Practical solutions for extending cold weather range

[Pier]

Did you think about infrared lights ?

I am going out this morning to buy locally a 150 watt lamp ( used by farmers to heat chicken), connected to an inverter in the 12v socket. This lamp will be somewhere in the foot well, if I can find a place to hold it. I might wait next monday ...weather will be up dramatically...easier to work hands on cold metal.

I beleive 150w is too much , 50 would be better.

 

[DonDakin]

Hello all,


Today was my coldest run to work -12 Deg C on my temp guage.

I keep the car in the heated garage overnight (about 10 deg C) and preheat it with the defroster for 30 minutes before I leave for the 11 KM drive to work. It's a short run and today was sunny but the sun just on the horizon at 7:30 AM. I didn't have enought time last night to fully charge on 120 Volts as I was busy running around last night so I Was about 4 bars down from full showing 70 km of range.

No problems on the ride in. Of course those heated insoles are totally amazing I should have bought a pair 20 years ago.

I actually ran the 25 minute ride into work without heat just the seat heater and insoles.

I'm starting to realize that there are really 2 issues in winter: one is heat for comfort the other is condensation (fogging up) on the windows. It seems that the condensation builds up faster then the need for heat. This condensation also builds up even faster with more people in the car (breathing that is). I didn't really think of that effect too much. What I have found it that for short runs if you preheat the car you can stay warm enought with the seat heat and heated insoles and a good coat and hat gloves etc.... but you need to bring in cold air from the outside to keep the windows clear. The exception is the rear window that you can activate the defrost on.

So I think it would be great if Mitsubishi or someone would develop a very thin wire heating system for all the windows in EV's. That would keep them clear and also perhaps create a little heat boundry layer that would maybe keep the heat in the car better. Not too sure about the latter but I do know that in the garage during preheat the back window gets very warm to the touch.

So this is a bit of an eye opener for me. I think the issue of keeping warm with a car that is already pre warmed up in a garage is limited a little by the need to defrost the windows. It would be neat if we could somehow remove moisture from the interior without using the air conditioner (because it cools the air). Anyone know how to do this ?

Anyways I thought is was worth mentioning the condensation limitaion.

After the car sits in the cold all day at work and I go home in the dark at 5:00 I have to heat it up the traditional way so in that case the defogging the windows is not really an issue. You need the normal heat mode to overcome the cold that is already saturated in the car.


Bottom line is things are working out with the cold and the iMiev which was one of my big worries about driving electric here in Montreal.

Actually in some cases it's nicer in the winter with the iMiev, Since this car is small it fits nicely in my crowded garage really well and It's actually nicer to get into a warm little iMiev that was inside then to get into my other ICE car which is much larger and has to stay outside at night and is cold soaked.

If I had 220 Volt 16 amp home charging maybe I could leave the car outside and preheat it at 220 volt and it would come up to temp nicely also. Does anyone have any experiance with 220 volt preheat when it's really cold ?

Oh yeah another thing I discovered with the recent snow is that I don't have to do parking lot donughts in reverse anymore like I used to do on my front wheel drive civics, I can do them the normal way just like the old days..... (have to turn off the traction control for that kind of fun mode) and with the traction control on it's near impossible to drive like an idiot on the snow....


Don.....

 

[NeilBlanchard]

The main reason your feet and hands get cold first is your body is controlling blood circulation to conserve heat for the core of your body. So wear a warm hat (you lose about a quarter of your heat from your head), and an electric vest would keep your body core warm, so you can "spare" the warmth to keep your feet and hands warm.

I am building an electric car from scratch, and I plan on providing power plugs at each of the 5 seats for electric vests. It is the most efficient way keep the people inside warm. Oh, and the car will be fully insulated with foam, and the side windows are intended to have 2 layers of glazing.

 

[sandange]

Pier
Very interested on how you make out with your experiment
Here is a related posting

Link to a story on how BMW is working on using infrared to heat their ev's in cold weather.

http://www.torquenews.com/1079/bmw-turns-infrared-heating

Dan

DonDakin
2 nights ago at -9 C (16 F) I had the Mieve outside overnight, charged and preheated with the 240v Schneider home charger - 0nly preheated for 10-15 minutes , could have been longer, but was warm enough.
Still not like parking in the garage


NeilBlanchard
You made a great point about having good rubber mats & tracking in snow with your boots creating high humidity levels in the car
Problem is they don't have them yet or do they? and the need to have a bit of a lip to keep the slush in the tray

I remember taxi drivers placing newspapers on the floor to absorb the melting snow and throwing them out every so often - but what a mess.

