little car/with EV disappears

Is your heat on? Here in northern Wisconsin the engine runs about 10 months of the year for heat.

 

That little car with EV is the economy indicator.

 

I agree...you probably had the climate control on and the engine had to start for heat.

 

Really wish they had electric heat in these things.. at least while in EV mode. Although.. the heat does come quickly thanks to plumbing the coolant through the cat converter.

 

agreed, when you don't need full range, it would be nice to have a bit of heat.

 

Aren't electric heaters pretty inefficient though? I'd always heard that it's not that much more inefficient to just start the ICE than to use an electric heater (at least on a ICE as efficient as the Prius has).

 

I think the reason Toyota decided to use ICE for heating is to reduce the load on the cold battery (which can be very cold in some areas).

 

Wear gloves. If you have the PiP, you probably have a garage. I have turned the heat on maybe 4 times total since I bought the Prius, all times because the girl occupant was cold. Windows up in the winter time even for longer drives is comfortable. I drive to ski resorts all the time. Here in the Colorado Rockies we get a bunch of snow and ice and very subfreezing temps.

 

The 13" leaf runs the ac backwards to create electric heat. The heat pump is probably more powerful than other strategies. I think the ultimate solution for an EV is a fossile fuel powered heater. It makes an EV non zero emissions but it is a great way to heat a small cabin. I think one of the EVs from the 90's had a little turbine heater that worked well.

 

The difference between this...


....and this...


...is indeed an indication of the engine running, most likely for heat. Though, the same thing happens while traveling faster than 62 mph.

The system switches from EV mode to EV-BOOST. That means you're still getting the benefit of extra electricity from the plug, but it's obviously going to be lower MPG than 999. Fortunately, it's quite a bit higher than what the non-plug efficiency can deliver during warm-up.

As for offering electric heat, that gobbles up electricity at such a fast rate, you'd be starting up the engine anyway. Between the capacity available and the increased resistance due to the cold, the penalty is too much. Also, keep in mind that heat-pumps don't work well in extreme low temperatures.

 

Well... efficient, effective, and waste don't necessarily go hand in hand, and it depends on what size picture you're looking at...
For instance: for the purpose of warming you, the driver:

• Electric heat (think space heater) would be warming the air, which would then warm you. It takes a lot of energy to heat up the entire cabin, even if it's "100% efficient" at converting the electricity to heat.
• There's using electricity to move heat, rather than produce it, but regardless of how effective or not effective it might've been at cold temperatures, it's not in the production model, so that's moot.
• Seat heaters would be warming you pretty close to directly, rather than indirectly via heating the entire cabin. There's a lot less you're trying to keep warm here, so that should be more effective.
• Using heat from the engine would be warming the the entire cabin again, but - that heat would be there whether you use it or not. A lot of the energy in fuel is normally wasted as heat, much less actually goes towards moving the car.

The pip's electric range is rather short, so unless you have a very short commute, eating into the battery to produce a substantial amount of heat (if the seat heaters aren't enough) would likely cut your ev range by quite a bit... making you more likely to need to run the engine for the rest of the way... So even if your objective is using less gas, you're still likely to use less gas by using gas for what it's better at (heat) and electricity at what it's better at (motion). Might as well use gas earlier (and use that otherwise wasted heat to keep you warm).

 

So this all leads to another topic that we should all be doing when it's cold enough: Grill Blocking!

 

The reason Toyota's including seat heaters with the PlugIns and EVs no matter what the seat material is stems from the logical fact that it's faster to warm your BODY than to try to warm the entire cabin.

 

Did some one say grill blocking time? OK!

 

That looks familiar. I blocked mine last Tuesday. It's time.

 

Think you'll block the top when it gets a bit colder?

 

I understand the reason for no electric heating, but I do wish the PiP had a heated front windscreen, like my previous Ford Mondeo had (Fusion I think, in the US). Haven't had any other car with this, it was really useful both to clear condensation and melt ice enough for the wipers to work, and presumably used no more electricity than the rear window one.

 

Nope, keep the inverter cool!

 

Are you saying this because the inverter gets more work in our PiPs? Or would you say that if you had a regular Prius, too?