Just how important is that hybrid heater in western WA?

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farflung

New member
Joined
Mar 11, 2021
Messages
4
Hey all,

Looking to buy my first EV. I have pretty much settled on a Gen 2 Leaf. It won't be my only vehicle (will keep our Xterra for longer trips) but I would like the Leaf to cover as much of our driving as possible. At a rough glance, that looks like at least 90% of our daily running around would easily fall within the normal driving range of 2018 and later models. The exceptions might be snowboard/snowshoe days where we drive 50 miles and leave the vehicle parked all day in freezing temps.

I've seen the charts on the comparative power consumption of the hybrid vs resistive heaters and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the basic differences, but I would love to hear from some of you with real world expercience, especially if you're in the Pacific NW (or coastal BC!) and you've driven cars with and w/o the heat pump.
 
At a rough glance, that looks like at least 90% of our daily running around would easily fall within the normal driving range of 2018 and later models. The exceptions might be snowboard/snowshoe days where we drive 50 miles and leave the vehicle parked all day in freezing temps.

It sounds like you would benefit from the heat pump mainly in those exceptional cases - unless by "freezing" you mean ten degrees or more below freezing.
 
I agree with Lefty. The conditions where the heat pump makes the biggest difference is 'cool' temperatures where there is sufficient heat in the air for the heat pump to move but it's cold enough that heat is wanted. In other words, maybe 60F - 30F. Above 60F heat might not be needed and below 20F the heat pump can't do much since there isn't enough heat in the air so the heater reverts to resistive heating. I'm in CO with lots of sun so I get a lot of solar heating inside the car and the air is dry, so de-fogging isn't an issue. In the PNW, those conditions probably don't apply as often.
 
I look at it this way, unless you live in a place where the temperature is below 20F year round, you will get some benefit from having the heatpump when temperatures are high enough to use it. Sure, you might get less of it during the extreme cold of winter, but cold weather isn't an on/off switch, it gradually gets colder and gradually gets warmer (minus the global climate change doing crazy stuff to the weather lately), so I see it as a benefit if you can get it since it can help save some mileage on heating, just not all the time. :)
 
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