I wear a hat and gloves when driving in these conditions, the legs & feet still get cold - must be getting old

 

[Don]

I could use some clarification about the heater controls, and what may be the most economical settings for extending RR. Turning the temperature control all the way up to Hot seems to have no effect on RR, yet the fan speed drops it way down.

So what exactly does the temperature control do? In more traditional cars it usually mixes in cold outside air. If this is so in the iMiev, then the most economical setting would be all the way up on hot. (which is counter-intuitive, right?)

I think the temperature control is a bit like the thermostat in your house - It determines at what interior temperature the heating element in the heater will begin to cycle on and off. Whenj the car is cold inside, one click up from center appears the same as 'full on' so far as RR is concerned. Once the car gets warm enough for the heating element to cycle off, the RR will give you back some of the range it took when you first turned it on. The fan speed has an effect on RR because it alone determines how quickly heat will be extracted from the heater, so higher with fan speeds, the computer knows you're going to be extracting more heat, hence less RR

And the recirculate control...shouldn't we keep it on recirculate to keep the cold outside air out?

Yes, but . . . . you'll probably need some outside air to keep the windows from fogging up, especially if you have 3 or 4 people aboard. On the plus side, the more warm bodies you have in the car fogging up the windows, the less extra heat you need

Did you think about infrared lights ?

I am going out this morning to buy locally a 150 watt lamp ( used by farmers to heat chicken), connected to an inverter in the 12v socket. This lamp will be somewhere in the foot well, if I can find a place to hold it. I might wait next monday ...weather will be up dramatically...easier to work hands on cold metal.

I beleive 150w is too much , 50 would be better.

It would probably be better to connect your inverter directly to the 12 volt battery - The accessory outlet fuse might be only 10 amps which is good for only 125 watts or so. With inverter losses, your 150 watt bulb might draw as much as 185 watts or so

Don - I think the window fogging issue is much worse than normal because the inside of the car is so small - Not many cubic feet of air inside. We regularly drive the car with 4 occupants and it doesn't need to be very cold out at all to see a good deal of fog after only a few miles. Leaving the heater set to outside air goes a long way toward eliminating the fog, but I'm sure it takes more energy to keep the car warm when you're heating outside air as opposed to the warmer air already in the car . . . . but when set to recirculate, it really does fog up quickly. I don't know how practical defroster grids in all the windows would be, but if we had an old fashioned knob where you could regulate the inside/outside air mix it would really help - That way, instead of heating 100% outside air, you could get a mix of maybe 85% recirculate and 15% fresh air and that would probably work

Don

 

[JoeS]

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.

 

[jray3]

:idea: Heating the cabin is for creature comfort and costs range, but doesn't do much to warm our batteries and address their reduced output when cold. So, what about parking over a radiant panel heater, which would gently and evenly warm the pack from below, without hacking the car at all?
I'm trying to decide between the 150W Cozy Legs or the 400W LifeSmart panel. LifeSmart appears to have fragility issues, and Cozy Legs has been well-reviewed by peers using it in it's original intended purpose. Might as well start off gently before amping up.
I'll be using a Fluke TiR1 thermal imager to document the battery pack temperature (from below) after cold soaking, after a drive, after a cold-weather recharge, and after a night above the radiant panel.

 

[peterdambier]

Defogging.

We always travel together, my wife and me. Her side is always foggy.

Accidently found out, with airstream to the window (max defogging) then A/C switched off manually, the i-MiEV remembers the setting when you get out and come back next day. Well it is could but the windows stay clear.

Next switch fan speed from auto to manually and only as fast as you really need. Costs you less power and gets not so cold.

Our 2010 i-MiEV does not have heating when plugged in. So I got us a 2 kW electric heater and fan that works best in the foot well. I have already thought about putting that unit below the car to heat the batteries. Maybe I need to place a styrofoam shield around the car so the heat cannot escape.

You might not call it cold, -2C = 28F but we are not at all used to winters and not that early.

