Pre heating in the morning

[maddogsetc]

I do not agree that the heater will drain the battery faster than the charger can refill. When having a normal cabin heater (electric fan running on 220V) they are normally around 1000 W in power. The charger is using and delivering roughly 2200 W (10 A times 220 V) constantly. If not the built in heater is extremely uneffiently designed (warming up the outside) it would not take more than half the power delivered by the charger. Power available would not be a problem! Why not extend the 10 m or have the user to set the take off time and have the car adjusting the inside temp to something suitable like 15 deg until this time. /k

This is where the information about charge time vs battery drain came from: http://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=514&start=40 - have a read and you'll see on the 5th page that one member (avensys) had tested this. According to his information (though I don't know if it's correct) the heater is 4Kw, not 1Kw. Nonetheless I do agree it would be better for Mitsi to give us the information and allow us to choose our own preheat time or set temp.

As per my message above you can set three timers back to back for preheat for 30 mins

Have you actually succeeded in doing this? My interpretation of the App is different - although there are three timers available as far as I can see you can only choose one of the three (or turn it off) for each day. According to my interpretation it's designed to allow, for example, weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays all to have separate preheat start times.

 

[jdsx]

As per my message above you can set three timers back to back for preheat for 30 mins

Have you actually succeeded in doing this? My interpretation of the App is different - although there are three timers available as far as I can see you can only choose one of the three (or turn it off) for each day. According to my interpretation it's designed to allow, for example, weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays all to have separate preheat start times.

I'm with maddogsetc on this - the preheat is limited to one 10-minute slot per day. You can of course change the slot once one has finished and re-set it, but you (or at any rate I) can't run three back-to-back.

Fwiw, I sat at a rapid charger recently, and having 'filled up' to the auto-stop (to 79.1% according to the charger), I then sat inside and ran the 'pre-heat' for 10 minutes. It was quite warm inside by the end (outside temp was around 6 degrees C I think) so it definitely works! I then plugged in again, and the charger showed 74.1% as I plugged in, and it then continued past 80% as I understand rapid chargers will do. Don't know quite how much that means it consumed - maths not my strong point!

 

[maby]

As per my message above you can set three timers back to back for preheat for 30 mins

Have you actually succeeded in doing this? My interpretation of the App is different - although there are three timers available as far as I can see you can only choose one of the three (or turn it off) for each day. According to my interpretation it's designed to allow, for example, weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays all to have separate preheat start times.

I'm with maddogsetc on this - the preheat is limited to one 10-minute slot per day. You can of course change the slot once one has finished and re-set it, but you (or at any rate I) can't run three back-to-back.

Fwiw, I sat at a rapid charger recently, and having 'filled up' to the auto-stop (to 79.1% according to the charger), I then sat inside and ran the 'pre-heat' for 10 minutes. It was quite warm inside by the end (outside temp was around 6 degrees C I think) so it definitely works! I then plugged in again, and the charger showed 74.1% as I plugged in, and it then continued past 80% as I understand rapid chargers will do. Don't know quite how much that means it consumed - maths not my strong point!

According to my mental arithmetic, that means that is consumed about 5% of a charge. Since a full charge is reported to be 10KWh, that comes out at 0.5KWh. If it was running for 10 minutes, that would indicate that the pre-heat was drawing about 3KW - which is pretty close to the 4KW that it is usually reported to draw.

 

[EVkris]

I wonder what the car is doing with the 3-4kW then. It's similar to what a medium sized Sauna stove consumes. Maybe it's needed? Once again it indicates that the 10 m is not enough. I also cannot set more than one 10 m period each day so having 3 10 m periods running after each other is not a solution. Anyone who knows?

regards /k

 

[maby]

Cars are not particularly well insulated beasts, you know! All that glass and none of it double glazed - and no insulation in the roof lining to speak of. The Outlander is a moderately large car too - energy losses must be quite high.

 

[CJ1045]

Sorry you are right - only one timer per day - even went out to the car in the pooring rain to check on the MMCS itself. So much for the back to back idea.

CJ

 

[Ozukus]

Pre heat and DAB were two reasons and only two reasons I would have liked a GX4 seems DAB for an extra 90 a month was a definite no goer.

 

[Johlin]

Not be able to set more than 1 timer / day is a real hazzle. I would like to have a warm car both in the morning and in the afternoon, driving home from work. I now have to manually change the time manually. Not be able to set the heating time feels really oldschool. I really hope they will fix this in a software update soon..

