How to survive cold weather in your Leaf when stuck

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OldManCan said:
Triggerhappy007 said:
I just tested at 23F outside, Temp set to 60F, recirculate on. It lost 0.8% after 30 minutes and 1.6% after 1 hour. So the car could last 2 days if I started with 77% SoC.

Thanks for the data point. Is it a resistance heater or heat pump model?
Heat pump
 
It was only a matter of time...

What is being shared around on social media. :lol:

OGvA2dU.png
 
A lot of FUD is routinely spread against EVs on that topic. Reuters did a Fact-Check on it: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-environment-ev/fact-check-electric-cars-not-more-likely-to-get-stuck-in-traffic-jams-idUSL1N2RW0QD
 
illidotane said:
A lot of FUD is routinely spread against EVs on that topic. Reuters did a Fact-Check on it: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-environment-ev/fact-check-electric-cars-not-more-likely-to-get-stuck-in-traffic-jams-idUSL1N2RW0QD
From the article.
"Using the Nissan Leaf electric car (here) as an example, Dr Collett said: “Say the heating was on constantly at 2kW (which would be unlikely due to insulation of the vehicle), even if you only had half the battery charged, you would still have almost 10 hours of heating."
They must have been talking about a half-empty 40kw Leaf?
Lets say you have a 62kw Leaf and it was down to say 50kw, using their 2kw figure one would have just over 24hrs and again unless the temps were below zero I'd guess more like 1kw would keep the Leaf acceptably warm. I mean think about a 1kw heater in a room the size of the Leaf cabin, I think that would be doable.
 
Yeah, it would have to be, otherwise, half of the Leaf Plus (let's use 31 kWh just to be nice), would still give you 31 / 2 = 15.5 hours of heating, which at 2 kW you would be roasting inside the cabin unless you had the windows down? :?
Think about if you brought out a 1500 watt space heater from your house and put it inside your Leaf and set it for "high" and left it running for hours, it would be hot as hell inside the cabin and it's using less power than what the article is talking about. :mrgreen:


jjeff said:
illidotane said:
A lot of FUD is routinely spread against EVs on that topic. Reuters did a Fact-Check on it: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-environment-ev/fact-check-electric-cars-not-more-likely-to-get-stuck-in-traffic-jams-idUSL1N2RW0QD
From the article.
"Using the Nissan Leaf electric car (here) as an example, Dr Collett said: “Say the heating was on constantly at 2kW (which would be unlikely due to insulation of the vehicle), even if you only had half the battery charged, you would still have almost 10 hours of heating."
They must have been talking about a half-empty 40kw Leaf?
Lets say you have a 62kw Leaf and it was down to say 50kw, using their 2kw figure one would have just over 24hrs and again unless the temps were below zero I'd guess more like 1kw would keep the Leaf acceptably warm. I mean think about a 1kw heater in a room the size of the Leaf cabin, I think that would be doable.
 
There seems to be some underlying feeling here that ICE cars never, never run out of gas...
 
It seems to happen to those who can least afford it--trying to stretch until payday in a min wage job. Nobody would want to run out of fuel or electrons, a close call is all it takes to put the pucker in your shorts...
 
Another factor that I don't think has been mentioned is that an ICE engine would need time to warm up to produce hot cabin air. My Leaf gets hot cabin air within ~30 seconds.

Also, an engine at idle may not produce much heat at all. My diesel truck takes a long time to warm up, but once warm the engine does hold heat fairly well. A smaller gas powered car may not do that.
 
ICE cars are glorified heaters that also happen to convert some energy to useful rotational motion :) A really efficient ICE car is only 30% efficient, most are worse.

So, any ICE car that can't easily keep the cabin warm while idling has either a clogged heater core or some other cooling system issue.
 
