Do the heated seats draw power from the lead acid battery?

If I use the heated seats and heated steering wheel, do they draw from the Li-ion batter and reduce range, or draw from the auxiliary lead acid battery?

cyclone701 said:

If I use the heated seats and heated steering wheel, do they draw from the Li-ion batter and reduce range, or draw from the auxiliary lead acid battery?

Click to expand...

Where do you think the power comes from to charge the lead acid battery?

They are 12v, but of course the 12v battery is charged by the traction battery...

cyclone701 said:

If I use the heated seats and heated steering wheel, do they draw from the Li-ion batter and reduce range, or draw from the auxiliary lead acid battery?

Click to expand...

All the power comes from the Li-ion battery, but the draw for the heated seats and steering wheel is so trivial that it has essentially no impact on range. This is in contrast to the cabin heater, which can significantly reduce range because it starts out at as much as 5-6 kW, although the draw will drop as the heater bottle warms.

Besides using the heated seats and steering wheel, another way to reduce range loss from heating is to preheat while plugged-in so that the cabin is already warm, using power from the wall. This works best when charging at Level 2 (240 V) and can be set by a timer similar to the charging timer.