First cold night...no heat? Anywhere? Grr

[LeftieBiker]

Ok, so check this out...this is interesting.

I took it to the dealer to let 'em have a look, and they agreed the air coming out felt too cool & couldn't understand why the seats & steering wheel wouldn't stay hot & everything seemed as messed up to them as it seemed to me. So after some digging they found there isn't anything wrong with it...it's just smarter than we are. Basically, the heater operates on a heat pump, and the warmth depends on the ambient temperature, the colder the air is to start, the hotter the air will get...so on a 65 degree day it just sort of feels luke warm. It should get nice & toasty when the weather turns colder from what they say. Likewise with the steering wheel & seats, they cycle on & off based on ambient temperature, so once they decide it's warm enough in the car they just turn off. Everything is functioning as it should, it's just not what I'm used to.

Of course I feel a little silly hearing that, but it's good news that my car isn't jacked up! I sure hope when it starts getting colder outside the heater keeps up with the cooler temps. I guess only time will tell!

This doesn't agree with my experience, unless you are saying you only tried it in 65 degree weather. Didn't you mention 50's at some point? When I turn my heaters on with temps in the mid fifties, the wheel gets *hot*.

 

[damnameisinuse]

They gave me a chart they found in their literature...the Heat Pump is assisted by something called a PTC Heater for startup and colder weather.

The PTC operates 100% of the time from -4 to 14ºF, and gradually does less & less of the work from 14º to 68º, not operating at all above 68.

The Heat Pump does not operate at all from -4 to 14ºF, then takes on the primary heating workload from 14-50º. Temperatures between 50-68º will warm, but not efficiently as below 50, and cool, but not as efficiently as above 68. Once ambient temperature is above 68 it can only cool.

This explains why the heater seemed completely broken on the first days in mid september, and seems kind of anemic now, so hopefully when I see temps at or below 50 I'll have a nice toasty cabin. We'll see!

Oh and Leftie, yes when I tried it at night it was down close to 50 outside...that was the time the wheel warmed up nicely, then just cut off & stayed cool for the rest of the trip. It's apparently designed to only get hot when it thinks it's cold. Once it got hot, it must not've cooled down enough to turn back on before I got where I was going.

 

[epirali]

Ok, so check this out...this is interesting.

I took it to the dealer to let 'em have a look, and they agreed the air coming out felt too cool & couldn't understand why the seats & steering wheel wouldn't stay hot & everything seemed as messed up to them as it seemed to me. So after some digging they found there isn't anything wrong with it...it's just smarter than we are. Basically, the heater operates on a heat pump, and the warmth depends on the ambient temperature, the colder the air is to start, the hotter the air will get...so on a 65 degree day it just sort of feels luke warm. It should get nice & toasty when the weather turns colder from what they say. Likewise with the steering wheel & seats, they cycle on & off based on ambient temperature, so once they decide it's warm enough in the car they just turn off. Everything is functioning as it should, it's just not what I'm used to.

Of course I feel a little silly hearing that, but it's good news that my car isn't jacked up! I sure hope when it starts getting colder outside the heater keeps up with the cooler temps. I guess only time will tell!

Fwiw my car does exactly the same with steering/seat heat, and it hasn't been cold really since I got it.

Also the heat pump is just like my house: it gets warm, but it never is "toasty" like electric or ICE engine heat. It is a "mild" warming effect. But the temperature does go up. It's why some people prefer gas over heat pump for heating.

 

[XeonPony]

at -13C every thing got real nice and warm in my 2013SV and at -5c same thing so far the heating all works well, average power draw is 1.5 to 2Kw for climate controlls

 

[dgpcolorado]

at -13C every thing got real nice and warm in my 2013SV and at -5c same thing so far the heating all works well, average power draw is 1.5 to 2Kw for climate controlls

Interesting. Nice to see a power usage report from someone with the heat pump in some actual cold weather. Much appreciated!

 

[XeonPony]

I should note it does spike every so often to 3Kw, I am going to hazerd a gues and say it is a defrost cycle, but the air still comes out good and warm and not anemic in the least. seat heaters work great and the steering wheel still stay off longer then I would like and gets too hot while doing so! I wish some one would teach hem what a perportional loop controll is! hell even PWM would be dandy set the temp and let it modulate to maintain that temp the whole trip.

 

[cwerdna]

They gave me a chart they found in their literature...the Heat Pump is assisted by something called a PTC Heater for startup and colder weather.

They who? Where did the chart come from?

 

[LeftieBiker]

The PTC heater is the same heater found in the Leafs with no heatpump, IIRC. It's needed for very cold temps when the heatpump can't extract heat from the air.

 

[XeonPony]

yup heat pumps have a practicle limmit, and that is around -20 they become next to useless, this is why you see very few if any installed int he colder climates unless it is a ground coupled loop heat pump. Obviously a geothermal heat pump is not usefull in a mobile device, hence the PTC/Nichrome wire type heaters are needed.

What I want to know is how much heat does the motor controler and motor generate and if they are recovering and using that heat? Seems a terrible waste in efficiency to just dump it!

a thermalstatic by pass to redirect the hot coolent into the car floor would be very easy for them to do, so any wate heat wold be bruaght into the cab via a floor heat exchanger, or even using the heat pump to extract the heat from the coolent.