I discovered a new benefit for L2 charging at home

It works great. I use L1 charging with preconditioning with the schedule set to be complete by a certain departure time. It hasn't failed me yet. We recently had some mornings that were a nice balmy 14° and I didn't use the heater. It works very nicely if you wear a coat.

I do the same thing in the summer when the night temp lows are still in the high 80's.

 

Did your preconditioning (i.e. heat pump) work at that low ambient temperature, or maybe your car was in a warmer garage. I tried one winter when the ambient temp was 4-6F, but preconditioning (using remote A/C while the car is still plugged in) did not warm-up the cabin temperature at all after repeated remote A/C for 3-4 times. I gave up on preconditioning and remote A/C after that attempt. I really don't need the car to be warmed up if the temp is above 14F, but if it's colder than 14F I wish to be a bit warmer when I first get in the car.

 

It was in a nice toasty (in comparison) garage. The garage temp had gone down to the 40's inside.

 

That explains. For a car parked outside, when I really want the preconditioning, it does not work.

 

The heat pump doesn't work below about 13 F degrees. I've seen it keep working down to 12, but I turned it off to keep the engine from having to start.

On a snowy morning it will usually take 3 or more pre-conditioning cycles to melt the snow or frost on the windshield enough to make it easy to brush off. Of course it depends a lot on the temperature.

Also, I think you have to set the temperature and vent setting to what you want when you park the night before. It does still work if the fan is set to Off when you park.

 

How long does it take with an old-school guzzler ?

 

Maybe 10 minutes? But I don't have remote start, so I have to go outside.

 

Yeah, that was my first winter with PRIME. I have not used the pre-conditioning or remote A/C every since. I contemplated, installing a remote engine start to pre-warm in those frigid cold days, then discovered that remote engine start would not be able to start ICE if the car is plugged. That defeat the purpose of having a remote if I have to go outside to unplug the car first.

 

You could try a block heater. That would pre-heat the engine a bit, and if it's below 13F the engine is probably coming on anyway. Although one 9 degree morning I drove to work with the heat off in EV mode just to see if I could. It worked since the battery was pre-heated from being plugged in. Needless to say the drive was quite chilly.

If you add a block heater you'll want to plug it into a separate circuit, limit your charging current to 8A, or come up with a creative combination of wall timers so that both things don't run at the same time.

Another option would be to add an electric interior heater and plug that into another circuit like you would with a block heater. You could set that to run for 30-60 minutes before you plan to leave. For example check out the Zerostart 2600900. I have one that I will probably never use, so I'll sell it to anyone here if you're interested.

I wish the seat heaters and rear defroster could be set to come on with pre-conditioning or remote AC.

My ideal setup would be one block heater plug that powers:

• Engine block heater (400W)
• Interior electric heater (900W)
• 12V battery charger (<100W)
• Relay to activate seat heater and any other 12V accessories

It doesn't usually get cold enough here to justify adding all that, and my garage only has one circuit that I use for charging.

 

Yap, thought about EBH. But as mentioned, having a separate circuit to plug in is the problem. I am currently using only the circuit outside of the house on 15A breaker for charging. This is the circuit that feeds the garage. I have a freezer plugged in on this circuit and two garage door openers, a few lights for outside and inside of the garage. I really do not have a headroom to use EBH or any kind of heater inside of the car. Putting another circuit will require upgrading the main panel and doing some digging under the blacktop. The cost is too much for my liking.

Yeah, that's the thing. Our electricity is high enough it is very likely it's cheaper to buy a bit more gas than trying to heat my car by electric heater.

 

It might be worth it for comfort or to save time clearing the windshield. Here we have cheap electricity ($0.11/kwh), but even then it wasn't worth running a block heater for my SUV to save gas.

 

Am planning to put solar pannes on the roof sometime in near future. When I do, I have to upgrade the main panel and do major electrical work on the garage, for I am using both garage roof and main house roof. But I am also hoping to do addition/remodeling to the house before doing the solar panel. All in all, I don't want to duplicate any of the electric subcontract works needed to accommodate those projects. Until then, I will suffer a cold car.