Volusiano
Well-known member
TMS is not entirely useless in cooler/colder climate. It is useful to keep the battery warm in the winter time so you can extend your driving range coming out of your garage. Range is only affected if TMS is used while the car is not plugged in. But while the car is plugged in at home, TMS draws power from the wall and can only help and not hurt the range. On the Volt, if the battery SOC is less than 75% and the car is not plugged in, TMS is not used even if battery is warmer/cooler than optimum temperature to preserve the 75% SOC on the battery for driving range.
Another thing to consider is that TMS allows the battery to be very well/heavily insulated. So it helps make the battery more impervious to ambient temperature. Most of the times, TMS only has to take the heat created by using the battery out of the car. It doesn't have to take ambient heat soaked into the car as much thanks to the heavy insulation. So while it does dump heat out into the garage, I find all this talk about that being a vicious and perpetual cycle forcing TMS to run more often and creating forever more heat while parked inside a garage non-sense. Once the heat inside the battery has been removed, TMS will stop and thanks to the heavy insulation of the battery, the ambient heat in the garage will not penetrate back into the battery as quickly as it is dissipated through the uninsulated garage walls and ceiling and door. I don't recall TMS ever running on my Volt in the garage well after the charging is done. Usually it stops by the time charging is done and I don't recall it ever turning back on after that until I take the car out of the garage the next morning. And I live in Phoenix. This is the first summer for my Volt inside my Phoenix garage and I still haven't seen TMS kicked in (without charging) just because the garage is too hot.
Another thing to consider is that TMS allows the battery to be very well/heavily insulated. So it helps make the battery more impervious to ambient temperature. Most of the times, TMS only has to take the heat created by using the battery out of the car. It doesn't have to take ambient heat soaked into the car as much thanks to the heavy insulation. So while it does dump heat out into the garage, I find all this talk about that being a vicious and perpetual cycle forcing TMS to run more often and creating forever more heat while parked inside a garage non-sense. Once the heat inside the battery has been removed, TMS will stop and thanks to the heavy insulation of the battery, the ambient heat in the garage will not penetrate back into the battery as quickly as it is dissipated through the uninsulated garage walls and ceiling and door. I don't recall TMS ever running on my Volt in the garage well after the charging is done. Usually it stops by the time charging is done and I don't recall it ever turning back on after that until I take the car out of the garage the next morning. And I live in Phoenix. This is the first summer for my Volt inside my Phoenix garage and I still haven't seen TMS kicked in (without charging) just because the garage is too hot.
