How to survive cold weather in your Leaf when stuck

[dmacarthur]

An op-ed in a local paper screaming "don't let the commies force you to buy an electric car- your quality of life will be greatly diminished and there will be added expense and time involved that you can not imagine!" . The next anti-vax rage is EVs.....

[HRTKD]

A friend of mine suggested that the recent debacle on I-95 in Virginia would be even worse if all the vehicles were EV. So that got me to thinking, how long would my heater run with the vehicle in Park?

I have a 2019 Plus and get between 230 and 270 miles of range from a solid charge. Since it's winter, I would go with the lower end of that range at 230 miles. My guess is that the heater could run for about 6 hours. But I'm just spit balling.

If I knew I was going to be stuck for an extended period of time, I think I would use the seat heaters instead of the dash heater, assuming that the seat heaters would be more efficient.

In the winter I always carry cold weather gear, no matter which vehicle I'm in. Hat, mittens, blanket, etc. I can ride out the storm if I have to.

[knightmb]

A friend of mine suggested that the recent debacle on I-95 in Virginia would be even worse if all the vehicles were EV. So that got me to thinking, how long would my heater run with the vehicle in Park?

I have a 2019 Plus and get between 230 and 270 miles of range from a solid charge. Since it's winter, I would go with the lower end of that range at 230 miles. My guess is that the heater could run for about 6 hours. But I'm just spit balling.

If I knew I was going to be stuck for an extended period of time, I think I would use the seat heaters instead of the dash heater, assuming that the seat heaters would be more efficient.

In the winter I always carry cold weather gear, no matter which vehicle I'm in. Hat, mittens, blanket, etc. I can ride out the storm if I have to.

As per this topic: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=32943
A very long time, like days long.

[alozzy]

Assuming that it's not so cold out that the heat pump won't work, for many hours.

I would think that you could pull 1kw for heating to stay adequately warm in all but the harshest ambient temperatures. At that rate, the pack SOC would drop 1 kWh every hour, so potentially 60 hrs if the pack was fully charged. Obviously, at 2kw rate, half that time.

Just linear math calculations, so easy to work out different scenarios...

[HRTKD]

As per this topic: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=32943
A very long time, like days long.

Thanks for the link. I did search before posting, but I looked in the wrong subforum.

[knightmb]

You could easily make a good Onion article title out of this.

EV owners frustrated at ICE owners for running out of gas on frozen highway...

[LeftieBiker]

How the heat was used would also matter - a lot. Resistance heat set to 74F would use roughly 5kwh per hour. The heat pump, set to 65F and turned off 50% of the time, should run for a couple of days, depending on SOC.

[Triggerhappy007]

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.

[OldManCan]

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?

[knightmb]

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.

Nice data point. The average car uses about 1/2 gallon per hour idling. Small cars can have 12 gallon tanks, larger cars can have up to 15 gallon tanks. Average the two and say your car happen to be full with 13 gallons of gas, that would give you about 26 hours of heat. Now.... you can ration it of course and just run for a little while, heat up, then shut down to save gas, but you could do the same thing in an EV.

So between a car with a full tank of gas and an EV at 100% charge, it would actually be better to be in the EV for survival reasons, especially if the car is getting covered in snow or ice and you don't want vehicle fumes coming back into the cabin and killing everyone.