 

[DonDakin]

Hi all,

Has anyone used a chemical defogging agent in the car ? Something like rain-x antifog ?

Perhaps mixing the interior/exterior air could help. It would be nice to be able to control it. Good Idea. Sandy mentioned that he defogged with opening the windows perhaps that is the best contol method. put the heater on re-circ and open a window just a little.

I do have the tendency to want to not let in any cold air but perhaps cracking a window open from the begining is the best method. That will be my next experiment.

Don...

 

[sandange]

JoeS

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?

When I turn the dial to full defrost I manually turn off the AC - I already have ice on the window and need heat to remove it.
Cracking the window helps as cold air is dry .

I try to use the max setting sparingly turning off and on when needed only for short periods of time , same for the heated seat you can coast for a long time once heated up.
The main cabin heater, I need to bounce from low to high on fan speed and keep the heater dial on relatively stationary about mid point and crank it up if the windows start freezing up.

Starting with a full charge and the conditions I described I can probably do this trip twice if I'm careful,
Combine this with driving in the mountains and the RR meter seems totally out to lunch.
I need to balance the RR reading and comparing with how many bars are showing to approximate my range.

After a few weeks of this , something will start to show a pattern and make sense.

Just to confuse things more I just installed a multi-port switchable accessory connector to power our new passenger heater cushion and a 12v car blanket.
The experiment continues.

 

[tonymil]

I think the temperature control is a bit like the thermostat in your house - It determines at what interior temperature the heating element in the heater will begin to cycle on and off. Whenj the car is cold inside, one click up from center appears the same as 'full on' so far as RR is concerned. Once the car gets warm enough for the heating element to cycle off, the RR will give you back some of the range it took when you first turned it on.Don

Are you sure about this Don? My impression is that the temperature control determines how hot the heating element will get and therefore how warm the air will be coming into the cabin. I haven't noticed the heater shutting down when the cabin gets warm, I have to manually turn down the control once it starts getting too warm. The reason I think the RR doesn't change when you go from one click to "x" clicks is because just turning the heating element on causes the biggest drain, increasing the temp causes only small additional draw on the battery. But, this is just an impression, I have no data to back it up.

 

[fjpod]

In typical ICE cars, the temp control usually mixes the heat from the engine with cold air. This would be a bad thing in the miev. Also, if the temp control sent more power into the heater as you turn it up towards max hot, it should show an effect on the RR...but it doesn't...which leads me to believe the miev mixes cold air to regulate the air temp. I have a feeling that the fan switch has such a large impact on RR, that it cannot simply be just from the blower motor. The fan switch must also send more juice to the heating element/s so as to keep the temperature up as it blows more volume.

So...I'm still thinking that for maximum efficiency, the temp control should be kept at maximum hot and the fan used as sparingly as possible.

 

[MLucas]

Hi all,

Has anyone used a chemical defogging agent in the car ? Something like rain-x antifog ? Don...

Yes, I use the Rain-X products on both the inside and outside of the windshield and find that it works rather well. I only applied to the windshield and not the side windows. I have tinted windows and not sure how the Rain-X anitfog affects it. So, I can see a difference between the windshield and the side windows, I don't get nearly as much fogging on the windshield. In my previous car, a Nissan Versa - I didn't use the antifog but I sure I had to use the defoggers a lot in that car. I'm thinking its working pretty good. The Rain-X for the windshield on the outside helps to reduce the amount of wipers I need to use during wet conditions. I use both the product that I have to wipe on the windshield and the washer fluid.

 

[MLucas]

So...I'm still thinking that for maximum efficiency, the temp control should be kept at maximum hot and the fan used as sparingly as possible.

Watching the ampmeter and the RR, I find the best efficiency is to leave both of the lower dials to AUTO and only adjust the temperature dial. If you watch the RR meter, and not have either of the dials on AUTO - then move both to AUTO you'll see the RR gives you a bit mileage. Then also watch the ampmeter and you'll see it move up and down based on your selection. On AUTO on both lower dials and on the third notch, my ampmeter is about a 1/4" above neutral. Clicking it down one notch and I'm closer to neutral on the ampmeter.

For maximum efficiency, then turn the middle Dial to OFF and the top dial to the Green dot and the system is OFF. But, I'm a wuss and can't stand the cold - so I'll sacrifice range for some frickin' heat. I'm still thinking about getting a heated blanket for the car like Sandange has mentioned.

