Sandange, thank you for describing your typical trip to/from the train station. Wow, what a different life from mine :!: . I'd be surprised if you could not make this 35km (22-mile) round trip despite running with headlights and heated seat and with all the iMiEV heating and aircon systems going full blast: my guess is that the drive itself should consume say 6kWh, the heating system 5kWh, and aircon another 3kWh and lights and seat heater say another 1kWh… leaving you with not much energy left by the time you get home which means I'd always want to always start with a full charge.
If I understand correctly, here are the proper settings as though we had no range concerns: for maximum defrosting and dehumidification, when the Mode control is rotated to full defrost the air conditioning automatically turns on (you can manually turn it off but you may not want to do that), and air recirculation is NOT enabled. The primary objective here is clear windows rather than creature comfort. Sandange, are these the settings you had?
The seat heater uses say 6A*12V= 72W which is very small: I'd be inclined to leave it on all the time… it cycles on/off anyway.
This thread is for figuring out tricks to extend the iMiEV's range in cold weather… so now back to the topic of how NOT to burn off the car's energy… I'd be inclined to throw in a separate small AGM 12v battery to power the boot heaters, sock heaters, electric blankets, heated jacket, heated gloves, and heated passenger cushion... sheesh, one would look like an instrumented lab experiment! :lol: Never realized how many products there are; e.g., http://cozywinters.com/ BTW, I use small Anderson Powerpole (PP15/30/45) connectors for all my 12v power stuff in both cars and boats.