 

[maby]

Not be able to set more than 1 timer / day is a real hazzle. I would like to have a warm car both in the morning and in the afternoon, driving home from work. I now have to manually change the time manually. Not be able to set the heating time feels really oldschool. I really hope they will fix this in a software update soon..

I have to say that I've only actually used the timer once - my movements are not sufficiently predictable. I connect to the car from my phone shortly before I travel and turn the heating on manually. If it was really cold, I would trigger two heating cycles in quick succession.

 

[EVkris]

I discussed this issue with product manager at Mitsubishi in Sweden and they said that the factory will change the once a day 10 m limitation. I assume this will be updated during next service. For the WIFI limitation its more of a hardware issue and it will not be changed on existing cars - I'm back to the additional phone and Mobizen application procedure. I realized however that my old Android phone I wanted to use for this job has an old Android version which means that Mobizen will not run on it... More technical details to solve.

 

[byrnehj]

maybe i am being thick... when i go to set the pre-heat from the car itself it allows me to set an actual time... granted, only for 1 slot per day, but i am doing a pre-heat for 30 mins before setting off, and as it is a timed setting presumably i could set it longer.

am i mis-interpreting this? I mention this as it doesnt seem to work anyway, and car recently hasn't felt warmer at all!aps

perhaps my PHEV has already had the firmware upgrade (received it end of Sept)?

 

[maby]

maybe i am being thick... when i go to set the pre-heat from the car itself it allows me to set an actual time... granted, only for 1 slot per day, but i am doing a pre-heat for 30 mins before setting off, and as it is a timed setting presumably i could set it longer.

am i mis-interpreting this? I mention this as it doesnt seem to work anyway, and car recently hasn't felt warmer at all!aps

perhaps my PHEV has already had the firmware upgrade (received it end of Sept)?

The pre-heat only runs for ten minutes from whatever time you start it - which is probably why your car doesn't feel warmer if you are triggering it for 30 minutes before you set out - it will have been cooling down again for 20 minutes which is quite long enough for a car to get quite cold.

Don't expect the pre-heat to get the car toasty hot - it takes the chill off, demists the windows and de-ices the windscreen!

I gave up on using the timer - my movements are not sufficiently predictable - I just connect in via the application on my phone as I'm getting ready to go out and switch the heater on.

 

[byrnehj]

thanks for the reply... another foible of the PHEV! i know its been said many times on here, but the software turns a 5* car into a 4*... which is a great shame

 

[maby]

thanks for the reply... another foible of the PHEV! i know its been said many times on here, but the software turns a 5* car into a 4*... which is a great shame

Possibly they should have implemented two different sets of rules depending on whether or not the car is plugged up to the mains. The preheat will also work when the car is not charging and you can imagine the howls of protest from some around here if it was willing to run for 30 minutes and use up all your battery so that you ended up running the benighted ICE! There has apparently been a promise to fix the bug in the interactions between the charge timer and the pre-heat timer - perhaps they will change this behaviour as well. That said, I still find that controlling pre-heat manually makes the most sense - for me at least.

 

[Snowball]

thanks for the reply... another foible of the PHEV! i know its been said many times on here, but the software turns a 5* car into a 4*... which is a great shame

Possibly they should have implemented two different sets of rules depending on whether or not the car is plugged up to the mains. The preheat will also work when the car is not charging and you can imagine the howls of protest from some around here if it was willing to run for 30 minutes and use up all your battery so that you ended up running the benighted ICE! There has apparently been a promise to fix the bug in the interactions between the charge timer and the pre-heat timer - perhaps they will change this behaviour as well. That said, I still find that controlling pre-heat manually makes the most sense - for me at least.

It should have been two settings for preheat, one set when connected to electricity, heatingtime 10-120mn and one set when on battery only, 10-30mn.
This morning, +1dgC, preheat 10mn, ICE kicks in at start and runs for 2km an it also kicks in frequenty for the rest of the trip. Total trip 5,5km, 100% batt at start and almost no use of batt for the whole trip.
Annoying, ICE should have been disabled when pressing eco button otherwise we will use petrol even on short trips.

 

[greendwarf]

thanks for the reply... another foible of the PHEV! i know its been said many times on here, but the software turns a 5* car into a 4*... which is a great shame

Possibly they should have implemented two different sets of rules depending on whether or not the car is plugged up to the mains. The preheat will also work when the car is not charging and you can imagine the howls of protest from some around here if it was willing to run for 30 minutes and use up all your battery so that you ended up running the benighted ICE! There has apparently been a promise to fix the bug in the interactions between the charge timer and the pre-heat timer - perhaps they will change this behaviour as well. That said, I still find that controlling pre-heat manually makes the most sense - for me at least.

