Hows the heat in cold temps.

We've had the snowflake for the last couple of days and it takes Prius about a mile and a half before warm air starts to come through the vents.
Seems pretty much the same as 'normal' cars I've owned before.
Also Max Hot is not as hot as previous motors I've had - but I can live with that

 

IMHO the heat in the Prius is nowhere near as strong as in other vehicles. Ours very rarely gets warm in the winter.

 

Among other places, we have property in MT where it can get sub zero. Do the trick of any trucker ... cardboard in fron of the fresh air supply (just inside the engine compartment), or have someone do it for you if you are not skilled in such ways. Works like a charm

 

I lived in Fargo, ND, until a year ago. (Wow, it doesn't seem that long!) Anything colder than 15 or 20 degrees below zero fahrenheit and I always let the car warm up for 5 minutes before driving, to start getting some heat into the cabin.

One problem was that nothing is very far from anything else in Fargo, so I seldom had to drive more than 10 or 12 minutes, not enough time for the car to warm up properly. However, on rare 20-minute-plus drives, it was nice and warm inside and I had to remove my gloves and hat.

For comparison, the Prius puts out more heat, and puts it out sooner, than did my 1989 Honda Civic station wagon, which I preheated, as above, in cold weather. On the other hand, I once had a loaner, I think it was a Camry, that put out lots more heat than the Prius. The Prius gets its cabin heat from the burning gasoline, and the "price" of high mpg is you don't burn a lot of gasoline.

FWIW, the Prius will put out a little bit of heat at the floor from a small electric heater, giving it an additional edge over the Civic.

John1701a puts on a lot more miles in Minneapolis than I did in Fargo, and will confirm that once warmed up, the Prius puts out plenty of heat. But no matter how you slice it, a 50-mpg car produces less heat than a 12-mpg car.

I have not seen Jayman on for a while, but he lives (lived?) in Winnipeg, where it's even colder than Fargo, and will confirm that the Prius does respectably in the matter of heat.

(On the other hand, your mpg will go way down in very cold weather, as the car burns extra gas to provide you with heat.)

And of course there's never any problem starting the Prius in the most bitterly-cold weather.

 

The heater in my Prius works great - sometimes too great if I don't bother to check the Auto-AC temperature setting. The air comes up to temperature within a minute or two in sub-freezing weather. You can take an MPG hit, but I don't use the heater on my usual short trips so I don't notice it much.

 

Ours works well in Northern Michigan. The Prius doesn't have a huge engine, so it's not going to make all sorts of waste heat to toss away, but the cabin heater does fine.

Tom

 

Mine works great... if i ever used it . most of my driving is fairly short (less than 20 minutes), and i figure if i could spend 20-30 minutes walking to class in the freezing cold with wind blowing in my face, i can let the car stay a little chilly too. The few times i have used it was for the defrost when the mirrors would fog up a bit - the air felt plenty warm for those few seconds :lol: