What is your winter warm up procedure?

That is pretty much how I feel about people who use their cars for 3 mile jaunts, unless they are bringing back more than can be put in a backpack.

 

Yup, my wife has a 4 mile commute to the bus stop nowadays. Get in, crank the heat, drive away. Neighborhood and Main St. speed limits keep things below 25mph and easy going for the first mile or 2 anyway.

When it's cold, I WANT the gas engine to run, I want it to warm up and pump heat and defrost. I'll even put it in "power" to amp that up. The last thing I want in very cold weather is to try and force the car to run on just the battery. Winter's the time when I'm happy to let the little gas motor do it's thermal-job.

But that's me, I'm happy to get a lower mpg than most of PriusChat.

 

For temps below freezing, that's fine.

It's when we encounter a vehicle being warmed up in conditions above that which don't make sense.

The excessively long times are an issue too. (On a regular basis, my neighbor has been known to leave his vehicle running in the driveway for over 20 minutes.)

 

I live in the southeast US and I doubt our temps would even bother someone from Canada. You would probably be out in shorts and a tank top. But on what we consider to be a cold morning, when I just jump in and drive, it seems that the car prevents any efforts to stab the gas and scoot. My guess is the engine computer knows that the ICE is cold and won't let you be too rough on it. Perhaps a tech could confirm this. But after the engine has warmed up, it acts differently on the pedal. Could just be me but that is how it seems.

@macman408 I was crazy enough to do long haul driving myself for a while in a semi. One truck I drove had an APU and one did not. The one that did not we had to idle to keep from freezing in our sleep unless the truck stop had heat (only the nice ones did). But what I was going to say is that if we were below freezing, we had block heaters to keep the engine warmed up. So it wasn't an issue on a big truck.

 

Why do so many posts use the word "cold" without ever stating an actual temperature?

The drive home was 1°F for me today.

 

Drive to morning coffee today -13 degrees f !

 

Many years ago I spent 5 weeks in Minneapolis/St. Paul arriving in late January to a blanket of snow and temps in the single digits. By the time I left the temps were back in the low 20's and the locals were walking around in short sleeves while I remained layered up. It's all what you get used to.

 

I just got back from taking Christmas light photos. Having finally got snow makes them look great. The wind in -2°F was pretty nasty on the bare hands carrying the frozen tripod though. Brrr. Even the battery in the camera choked at one point from the cold. Fortunately, the Prius ran just fine in EV during all that.

 

Freezing cold here in Bay Area, California. Dropped to 46 degrees. I'm wearing three layers. Prius took a little longer to warm up but faired well under these extreme conditions.

 

When the coolant temperature is below 65°C when you turn on the car, it will run the engine in a very limited-power mode for about 50 seconds (after about 12 seconds of EV when you first turn the car on). If you step on the gas, it'll still give you acceleration, but it'll be almost entirely from battery power - so it sounds and feels different. (The same way that getting in an EV for the first time feels quite different - there's no engine revving when you step on the gas!) If you press hard enough, it'll still use ICE power, once you exceed what the battery is capable of supplying.

So many of us avoid stomping on it during that 50-second warm-up period - but that's just to avoid using a lot of the battery. It's perfect for backing out of the driveway and going down the 25 mph residential roads by your house. I'll delay a bit if I know I need to accelerate immediately (like onto a highway), but never for more than that initial minute. In fact, one time where I sometimes use EV is if I'm going to be on slow roads or a parking lot for more than a minute; I'll try and time it so that I'm accelerating out of the parking lot right at the 1-minute mark as full power becomes available, to minimize the time that the engine is running (and to speed the warmup, by having the engine loaded).

In any case, it's my understanding that the car is more interested in warming up the catalytic converter than the engine itself. The computer is programmed to minimize emissions, so it avoids running the engine much until the cat is warm and able to mitigate some of the emissions. After the first minute, the cat is better able to do its job, so the engine is allowed to run freely.

 

Hahah! This is even warm for motorcycle standards for me. I was riding into the low 30's last week.

 

Morning here, -6C. Chillier than normal the last few days; they call it "arctic outflow". Normally we're above freezing, but just of late the interior of the province has left the fridge door open.

 

We've been in the teens in the morning, and not much above 32 during the day. (Fahrenheit, mid Vermont USA)

Prius sits in the garage though (detached, uninsulated) so no wind chill, no blanket of ice, and temps a bit warmer than outside.

 

More or less the same story for us. I kinda cringe, every time someone mentions remote starters, running the car at idle to warm it up. Couldn't do that.

 

-15F in north-central Wyoming last night. This temperature is not unusual for winter. We just drive the car without any consideration for temperature.

 

Why?

Automobiles are designed to do just that. If you use a high quality full synthetic oil, you won't have any lubrication failures due to the cold. That's what "block heaters" used to be for when oils would start to gel in cold temperatures.

The Amsoil I use doesn't start to gel until -70. At that temp, I'm not leaving the house.

 

Why?

For starters it's illegal in our area, to let a vehicle sit idling. Never enforced, and there's some obvious exceptions needed, nobody should be driving off with a frosted windshield.

But for me, if the car's running, it should be getting you somewhere, not just standing in place, consuming gas.

 

Yup, it has become "PC" (which doesn't stand for Prius Chat ) to pass laws to stop excessive idling. I often think of them when the "Idle no more" movement guys demonstrate.
We have a bylaw here in Edmonton, but it is waived when the temp. drops (written into the bylaw).

I often wonder what would happen if I left the Prius on for an extended period. Would the officer even know it was on? Would he give up when it shut off on its own?
Fun with bylaws!

 

Thanks for the explanation macman408! That fits my observation perfectly because even when I am backing out of the garage and going through the neighborhood, the ICE just seems to keep the same idle (even at stop signs).