It may be winter outside...

I don't fully understand the question. Are you referring to the heating of the interior (cabin) of the car when running and/or when stationary?

If stationary will the car be standing in the open or in a building?
What minimum ambient temperature would you expect?

This is not to say that I will be able to answer your question but I will be interested in the replies.

In my own case I do not expect the temperature to be lower than -10C and then only on rare occasions. I have every confidence that the car's a/c system will cope with this fairly well after I have started in the morning.

 

If you're talking about the interior, I wouldn't mess with it -- the car heats up pretty good, and already has an optimized conditioning system...

If you're talking about the engine, I would install an engine block heater that's on a timer and plugs into your wall.

The engine block heater helps with both mileage and interior heating. Probably the best way to go overall.

 

Hello there in Norway,

I use an elsectic heater for my cabin and block heater for the engine. I have a bumper marine plug where I can plug both in. My house outlet has a time switch.

You need to realize car heating is kind of rare over in the lower US. Some people use remote starters to just warm up the engine. My cabin heat is from a regular household electric ceramic heater. The kind you have in Norway like from Delfa are not easily available here.

Likewise for fuel buring cabin heaters. I did see a propane engine warmer once I almost got for my diesel car that was hard to start in the cold, but rarely see anything available these days.

I doubt even in Norway you need anything to get the car started up. But if you just want a warm car,
either option should work. Electric requires a grid power plug nearby, so that should affect your choice.

And here we find electric block heaters give us better mpg, but that may not be as true for European cars.

Maybe someone up in Alaska has seen some fuel burning heater options?

 

If their is one thing that gets my goat---it's people that reply on a forum without doing any research! Let's do this nice and slow for those simple folk. Right click on "File" in your tool bar on your browser. Mouse over New. Mouse over Window, right click. Enter "Fuel Operated Heater" in your address bar.
See, now wasn't that easy? :focus:

 

Actually, being as Prius is supposed to be an environmentally responsible vehicle, I'm surprised that the "non-idling" fuel operated heater doesn't come standard. In Norway you want to contact Webasto and in the U.S. you would want to contact Espar Heating Systems.

 

Wow...that's embarassing.

Welcome to Priuschat.

 

I would use Webasto even in the U.S.. Webasto makes a better hot water system, in my opinion. I did a lot of research with both Espar and Webasto when looking for a hot water system for our sailboat, and finally settled on a Webasto unit. It's been very good and very reliable.

Tom

 

LOL. Great first impression. OP will probably create a new account now.

Welcome!

 

Hi All,

I think the lack of a direct fueled heater is a problem for winter driving. It results in allot of wasted fuel in a really cold climate. -10 C (14 F) is not really cold, in my opinion, BTW. As long as the sun is shining, and wind is not blowing, that is good walking weather. But -20C is a diferent matter, and it was -20C (-4 f) here this morning and in such conditions one would need to run the engine for a very long time to get the cabin warmed up. When that is going on, most of the heat is just being wasted out the tail pipe, rather than into the car to get the car warm. Maybe some sort of tail-pipe heat recovery system would be a reasonable compromise.