Confused by the heater drawing battery

[johanf]

I am confused when I have used the remote to start the heater before departure.
When I start, only about 80 % of the battery remains. It is not full despite charging overnight. (The 230 V is connected but charging timer set to night charging,)
Do we have to turn on the heater and turn on the charger (or turn off the charging timer –if outside of charging time) to not consume battery power for the electric heater?

The 10 A should not be enough to run charger and heater together. Somewhere I read the heater is 4 kW. Is it pulling half of its power from the battery and half from the 230 V?

 

[generaltso]

If you have a timer that is preventing the car from charging when you start the heater, 100% of the power will be coming from the battery. It can't draw power from the EVSE if you have disallowed charging at that time.

I set my Chargepoint EVSE to start charging 5 minutes before I have preheat scheduled to come on so that it draws most of it's heating power from the grid. That works pretty well for me.

 

[johanf]

I think it is not a clever design by Mitsubishi. If I switch on the heater manually, It means I will drive within some minutes. If the cable is connected, why not take the power from the mains?
The charging timer is there to buy cheaper electricity during the night or to limit the main required fuses and/or help to balance the current consumption when it doesn't matter when we charge.

The instant heater is applied just before driving. It should not be limited by the charging timer ...

 

[maby]

I have not paid much attention to the charge timer - we pay the same for electricity irrespective of the time of day. Does the charge timer only allow you to set a start time, or do you specify both a start and end time? If so, why not simply set the end time after you would expect to start using the car the next day? Once it is fully charged, it will not draw any significant amount of current even if the charger is still active.

 

[generaltso]

I agree that it's not an overly clever design. It's just one of many things that I would change if I could. But the best you can do is know how it works and try to work around it. Can you schedule your EVSE instead of the car?

 

[Bert]

The 10 A should not be enough to run charger and heater together. Somewhere I read the heater is 4 kW. Is it pulling half of its power from the battery and half from the 230 V?

10A will give you only 2.3kW at best. The heater can use more power depending on your ambient and set temperature, up to 4.5kW. The charger slows down at the end of the charging cycle when the battery gets full but still can pull 1.5kW which leaves not much left for the heater. So, yes it can pull a substantial amount of energy from the battery itself during preheating. This as a result makes the charger pulling even more energy from the 230V socket as the state of charge of the battery lowers.

You should try to schedule the heater maybe 30min earlier as you do right now. This would allow the battery to recover and also lowers the consumption of the heater because the cabin temperature is reached earlier. Give this a go...

How cold is it at your place at the moment?

Cheers from Australia

 

[anko]

No. When the heater is on, the car will draw the full 10
(or even 16) amps, regardless of SOC.

 

[robdickinson]

So if I want to use the timer to charge up overnight and the heater in the morning (7am) I am best setting the timer to start say at 11pm and finish at 8am?

So its still on timer and 'charging' when the heater comes on, but the battery will be full by 5am or something?

 

[generaltso]

So if I want to use the timer to charge up overnight and the heater in the morning (7am) I am best setting the timer to start say at 11pm and finish at 8am?

So its still on timer and 'charging' when the heater comes on, but the battery will be full by 5am or something?

Yup, that would work.

 

[vlado61]

I have tried to preheat the car in the morning with the charger on. The preheat would finish and the car will continue to charge for another 5-10 min before I drive away. Without the preheating the suggested range on full charge is 39 km. After preheating and 10 min further charging it is 23 km. What I do now is, I fully charge the car overnight. In the morning I start the car with the heater on auto 25C. The petrol engine starts, and in 2-3 min hot air starts blowing. It takes 5 min to defrost the windows and the range drops only 2-3 km. I hope that the petrol used to heat the car for 3 min worth much less than the battery charge for 1/3 of the range.

 

[Trades46]

Seems like the charge timer & climate timer on the PHEV still hasn't been solved. I noticed that once the battery is full, even during the charging period the car will stubbornly be "waiting to charge", even when the electric heater is operating.

I think if one has a smart EVSE that has its own charge timer, you can just not setup a charge timer on the Outlander and just set the pre-heating timer. I'm not sure if that works, but once my Level 2 EVSE comes in next week I'll be sure to experiment with it.

 

[MarkL]

I am able to preheat and charge at the same time. The method I use is to have the PHEV charge timer turned off. I set the wall charger to start at 12:01 am and end at 8am. I set the preheat to start at 5:30 am and to run for ten minutes. When the preheat turns on it begins to charge at the same time. When the preheating ends it continues to charge until the battery is fully charged. I depart at 6am in a warm fully charged Outlander.