 

[sandange]

DonDakin & MLucus

Good idea using the RainX I had forgotten all about it
Used to use it when doing the windows on our house, it helped to kept them cleaner longer.
Gonna get me some

 

[Pier]

Did you think about infrared lights ?

Local store had only 250w infrared heating light, what they call «pig light »
Went to a pet shop and saw a nice asortment of bulbs 50w, 75w, 100w +. Bought one for experiments in home. It doesn't give a lot of heat but more than incandescent lights.

It is too cold outside now to work on my car in the cold wind, having no garage. I might wait next spring for experiments. Having driven 80 km this morning in -10°C without heat at all but well dressed, I didn't suffer from cold or even fogging. Winter isn't that long anyway, so I can wait. And actually, there is no « second half » beside me in the car.... :lol: Easier to suffer alone !!!

So here is my project. Install a permanent electric cable in the cabin from the main 330v battery. Install 3 X 50watt heat bulb in series in a secure porcelain holder under/partially inside the dash over the feet. 50 watt is not too hot and 3 of them should do the job. A 150w bulb is much too hot in the socket.

If someone want to give it a try, it's yours for free....

 

[DonDakin]

Hi Pier,

I thought about that too and I did do some experiments with some 50 watt 12 volt halogen lights. I even when out and bought a red acetate sheet to change the color to red. I wound up melting the red acetate. but I found a source in Montreal for high temp red gels. Which I have not yet purchased yet. I think running 3 120 V lights in series off of the 330 V pack is the best idea. It's just the access to the HT in the pack that might be difficult. Perhaps running a 150 W string of 3x50 W lights from the 12 V source is easier to do.

I have not installed this into the imiev yet. I decided first to get some heated insoles for my boots from a motorcycle shop. They work really well and take only 15 watts. I like the idea of the lights in the car because you don't have to put the heating into the clothing but it is less effecient and it's still really localized heat.

I'll post if I make any progress on this kind of thing.

As far as the temp selector/fan speed discussion I don't think there is any right or wrong combination. Increasing either one will increase the heat put into the car and drain the battery more. Increasing the fan speed will put more hot air in the car increasing the temp will increase the temp of the air going to the car. You adjust until your comfortable and that is the major feedback control in the system.

The only thing that will make the system more efficient is the insulation mod on the outside of the car.

MLucas,

I'm going to buy some rain X anti fog and see if that helps out with the fogging. I'll try using one side window as a control and see the difference. Thanks for the info.


Don.....

 

[Pier]

I thought about that too and I did do some experiments with some 50 watt 12 volt halogen lights. ...........to change the color to red. I think running 3 120 V lights in series off of the 330 V pack is the best idea. It's just the access to the HT in the pack that might be difficult. Perhaps running a 150 W string of 3x50 W lights from the 12 V source is easier to do.
Don.....

50 watt 12 volt halogen are not as efficient at heating. I prefer the infrared ones, like Exo-terra intense basking spot for terrarium. They come in 50w, 75w, 100w plus ... The only problem with the heating ones ...no 12 volt.

You're right, access to the pack might be difficult at least for now. I know how to access the leaf one but not Mitsu. Winter is too cold to find out by myself outside. Meanwhile, I will try to install one 50w bulb on an inverter just to see how it does perform.

Thanks, Pier

 

[DonDakin]

Hello all,

Well an inverter is not a bad way to go especially with resistive loads. Let us know how it works out.

I did the rain-x anti fog test and it was pretty "clear" that the rain X anti fog works. I will do all the windows in the car when I have a little free time. Hardest thing is getting it on the windshield but it's worth it.

Don......

 

[Pier]

Follow up on infrared lamp heating :

First experiment yesterday. Installed a ceramic socket under the dashboard and 50W lamp. T° in the car was 35°F. Car not moving. Came back 20 minutes later and T° was 65°F on the floor under the accelerator.

Seems good so far. Next step will be to drive in cold conditions (yesterday was more like warm 40°F), and try 75w or 100w. The energy comes from 400w inverter in 12v power socket.

Very easy to install. Lots of room under the dash and many places to attach. We don't even see the fixture, just the nice red light flowing to our feet.