Will battery charge WHILE precooling or preheating?

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acensor

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 15, 2013
Messages
371
Location
Southern Oregon
First question is will battery lack be charging during the time I precook or preheat ?

Second is..
I vaguely recall that is I use the remote dongle to have it precook or preheat it does only for a preset time period...like maybe 20 minutes ....then stops precooling.
Can anyone confirm or correct that?

And does it only precool with the settings that i previously manually set the climate controls to? (For example if I left the climate control temperature dial on the green dot (neutral temp setting) would activating a precooling do little or nothing?
 
Yes, pre-heating or cooling time is limited - Can't remember if it's 20 or 30 minutes

Yes, it will charge the battery at the same time *if* there's any juice left over - L1 with the OEM EVSE, it won't but with an L2 unit, it will charge some while heating or cooling . . . . more so for cooling and less for heating

Don
 
Don said:
.....Yes, it will charge the battery at the same time *if* there's any juice left over - L1 with the OEM EVSE, it won't but with an L2 unit, it will charge some while heating or cooling . . . . more so for cooling and less for heating

Don

Any idea if it'll simultaneously charge and cool with my upgraded OEM charger (plugged into 120 volts charging at 12 amps)?
Or any way , other than careful repeat experiments and reading the charge level indicator, to tell?

Hmmm. Thinking a bit more on it, it's not a very significant issue as worst case by preheat or precool I'd be giving up 30 minutes of 12amp 120volt charging time ... About maybe 4 miles of range in that rare oddball scenario where I needed 4 miles more range before leaving home AND just happened to be half an hour short of the needed charge.

So more a matter of curiosity at this point. ;)
 
30 minutes is the maximum time.

Don answered the question about charging while preconditioning the car.

No, the settings on the climate control stack are not used during preheat or precool. The car automatically sets this for you during this operation. I usually keep my heat off even during the winter unless I'm going a short distance. If the car used the climate control stack settings then I'd have no heat when I preheated the car. The same goes for A/C. The best setting for preheat is Defrost.
 
It seems that, on the stock EVSE, using "heat" for the first 5 minutes or so before going to "defrost" helps to get the coolant hotter. It does this by moving less air while warming up the coolant, saving energy by running the fan slower and not running the rear defroster/heated mirrors and re-directing it to the heater.

Once the coolant is heated, it can stay warm easier than trying to heat 3x as much air at the same time.

This may also help on level 2, seeing that it's a 5 kw heater on a 3.3 kw charger, and the heated mirrors & defroster use about 200-300 watts.

What would the difference in energy use be if all windows had heating elements in them? Use those to keep the car warm instead of heating air. A lot of heat is lost through the windows.
 
Direct heating defroster(s) would be the best thing for all EV's. Heated seats or heated vests for the people would also be the most efficient way to go - like 20-30W per person!
 
On a personal note, I've found that even 5 min of pre-heat/cooling helps my range substantially. It's almost always a good idea.

Anyone know of or constructed a "blanket" for the heating heating fluid reservoir? Seems like a good idea.
 
NeilBlanchard said:
Direct heating defroster(s) would be the best thing for all EV's. Heated seats or heated vests for the people would also be the most efficient way to go - like 20-30W per person!
Yes - It's not so much that I need to heat the entire car to be safe and comfortable in the winter . . . . but I do need to run the heater a good bit of the time in the defrost mode just to keep the windows clear so I can see where I'm going :eek: - Our running joke on a cold moring when the windows start to fog up while the 4 of us are motoring along . . . . "Somebody breathed!" :lol:

Preheating the car (in the defrost mode) greatly reduces the energy needed for that cold morning trip

Don
 
iDriver said:
On a personal note, I've found that even 5 min of pre-heat/cooling helps my range substantially. It's almost always a good idea.

Anyone know of or constructed a "blanket" for the heating heating fluid reservoir? Seems like a good idea.

I've wrapped my fluid resevoir in reflective insulation. Seems to help a bit. If you want it heated, buy a pair of heated socks. Use one to wrap around your fluid resevoir. You'll have to remember to check the batteries and turn them in the morning. :D
 
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