It should have been two settings for preheat, one set when connected to electricity, heatingtime 10-120mn and one set when on battery only, 10-30mn.
This morning, +1dgC, preheat 10mn, ICE kicks in at start and runs for 2km an it also kicks in frequenty for the rest of the trip. Total trip 5,5km, 100% batt at start and almost no use of batt for the whole trip.
Annoying, ICE should have been disabled when pressing eco button otherwise we will use petrol even on short trips.

As mentioned before, surely the ICE needs to be ready to kick in on demand, even on short journeys. Driving when the external temp is a low as 1c must mean the wind chill will be pushing the effective temp of the ICE well below zero. Seems likely to me that it needs to be warmed up for when it might be needed, otherwise it won't work properly or possibly even be damaged?

 

[jaapv]

It's a Hybrid, not a pure EV ( Nissan Leaf) or EV with auxiliary power (BMW i3)

 

[Snowball]

Possibly they should have implemented two different sets of rules depending on whether or not the car is plugged up to the mains. The preheat will also work when the car is not charging and you can imagine the howls of protest from some around here if it was willing to run for 30 minutes and use up all your battery so that you ended up running the benighted ICE! There has apparently been a promise to fix the bug in the interactions between the charge timer and the pre-heat timer - perhaps they will change this behaviour as well. That said, I still find that controlling pre-heat manually makes the most sense - for me at least.[/quote]

It should have been two settings for preheat, one set when connected to electricity, heatingtime 10-120mn and one set when on battery only, 10-30mn.
This morning, +1dgC, preheat 10mn, ICE kicks in at start and runs for 2km an it also kicks in frequenty for the rest of the trip. Total trip 5,5km, 100% batt at start and almost no use of batt for the whole trip.
Annoying, ICE should have been disabled when pressing eco button otherwise we will use petrol even on short trips.[/quote]

As mentioned before, surely the ICE needs to be ready to kick in on demand, even on short journeys. Driving when the external temp is a low as 1c must mean the wind chill will be pushing the effective temp of the ICE well below zero. Seems likely to me that it needs to be warmed up for when it might be needed, otherwise it won't work properly or possibly even be damaged?[/quote]


After this mornings trip I put the PHEV in my garage and topped up the battery to be ready for this evenings trip to my daughter. This is a total distace of 44km. 4km on motorway, 110km/h.
I preheated twice and drove off. Same temperature conditions. ICE started for a few seconds when I drove on to the motorway.. Eco button not activated.
It was almost 5 h between the trips so I would have thought that the ICE had cooled down by this.

 

[greendwarf]

As mentioned before, surely the ICE needs to be ready to kick in on demand, even on short journeys. Driving when the external temp is a low as 1c must mean the wind chill will be pushing the effective temp of the ICE well below zero. Seems likely to me that it needs to be warmed up for when it might be needed, otherwise it won't work properly or possibly even be damaged?

After this mornings trip I put the PHEV in my garage and topped up the battery to be ready for this evenings trip to my daughter. This is a total distace of 44km. 4km on motorway, 110km/h.
I preheated twice and drove off. Same temperature conditions. ICE started for a few seconds when I drove on to the motorway.. Eco button not activated.
It was almost 5 h between the trips so I would have thought that the ICE had cooled down by this.[/quote]

Well I just checked the Christmas pudding I made last night and steamed for 5 hours today and it's still warm after 4 hours

 

[Snowball]

As mentioned before, surely the ICE needs to be ready to kick in on demand, even on short journeys. Driving when the external temp is a low as 1c must mean the wind chill will be pushing the effective temp of the ICE well below zero. Seems likely to me that it needs to be warmed up for when it might be needed, otherwise it won't work properly or possibly even be damaged?

After this mornings trip I put the PHEV in my garage and topped up the battery to be ready for this evenings trip to my daughter. This is a total distace of 44km. 4km on motorway, 110km/h.
I preheated twice and drove off. Same temperature conditions. ICE started for a few seconds when I drove on to the motorway.. Eco button not activated.
It was almost 5 h between the trips so I would have thought that the ICE had cooled down by this.

Well I just checked the Christmas pudding I made last night and steamed for 5 hours today and it's still warm after 4 hours [/quote]

Im unfortunately very unfamiliar with Christmas puddings but if its still hot after 4h is seems to be pretty dense stuff