Use the AC for heating, why not?

[MartinH]

Mitsu is one av the biggest manufacturer of AC Equipment, all the Components are already mounted in the car.
Why not reverse the AC for heating?, to use 1 kWh/hour instead of 4.6?
Warm and nice car without draining the battery.

 

[Trex]

Mitsu is one av the biggest manufacturer of AC Equipment, all the Components are already mounted in the car.
Why not reverse the AC for heating?, to use 1 kWh/hour instead of 4.6?
Warm and nice car without draining the battery.

Oh I know. pick me, pick me

Because they are too dumb. :lol: :lol:

Sorry could not help myself.
.

 

[Tipper]

Mitsu is one av the biggest manufacturer of AC Equipment, all the Components are already mounted in the car.
Why not reverse the AC for heating?, to use 1 kWh/hour instead of 4.6?
Warm and nice car without draining the battery.

I wondered that too. The Renault Zoe uses a heat pump so why not the more technically advanced Outlander? Presumably they were just modifying existing Outlander Diesel systems to keep the cost down. :roll:

 

[Trex]

Mitsu is one av the biggest manufacturer of AC Equipment, all the Components are already mounted in the car.
Why not reverse the AC for heating?, to use 1 kWh/hour instead of 4.6?
Warm and nice car without draining the battery.

I wondered that too. The Renault Zoe uses a heat pump so why not the more technically advanced Outlander? Presumably they were just modifying existing Outlander Diesel systems to keep the cost down. :roll:

In this topic from very recently http://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2945&start=40 I stated:


"Yes, from my research on heat pumps, reverse cycle A/Cs they are still having trouble going down to very low temps.

It looks like they have problems with wear on the compressor, special heat exchangers needed, getting rid of moisture because of icing (like you said) so a defroster needed and are still quite expensive. Some of this applies to the reverse cycle A/C as well.

Yes the simple resistive heater for our use in the PHEV is looking ok IMO as well.

And just shoving in a reversing valve in the A/C as some here seem to think is all that is needed may need to have another think about it.

Some of us just should have trusted the Mitsubishi engineers more.

ps Some manufacturers are trying to persevere with heat pumps in cars. I hope they succeed. "

 

[HHL]

As far as I know reverse cycle does not work all that well in very low temperatures.

 

[MartinH]

I do not know what you consider "low temperature", have in mind that the iCE will run constant with temperatures lower than app. -15´c anyway.
We are using our heat pumps heating our houses with no problems down to -20´C, YES! i know the effiency will get lower, but it still works and give heat.
And yes, it is "only" to reverse the A/C to give heat vs cooling, exactly as we do in our houses, heating in winter and cooling in summer, and defrosting is eactly the same, you do not need to add one single part for defrosting.
Therefore i think 99% of the users of the PHEV uses the car in temperatures from +40´C down to -10´C, the remaining 1% is outside this range, this 99% of the users would just LOVE! to have a heatpump heating the car without draining the battery, for pre heating and also for heating when used.
It is the same with the 4WD, for 99% of the users it works perfect, but for me as my car daily have a 1500+ kg trailer to pull in a lot of snow, the 4WD does not work for me, and i am chasing Mitsu for this.

 

[Steepndeep]

@MartinH

Can you describe your concerns on the 4WD system. I may end up in same situation so would be nice to know your concerns. Maybe another thread

 

[Steepndeep]

On the issue of reverse A/C. Renault Zoe has one and judging from Renault forums it works so-so.

Yes my parents also has an Air/Water heatpump. Works great down to minus 10 and then slowly reduces efficiency. 3 Huge differences from car though

1 Size is of no concern. The thing is huge.
2 It sits under a roof and snow is not forced into it.
3 To de-ice (as in foggy weather with temp below 3 C it ices) it can reverse the process for 15-30 minutes to melt the ice. With a heat water tank oof 200 liters indoor as accumulator this is not noticed.

Apply to car

1 Size is critical
2 In sweden when we have snow, and we also have snö-rök (snow-smoke) which pushes and forces snow through the radiator and also partly through the ventialtion system. Run this through a heatpump and it will Ice immediately.
3 De-ice must be done very quickly, say 30 seconds max so you will need a huge resistor to heat AND get rid of the water.

So all-in-all I would love it to work but I think to have it reliably to work in wintertimes is really difficult.

 

[jazzboy]

I do not know what you consider "low temperature", have in mind that the iCE will run constant with temperatures lower than app. -15´c anyway.
We are using our heat pumps heating our houses with no problems down to -20´C, YES! i know the effiency will get lower, but it still works and give heat.
And yes, it is "only" to reverse the A/C to give heat vs cooling, exactly as we do in our houses, heating in winter and cooling in summer, and defrosting is eactly the same, you do not need to add one single part for defrosting.
Therefore i think 99% of the users of the PHEV uses the car in temperatures from +40´C down to -10´C, the remaining 1% is outside this range, this 99% of the users would just LOVE! to have a heatpump heating the car without draining the battery, for pre heating and also for heating when used.
It is the same with the 4WD, for 99% of the users it works perfect, but for me as my car daily have a 1500+ kg trailer to pull in a lot of snow, the 4WD does not work for me, and i am chasing Mitsu for this.

This was my point in the thread I started the other day. I accept that heat pump type of heating performance is not so good in extremely cold temperatures, but most sales are surely to places where that doesn't apply. Certainly in the UK it rarely gets less than -5deg.

 

[jaapv]

It was -10 in some places in the Netherlands last week. And there are places in japan where it can get down to -30...