Re: frozen Teslas

Most North American cars above the 48th parallel are equiped with plug-in block heaters to maintain engine temperatures in cold weather. This ensures that lubrication and cooling system components don't prevent cranking and startup.

Battery blankets are also a real thing.

They're powered by dedicated 3pin line cords, plugged into 120vac distribution. You'll see AC outlets in parking lots and garages, located for that sole purpose (not fused for > 10A). The cord dangles out of the grill, but may need an extension cord to reach an outlet.

Battery preconditioning for Tesla assumes it's at a charging station, and so will use that power source to bring up the battery temperature to a normal operating range. Have to assume low temperature operation is included in the system's state machine.

RL

AFAIK they all have air-cooled packs, so even on the Prius Prime the engine can't help bring the pack up to temp directly. But the power electronics are liquid cooled I believe.

The Volt's three loops work pretty well to pre-condition when not plugged in, below about 25 F the engine comes on and burns a couple thimbles of gas to warm everything up over a few minutes. Some percentage of that energy gets sent to the battery so you're wasting about a thimble all told, and probably win on the energy balance vs driving off with the internal resistance of a battery at ambient.

But I've done that too in cold weather and I think in 6 years the car only actively bitched at me about it once, when it was about -15, and acceleration was sluggish for about a minute.

Very trouble-free car overall, I'll probably run it another couple years or to 100k and then let someone else have some fun with it, but I will be sad to let it go. The Ioniq 6 is a very stylish EV, reminds me of Saab designs. It is true that a lot of EVs are aggressively ugly cars.

A battery probably still has about 5-10% charge when it's displaying 0 miles range to the user. I suppose I could check mine the next time it's flat but I've never been curious enough about it to bother..

I don't know any EV that displays actual SoC directly to the user without digging into OBDII, it's a guess-o-meter based on a some kind of average of past experience.

In cars with small packs like mine the preference is to use the seat heater, as the resistive heater really drinks the battery, much more than AC.

Something about heating your body core bla bla bla. My experience is that in very cold weather the heated seats just provide a hot butt and the rest of me is still plenty cold.

As I understand, Tesla uses a heat pump for a heater. How good is that I dont know. But they lose efficiency at low temps. Cheers

Metered parking is too short-term, but outdoor day lots will provide sockets or lose clients.

That's a diesel thing, mostly, and you're talking about reefer traction vehicles in unserviced layby areas. It's not cost, so much as warm-up times and cab use. Some can be time and temperature controlled for intermittent running. With commuter vehicles, I guess diesel owners just do what experience (or the manual) tells them they can get away with.

Home garages or car ports usually have an easily accessed socketry, or extension cords. Owners with fixed schedules will put this on a timer to save $.

RV travellers in the summer are gratified to find available power points - and disapointed to find they're blowing lower capacity breakers when trying to use these.

It's a seller's market ($$), as far as EV's go, but you can navigate the Trans-Canada highway with one, now, if you have to.

Don't know why I'm involved in this discussion. I don't drive. Everyone else in the family does. Their work either builds or services vehicles. In my home town, if it doesn't have wheels, they're not interested. Have never been able to earn a living there. (Gone broke twice, trying.)

RL

This is interesting:

Is that caused by the car, the drivers, both? Probably drivers.

I wonder how much of that is due to the user interface. Modern cars have far too many gadgets. They pretend to "assist" driving, but in reality merely divert attention if they do not squarely interfere with it.

Lately, my car has been warning me of "Limited visibility". What were they thinking? That I'm watching TV or something? Sheesh!

Jeroen Belleman

I'm thinking that two kinds of people buy Teslas. Some love the insane acceleration and use it. Some are greenies who are fundamentally inept with the physics of driving. Both are dangerous.

And its automatic gearbox! A piece of s*it! You have to move the lever backwards to drive forwards, or forwards to reverse, if it obeys at all. Under certain circumstances, it will just ignore my input, I haven't yet figured out all of those. The lever always returns to the same position, so there is no no way to tell by feel what state it's in. You have to *look*.

It has far too many modes. Efficiency, comfort, sport, manual, ... It will change mode for no apparent reason, or at least I haven't yet figured out what those reasons might be. It has two paddles at the wheel for manually shifting up or down which are ignored half the time, but which act with a good second of delay when they do work. I've since long abandoned trying to use those. They're too unpredictable.

I have yet to discover how to prevent it from shifting up when I want to use continuous engine brake in a steep descent, and no, I'm not exceeding, or even approaching, maximum engine revs.

This does *not* help! In reality, a mechanical stick shift was so much simpler! Grrr.

Jeroen Belleman

You have a good point. Too much stuff in the car to do. I have had to pull off the road several times to find out what button or where on the screen to push to get the car set where I wanted some things like the defroster.

Like one fellow told me his new car had a book on just the 'radio' that was larger than the book for the operation og the car.

A parking lot on undeveloped or demolished property, paved for leased commercial parking in urban areas that serves mostly day commuter traffic.

I bet there's actually more of this in warmer climes, than here, where indoor parking is in more demand as the temperatures drop.

'Employee Parking' is less likely to be serviced, unless it's for civil servants.;-]

RL

It's usually automated or policed here.

RL

On 1/20/24 22:39, Don Y wrote: [...]

Yes. And they do that by making lots of annoying obstacles, causing cars to spend more time on the road, causing *worse* congestion than before.

Jeroen Belleman

It is just the opposite in my town. They have the stop lights set so that you usually get stopped every 2nd light. That is 'so you can look at the stores and window shop'. The main street is only about 15 blocks long. It used to be 2 lanesw each way but they installed bicycle lanes and it is only one lane and a turn lane for most of it now. The cross road is about 8 blocks of stop lights and then a long streach to stop lights about every 3 blocks for about 15 blocks in one direction to the interstate.