Random EV thoughts.....

Companies in Ireland actively try to avoid petrol PHEV’s as they can’t claim VAT back on petrol but can on diesel. They’re feeling pressure from employees choosing company cars though as PHEV’s suit the nonsensical BIK rules that have been revised recently.

Looks like VW finally discovered heat scavenging

Looks like the general plan seems to be to rip off Tesla where possible. Can't see any problem with that as long as they don't go buying social media networks 😂

Isn't that exactly what heat scavenging is? Using heat wasted from one area of the system elsewhere that it's needed?

I would Tesla is taking it a step further by designing components with dual purposes so as to save on the overall BOM

Also, technically doesn't every heat pump just redistribute heat? 😉

Sorry I was away the last few days. Thank you for all suggestions. I'll be sleeping on it (literally I need some) and most likely I'll contact the council looking for an explanation

Ah yeah okay I follow you now

Like I said, Tesla have taken it a step further by using other components to generate heat and reducing the need for dedicated heating elements in the car

I'd still call it heat scavenging personally because you're moving heat from a system which isn't primarily used as a heater to somewhere it can be used, just a more deliberate version of it

Dunno about Tesla but I will say in general I've found that EVs don't heat up as quickly as ICE.

Makes sense since there's no combustion engine in the front losing 60% of its energy as wasted heat

In general, I've found there's 2 things to do to get around this and enjoy a nice warm EV

First is to get heated seats if available and use them instead of setting the cabin temp higher. They're much more effective at warming someone up

Second is to preheat the car to a higher temperature than you'd normally set it on cold days. So if you normally have the heating at 20C then preheat it to 23C.

The idea is that you want to get everything inside the cabin warmed up before you set off. Initially all the metal, plastic, glass and upholstery in the cabin will be whatever the outside temperature is, and it will all be pulling heat out of the air before it gets to warm you up.

So you need to get all of that stuff warmed up before the car is going to start feeling warm

I can tell you from experience that getting into a warm car on a cold day is so much nicer than getting into a cold one

Even the Leaf heat pump heats up pretty quickly. Unfortunately the rather annoying downside is that it sucks the life out of the range with the result that I now only turn on the heat just long enough to demist the windscreen. Every km counts!

Those are my experiences with the Leaf and ID.4 compared to the Auris

I'll admit they both have proper AC while the Toyota just had basic hot/cool air, so maybe that's a factor

I'm certainly never going back to a car that doesn't have an air conditioner

I never found the Leaf's heating to be power hungry. I'd typically be driving around with the heat set to 20C everywhere.

Funny enough I found the demist setting to be the most power hungry, so I'd always lower the fan speed to stop it draining the battery

It knocks about 8 to 10% off the range in my leaf, multiple short journeys being more range hungry as the car is being brought up to temp each time. That in itself is probably reasonable and comparable to other EVs but the problem I find is that if you are regularly doing multiple journeys that aggregate close to the max range, that 10% can be the difference between having finger nails intact by evening time! So I've evolved into a zipped up jacket wearing driver who is constantly amazed why I'm overheating when I drive the smax!

Are you going close to the max range very often?

I think I've only had one or two times I had enough short journeys in one day to get me below 20%

No option of a daytime top-up if you go below 50%?

Just seems a bit extreme to live without heating year round if it's a pretty rare event that you need to

Do I know you? 😁