Heater and Remote

I discovered that that the remote won't start the heater if one of the doors is not fully shut. I plugged in the car to charge for the night and charging started up OK as normal. I hadn't realized that the passenger door was slightly cracked open though. When I woke up the next day and used the remote to turn on the heat, everything seemed normal on the remote but when I got to the car about a 1/2 hour later, there was no heat!

It looks like they have programmed the heat not to come on if the car senses an open door. The charge up was OK though. Everything has worked fine since then with the doors fully shut.

I haven't tried to test it for AC though. That reminds me, are people running their AC for 5 minutes once a week as the manual says to do?

Steve - 8500 miles on Silver ES with factory charger.

Hi SteveB.

AC won't start with a door open either. However, once it's going, you can open a door and it keeps going. I was working in my garage and wanted to cool it off a bit, so i started up the AC with the windows down (it will let you do that) then opened the back lift gate.

I'm sure it wasn't a great idea from an energy standpoint, but it DID cool things off in the garage and i got a bit of a chuckle out of it. One of the many unique things you can do with an EV, but would be a HORRIBLE idea with ICE.

SteveB said:

...are people running their AC for 5 minutes once a week as the manual says to do?

Click to expand...

Nope. Ran it the other day and was impressed, though.

iDriver said:

I'm sure it wasn't a great idea from an energy standpoint, but it DID cool things off in the garage and i got a bit of a chuckle out of it. One of the many unique things you can do with an EV, but would be a HORRIBLE idea with ICE.

Click to expand...

Correct - From an energy standpoint, it would be a negative. Since the car was in the enclosed garage with the A/C running, and since the A/C generates more BTU's of heat than it does cool (because it's not 100% efficient) your garage should have actually gotten a little warmer and not cooler

What you created was the garage equivalent of those portable 'space' air conditioners, which you sit in front of your desk and blow cool air on you while exhausting hot air out the back - The room gets warmer, but your desk feels cooler

Don

I noticed this, too. I thought my car was doing the famous warning light issue, since I was on level 2 and the car was charging. Nope, the door was open. I wonder how many other people thought they were getting the light problem when in fact it was just that the door was open?

aarond12 said:

SteveB said:

...are people running their AC for 5 minutes once a week as the manual says to do?

Click to expand...

Nope. Ran it the other day and was impressed, though.

Click to expand...

Coming from a cooler climate where we rarely use AC..

I wonder if the default to turn on the AC, when you select defrost, is also a fail safe measure to make sure the AC is activated regularly in order to prevent it from seizing up from non use.

Some companies made the rear wiper go on when ever you went into reverse for this reason.

I've always assumed that the defogger automatically starts the a/c because the de-humidifier aspect of the a/c will defog the windshield much more quickly that just blowing air at it.