Question about Air conditioner

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BKY2003

New member
Joined
Aug 15, 2019
Messages
4
I'm new to leaf (15 days). I searched air conditioner post but could not find anything. I was noticing that my new 2018, 40 kwh leaf uses alot of power for the air conditioner. Has anyone tried setting up an alternative AC? Maybe like Used Leaf batteries and a car 12v Ac. And charge these separately .
 
What are you calling "alot of power"? I understand that configuring the LEAF's heat pump to allow cabin heating sacrificed a smidgen of efficiency relative to the earlier "cabin cooling only" setups, but it still seems pretty effective to me. For darn sure, you're not going to outdo it with any 12V-powered after-market add-on; I believe the compressor in the LEAF's system runs from the high-voltage traction battery. How are you determining your LEAF's HVAC power consumption?
 
On my 2018 leaf I press the leaf power consumption display button. Sometimes my AC will show 3.5 KW for AC and after a while it will go down to 1 KW. But I do live in Florida. I was comparing it to a 5000btu AC I have, and it uses 500watts on high.

Is the leaf AC cooling the battery pack? Thanks for your reply.
 
Just drove 21miles, First 9 miles it said over 3.5 kw then dropped to 1.5 kw the rest of the trip. 93 degrees out side, set the AC to 80 degrees.
 
BKY2003 said:
... Sometimes my AC will show 3.5 KW for AC and after a while it will go down to 1 KW. But I do live in Florida. I was comparing it to a 5000btu AC I have, and it uses 500watts on high.

The LEAF's AC is probably double to triple the BTU capacity of your window unit. Cars need to cool down quickly and also have to contend with a huge solar loading.
 
BKY2003 said:
On my 2018 leaf I press the leaf power consumption display button. Sometimes my AC will show 3.5 KW for AC and after a while it will go down to 1 KW. But I do live in Florida. I was comparing it to a 5000btu AC I have, and it uses 500watts on high.

Is the leaf AC cooling the battery pack? Thanks for your reply.

That's normal consumption for the Leaf AC. I run mine at 70 degrees. I prefer comfort over maximum range, but the loss from running the AC is not that great. Don't worry about it and just enjoy the car. If you are suffering massive range loss, you have defective components that need checked by the dealer.
 
To minimize power usage, I will cool the cabin while plugged in at full fan, then set thermostat to 77-79F (in summer) and put on auto (let's say when it is 85-90 outside). This causes the fan to run at low (most of the time) and run primarily a dehumidifying function, which keeps the cabin pleasant, but with very little draw. (maybe costs you 2-3 miles per hour of driving).
 
The LEAF's air conditioner is quite efficient (it is actually similar to variable-speed hermetically-sealed high-efficiency heat pumps used in houses except it runs on 360-400 volts DC instead of 240 volts AC. It has at least 10 times the cooling capacity of the little window unit mentioned in the original post so it can draw up to 5 kW at high ambient temperatures until the interior cools down (which is why it cools fast). Power consumption is minimal once the interior is initially cooled.
 
To a New Leaf User, I would say, that since all functions on the car run off of the battery, you will need to change your behavior somewhat...

Compared to a Gas Car. With 5 years of experience, I have found that the best efficiency on the Leaf is to run both the A/C and heat at 68 or so degrees, with the recirculation ON, and with the fan at 1 bar (lowest) speed.

When having driven gas powered cars, we are used to cranking up the heat and ac full blast, at highest fan.... Because it is free. On the Leaf, nothing is free.
 
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