Air Conditioning

Simply having the fan on (AC on or off) will decrease your EV range ESTIMATE by about 10%. I've only tested it once, but I made my commute with the fan on the whole time and A/C about half the time (all in Eco mode too) and I figure I lost about 0.25 to 0.50 miles of EV range (lots of traffic lights, but I think thats a safe estimate).

john1701a had his car plugged into a Chargepoint charger and was able to figure out that having the A/C on for 10 minutes (using the remote climate control) used 0.25 kWh of electricity from the Chargepoint charger/EVSE. However, I believe when the remote climate control/AC is used, it runs on full blast (highest fan setting). So that may account for the relatively high usage (a typical full-charge is about 3.1-3.2kWh and will get you about 11-15+ miles of EV range, depending on your driving pattern).

 

I smell something hiding under a bridge, but the answer is, of course it affects the EV range, as the Air Conditioning compressor in any Prius runs off the High Voltage battery pack, this should not be news to you Mr. 2006 Prius owner. We don't have any exact numbers yet, it's not A/C season in these parts yet.

 

You mean the Fremont bridge, right?

 

There may be a different penalty in EV than in HV mode. However, I'm not sure how to control for the ambient heat in either situation. If it's warm enough to use AC, it's warm enough to register a hit on your battery, too. How much - of each - is the question.

 

In my experience, the EV system (at least the battery) can tolerate warm temperatures quite well and still be pretty efficient. In fact, though I don't have hard data to back it up yet, I feel that a warm battery (warm enough that I'm very tempted to turn on the AC) seems to give me more miles than a cool battery (when the cabin temperature feels' just right' to me). Of course, I don't know if this increase in EV distance is really do to some other component of the EV system.

 

Has anyone figured out how many EV miles are reduced by running the Air Conditioning for 10 minutes? I'm trying to figure out if I'd be able to run the Air Conditioning a couple times on a single charge, or does it really hit the EV range to let it run for 10 minutes in the parking lot? Thanks!

 

depends on the ambient temp and humidity. there's no chart, so we will be estimating. 10 minutes in a 90 degree sunny parking lot and high humidity cost me around 3 miles.

 

Thanks bisco! Does 10 minutes bring the car down to the high 60's or low 70's, or is it still pretty warm inside? The dealer told me yesterday that the remote AC will just bring the car down to outside ambient temp, but I think he was confusing it with the solar venting roof.

 

Well, the air conditioner is variable speed and electronically controlled, and I'd be surprised if the question you're asking didn't have widely varying answers depending on the solar load (measured by the solar sensor) and the enthalpy of the air inside and outside of the car ....

-Chap

 

yes, he was confused. i can't tell you the inside temp, but it came down from very hot, to very comfortable.

 

Chap, yes... I understand there are variables involved. I'm trying to find out if turning on the AC for 10 minutes via Entune kills the EV range completely, or does it just use a couple (2-3, 5-6, or 7-8) miles of range per 10 minutes. I essentially want to know if I can get more than one use out of it on a charge, and is 10 minutes enough to be effective at cooling off the car on a 85-95 degree day? I don't need scientific numbers, just some help figuring out how well I can expect it to perform to help me make a buying decision. The dealer won't let me take a used one for an overnight drive so I can charge it up, and sit it in the sun to do my own unscientific assessment.

 

Thank you! I'm trying to stop sticking to my seats during my hour commute, so the remote AC is a strong selling point for me.

 

the thing is, i was in the car, and was able to control the ventilation, windows doors etc. which helps a bit in getting the hot air out. remotely, you won't be able to do any of that. still, you can only use so much battery per minute. the car probably won't be as cool as mine was.

 

Sure, I get that, but I suspect that "widely varying" in this case could end up meaning, maybe widely enough to swing your conclusions either way depending on the conditions.

You might be able to get usefully close by just crunching some numbers without a sample car at all. You'd have to pick the outside temperature and humidity you'd be expecting to deal with, and pick whatever inside temperature/humidity you'd consider low enough for running the A/C to have been worthwhile in improving your comfort. Look on an enthalpy chart for the amount of heat needing to be removed to get from the first temp/humidity to the second (per volume of air; times cabin volume from the car specs). Somewhere there has to be a spec for the performance of the air conditioner (it's greater than 1; an air conditioner using n joules of energy can move several times n joules of heat out of the space). A likely place to look for that spec might be Toyota's press releases about the neato ejector-cycle A/C they introduced in Gen 3. So use that figure to divide your total-heat-to-be-extracted and get energy-consumed-by-A/C ... then divide that into the published capacity of the battery.

That'll be really crude (as a back-of-the-envelope always is), but might tell you some of what you want to know. With the enthalpy chart out, you could even try different humidities to see how much difference that makes. I'm not sure how to handle solar load, though I know my own car sounds like the fan can speed up or slow down by a factor of 2 maybe when driving into or out of strong sun.

-Chap

 

I've seen the A/C consume somewhere between 300 and 1500 Watt, according to Torque. When the interior is not hot from standing still, it will do around 500-750W.