1949 vintage and a used car when I saw it around 1953) that had a gasoline catalytic heater . Probably same idea as the Corvair. No open flame.

Guess I'm REALLY showing my age

Alex