No heated seats?

No, no heated seats so far.

 

It's possible to install seat heaters to the OEM seats.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(aaf709 @ Dec 13 2006, 08:16 AM) [snapback]361505[/snapback]</div>

If you install after market heated seats be careful to make sure that the heated seats can not be on unless the car is in "Ready" or you run the risk of a dead 12 volt battery which will strand you.

I decided that the risk was not worth it.

 

It's actually pretty easy to set up any electronics to only work when the car is on - there are a number of hot leads that only activate when the car is on, and then can either be tapped directly for power( depending on power requirements) or used as a trigger to allow power to be drawn from another source. No risk involved, really, just a little extra effort.

And as for the question as to how well the heater works... I think it works fine. i have a 12 minutes commute, and the heater is capable of blasting out hot air within 5 minutes. However, be warned that running the heater will lower your mileage, as it draws heat away from the engine, forcing it to run and use gas to stay warm.

The prius A/C unit (controls both heating and cooling as a true air conditioner) is pretty good at doing its job. you set it to a certain temperature and just leave it. in the winter, it will hold off pumping air into the car until it can actually warm the air, which is pretty nice if you're coming from a heated garage into the blistering cold - the cabin is warmer than the air outside that would be pumped through the system.

 

There is an electric heater that's used until the ICE is warmed up. The electric heater isn't as good as the one from the ICE, but it helps.

 

How funny... My daughter just complained about this very thing this morning on our commute in. It would be very nice to have heated seats.

 

Why not get some sheepskin seat covers? That should help warm you up.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Davideo @ Dec 13 2006, 10:43 AM) [snapback]361536[/snapback]</div>

Define how quick a normal car is. The car i had before this took longer to heat up the cabin than the Prius, and the cabin was even smaller.

electric heaters are woefully inefficient - you can draw 2000 watts and not even be adequate to heat a small, 1 car garage. I haven't looked into the Prius heating system much, but it definitely does its job as well or better than any other car i've been in.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Davideo @ Dec 13 2006, 12:43 PM) [snapback]361536[/snapback]</div>

Ours heats a good deal faster than our old 98 Subaru Outback did. And it's been cooooold here lately.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Dec 13 2006, 12:29 PM) [snapback]361585[/snapback]</div>

The electric heater is only around 300 watts. I need to track it down in the service manual - with that low a wattage I can't imagine it is for anything other than the main battery (it needs to be warm for best operation) or for the defrosters. The average hair dryer is 1000 to 1500 watts, so this is really insignificant!

More importantly is the engine coolant thermos bottle. It jumps the coolant temperature by 20 to 30 degrees from ambient after parking overnight. That trims a couple of minutes off of warmup.

- Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Dec 13 2006, 08:57 AM) [snapback]361555[/snapback]</div>

In what way are they inefficient? They are 100% energy efficient. They convert 100% of the input energy into heat. Did you expect to get out more energy than you put in? Electric heat might be less cost efficient than gas, but devices which are 100% efficient are normally not referred to as "woefully inefficient".

In warmer climates a heat pump can heat a house using less electricity than an electric heater, but that's not generation of heat (just as air conditioners don't generate "cold"), that's moving it around.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tom_06 @ Dec 13 2006, 01:16 PM) [snapback]361663[/snapback]</div>

To follow up on my own post, there are Two electric heaters in the cabin heater core of 165 watts each. That is a total of 330 watts. They are PTC heaters which means they control their own temperature by throttling back as they heat up. Here is a page from the technican training materials from Toyota's techinfo site:

[attachmentid=5908]

As they are in the heater core, they wouldn't have anything to do with warming the main battery. At 330 watts, they might help the defroster, but that's not much for keeping the cabin warm. A person of average weight is supposed to put out about 100 watts - how warm would you be with three adults in tha car and the engine off on a cold day? OK, it depends on consulting adults, lack of clothing, and appropriate sexual orientation for the given participants.

- Tom

 

Heated seats? Yeah those are nice, but I want cooled seats like a lot of luxury cars now have.

Call me greedy, but that's what I want!

 

I thought the heater might actually work like a home heat pump. After all, if there's a compressor for the AC, then all the parts are basically there to have a mini heat pump on the car. If you're not familiar with a heat pump, it's basically running the AC in reverse to provide heat. Seems like that would be more efficient than 300 watts of resistance heat. Wonder what the EV-1 and RAV4 EV did for heat?