"Tesla Model 3 Owner Thankful For His EV When Stuck On I-95
He was stuck for 14 hours without any issues while ICE owners had to worry about toxic fumes and running out of gas."

https://insideevs.com/news/560870/tesla-model3/
 
OldManCan said:
"Tesla Model 3 Owner Thankful For His EV When Stuck On I-95
He was stuck for 14 hours without any issues while ICE owners had to worry about toxic fumes and running out of gas."

https://insideevs.com/news/560870/tesla-model3/

Great article, the comments were entertaining to read as well, a lot about how "gas" vehicles will run for days and days on just a little gas, but then someone linked in some actual test article about the gas going pretty fast at idle because the vehicle has to raise the RPMs to keep the engine warm (and cabin), which just burns the gas even faster, etc... 👨
 
True, but I'd guess some diesel cars could run for days on a single tank. Of course, they can do this because they're efficient enough to not generate a lot of excess heat. My old VW TDI would not stay warm on a cold day at idle, it had to be revved up considerably to get the ICE warm.
 
It's because diesels require much less fuel at idle than do gas engines. Presumably that's because they have a higher combustion efficiency, and because their valve timing isn't biased towards higher RPM performance.
 
knightmb said:
dmacarthur said:
Some other stories from the I-95 freeze about a Tesla driver.
https://twitter.com/myworldtaw/status/1 ... 5368780806

With the rare exception, none of the people replying to the Twitter post have figured out that the Tesla is way better than the ICE cars for getting stuck in traffic- even with a small amount of battery power left it should be able to heat for hours. Seems like the owner should know that also, and should be able to contact Tesla to get it figured out....

I was thinking the same thing, but imagine you were on your way to a QC station and low battery charge... and then you get stuck there. :eek:

I think that if one was to survive 24 hours in that situation, minimal heat settings should still be enough to keep you from freezing for a day and still have enough to turtle to the nearest QC station at a low speed. If you could just get the EV power consumption down to a minimal 500 watts for example, then 24 hours of heat would cost roughly 12 kWh of capacity. It would be a touch stretch for a Gen 1 Leaf (with a 24 kWh battery), but I think any of the Gen 2 Leaf, Tesla, Bolts, etc. could swing that without much issue provided they didn't get stranded with less than 33% SOC when it happened.


Living in Texas and through the cluster last year where power was out, I wonder what happens if you are in an extended blackout and can't get any electricity. I've made it a point to charge my Leaf to full power the day before we're set to receive any cold weather. I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.
 
BeyondBeLeaf said:
Living in Texas and through the cluster last year where power was out, I wonder what happens if you are in an extended blackout and can't get any electricity. I've made it a point to charge my Leaf to full power the day before we're set to receive any cold weather. I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.
I agree that having a extra can of gas is convenient (at home) for the ICE vehicle, but gas stations need electricity to work also. An interesting bit of math though, a gas generator of electricity is usually twice as efficient as the gas engine in your car. If you were in a situation where you had an extended outage and you needed transportation, would it be better to pour a gallon of gas into your tank or use it to charge your EV?
In that example, you would be better off using the gas to run a generator and charge your EV as you will get more mileage that way than if you used it in your car/truck instead, as an extreme example. That is also provided you had the time to wait for the generator to charge the EV and didn't need to drive in the next few hours. :?

Also, I do the exact same thing with mine. If bad weather is coming tomorrow (ice or snow, possible power outages because of it), I make sure to fully charge both my own and my wife's Leaf just in case. At least the weather is freezing at that point, so I'm not too worried about the battery being near 100% SOC for a while. :cool:
 
Probably some of you may have seen this but since it is very relevant to this thread I wanted to copy / paste here. This is from FB - Nissan LEAF/Ariya Owners USA - group. Thank you Nick Anastasiadis for the experiment and the video


Just under 13 kW used in 7.5 hrs sleeping in my car with Temps down to 17 degrees F. I kept the camera going the entire time just used hyperlapse and made each minute last a second. So if you see anyone say your EV will die in the cold, send this to them.
https://youtu.be/Uoj_bS0REMg
 
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