Leaving a cooler of ice in the Prius for hot weather.

When its really hot, I lower back seats and open carpet cover to expose stack. I Just removed the one screw...then its simply velcroed down and a few clips. I Let it "breathe" so to speak. I point A/C vents up and towards the stack and seems to cool metal faster... maybe helps? I monitor temp on Elm. The cooling fan circulates the air to it. I thinks it circulates/cools most efficiently when settings are in "outside air " as opposed to max cooling "recirculate" setting of cabin cooling. Incoming Air pressure exits rear vents on side of car under bumper cover.

 

I just pack mine in dry ice all around and it seems to a good job.

 

Really hot yesterday when I left my Energi (white, no window tint) in a unshaded parking lot at 1:30pm. Came out a couple of hours later to see my scangauge reporting 111f interior, battery 93f. Drove a couple of miles home with a/c running at max and battery rose to 95f while interior had dropped to 89f.

FWIW

 

I only do it because I cant tell if the cooling fan is working after I cleaned it, I removed it out of car and disassembed it. I know I connected it but I havent heard it in high speed anymore. So I try to monitor it till I can figure out a way to test. The ELM 327 has a fan PID but I''m not sure if its the battery cooling fan. With carpet off I can hear it better. If it doesnt turn on soon I will disconnect and reconnect, maybe....last time I got the ol Triangle!

 

That's crazy talk, next it'll be saving the hot coolant in a thermos for later. Oh yeah...

 

95F for battery is low compared to Prius. I've seen 45C (113F) under similar parked in the sun, then drive conditions. A cool evening drive, with the car fully warmed up, it'll settle around 35C (95C), your maximum.

There's a popular, but I think misguided, maxim, that running AC will cool the battery. I don't see it born out in practice, when I was monitoring battery temp's. Your experience seems to reflect that too, running AC on max.

My son-in-law was tooling around in an Energi plug-in, back a week or so, he's working with Ford, gets a variety of cars.

 

i think i read that maxim in a toyota statement recently.

 

Hah, what do they know?

 

an excellent question, because they aren't telling.

 

Yeah different chemistries and behaviors. BTW, 113f is Ford's upper working limit for EV and has the car revert to hybrid mode beyond that. Even here in south Texas, I've never encountered that threshold as 109f is the highest I've ever seen on my scangauge.

 

Somehow you have seen these temps without having ice water bottles strewn about your Prius?

Maybe swamp coolers aren't required afterall.....

 

How long did you monitor at a time? It takes a fairly long while, but my experience in long rides is that even minimally cooling (~84°F or 29°C setting) the interior eventually makes a big difference in battery temperature (BT2).

 

The car was parked after a drive, in hot sun, for maybe 1/2 hour. Starting up, BT2 read somewhere around 45C. Drove for about 5 minutes without AC, windows down, BT2 temperature wasn't going down, so rolled up the windows and turned on A/C. About 15 minutes later, cabin cooled down, and BT2 had dropped to around 42C. I shut off AC, rolled down windows, ran fan for a few minutes to clear humidity, then shut off completely. We got to our destination in maybe another 10 minutes, BT2 had dropped to around 40C.

Not really conclusive, but the sense I got is that BT2 temp will drop just with steady driving, with our without AC, due to the hybrid fan. Logically AC should help, but it seemed a drop in the bucket. Too, I guess I'm just not a fan of AC, lol.

 

This tread is still going

 

@StarCaller would be proud as well.

 

maybe break out the ole hot water bottle