How To Preheat The Engine in Cold Weather

My nearby dealership always seems to be awash in the Plug-In version, and one or two Hybrids.

 

I think he meant coldest town in Colorado... Because we all know there's lots of super cold places in the world, especially 12K years ago.

 

Winter (Dec – Feb): Average lows range from -10C (14f) to -15C (5f) in Calgary

The Calgary I know in winter is cold but not -30C on "most days".

The engine will start on a hybrid pretty quickly due to quick discharging when cold.

You bought a plug in with no place to plug it in. I would dig a trench in the current 63f weather (no freeze in sight) and call it a day.

 

Well, you know what they say about people that make assumptions. Muted for being a Canadian AH

 

0W-16 oil, computer-controlled hybrid drivetrain that also uses the electric motor as the motive force—there is little need to warm up in frigid weather. Even my 1985 Corolla owner’s manual recommended only a few minutes of warm-up in frigid weather, and that was with 5W-30 or thicker (typically 10W-30 or 10W-40) and a carburetor. As long as you drive gently with a cold engine, you will be OK. Just don’t floor it. In fact, if I floor my Gen 4 Prime PHEV with a cold engine (using 0W-16 oil), it smells really bad, like some plastic is burning; so, don’t do it with a cold engine.

 

Have u tried just driving it

 

The icebox of the country. Know it well. Worse than ridiculous, probably not good for the engine.

 

What they said: The best way to warm up any car is to drive it gently for a few minutes. Idling just wastes gas. As a former Minnesota driver, sometimes at -40'C/F, the window defrost solution is external air.

 

Okay I'll bite: What specific problems are people (first hand stories only please) having with Toyota engines from using them in cold climates without preheating?

 

Lack of responses shall be deemed as a conclusion to this topic.

 

Wow....
Interesting thread.

SO......the initial actual question was:

How To Preheat The Engine in Cold Weather

This led to some unfortunate ASSumptions like:

The OP, like most people, lives in a single family detached dwelling since they are they the dominant housing type in suburban North America, Australia, and parts of Latin America.......

DESPITE the fact that we're more than a quarter of the way through the 21st century.....car engines STILL require pre-heating....

Canadians tend to be more polite than Americans......

Fahrenheit = Celsius.....


To answer the ACTUAL question:
Yes you can do it - even if for some inexplicable reason you're driving a $35,000 compact hatchback, while living the condo-life.
It will cost you the price of a block heater in the 700-ish watt range and a 1200 watt/hour portable power station (sometimes incorrectly referred to as a "solar generator")
Keep the PPS charged until you park the car and plug the block heater into the PPS.

I never said that you could preheat the engine easily or inexpensively........

You probably ought to have a portable power station handy in any case and since we live in a golden age of battery technology and we do not seem to mind the child and minority abuses in getting those batteries inexpensively, they're cheaper than ever and they're good for about 3000-4000 charge/discharge cycles without significant battery degradation.
-Just like the battery in your gas car.

While it IS possible to do so, you may NOT want to pre-heat the gas engine BECAUSE:
It wastes energy unless you're going so for comfort - which is still somewhat wasteful but - I'm not judging. There will be some value in surviving near fatal cold temperatures while you're waiting for the car to warm up.
The G5 Prius is a compact hatchback - so it warms up fast and even the Canadian spec Priuses don't use very thick oil - IIRC it's 0w8.
I would add "full synthetic" but that's a redundancy.
THUS 'preheating' will not add really anything to the longevity of the car or it's future street value - so it will be a sunk cost.
Besides:
Most people living the "condo life' do so near the bookends of adult life.
They're either just getting started or they're into their 'golden years' - either of which means that the car doesn't really have to last for 20-30 years - riiight?
Young people do not usually keep their cars that long and older people don't get to.

Good Luck!

 

The problems I have:

1. Cranky wife. (And yet another husband who blames his wife. ) She likes to be warm, and it isn't enough when the car is just barely getting the cabin warm by the time we get to work. Getting in a car that can be -30 °F or so also isn't that comfortable.
2. Windshield won't stay clear. I'll scrape off any frost, and brush off any snow before we go, but sometimes it just frosts back up from the inside from our breath. Not breathing isn't an option, so we need some heat.
3. I'm a bit concerned about engine longevity. We got over 500,000 miles out of our last car, but it had a 1,500W circulating engine block heater that I used all winter every winter. I wonder if that didn't help. When you start up your Toyota hybrid at -36 °F or so and it starts making a whirling sound that doesn't sound normal you start to wonder if you're not doing some damage to it. The block heater on our Toyota hybrid (2013 Avalon) is pathetic. At temperatures of -30 °F or colder it doesn't seem to be able to keep the engine above freezing. I guess 20 °F is better than -30 °F, but still. I ended up with a gen 2 Prius with less than 200,000 miles on it with damaged cylinders purchased from here (the other coldest town in Colorado, Gunnison) and I wonder if the cold starts weren't part of the reason the cylinders got damaged.

 

Hmmmm....
I used 1200Wh for my energy budget above based on what the Googles said was usually installed for a compact car.
For ops in the -30 °F world???
I may have erred on my ASSumptions.....

A circulating 1500w block heater??!!
Maaaaaan, that's crazy.
According to the Googles and using what they claim is a typical U.S. electricity rate of $0.16 per kWh, running it continuously costs about $0.24 per hour. Because these heaters have built-in thermostats, actual usage and costs are usually 30-40% lower once the engine is warm probably less lower for a car sitting out in the elements.

.....so.......
Nope!
I don't think my half-baked idea would work out very well in the frozen hellscapes north of I-20.....at least during the winter.

OTOH,
You might be able to run an extension cord....a REALLY THICK one!
It's not like anyone would be bothering it.
You'd have to be somebody like Jussie Smollette to be out and about and looking for trouble after dark when it's -30 °F outside!!!!!

 

The coldest I've seen is -52 °F. Not far from here (in this same county) was a Colorado record of -60 °F.

To me, the bigger the better. They key is to use a timer. This leads to better efficiency. It's more effective and more efficient to run a 1,500W (or 2,000W or whatever) block heater for half an hour than to run a 200W block heater all night long. Since it has less time to dissipate the heat into the atmosphere you end up using less electricity as well as end up with a warmer engine. You just have to adjust the time based on ambient temperatures.

I have a 1,500W circulating block heater I want to install on the Avalon hybrid. But I don't like how the coolant hoses are set up and don't know if it'll work or have the space for it.