Extra Auxiliary Heater in Prius for climate demand?

I know that the gen 2 had ceramic heaters that worked during defrost.
Here are pictures via ebay 2005 TOYOTA PRIUS CERAMIC HEATER CORE AUXILLARY ELECTRIC ELEMENTS 8721147070 OEM | eBay

 

OK I found a reference to the ceramic heaters in gen 1 here: Mastering Hybrid HVAC Systems, Pt 1 — Toyota Prius - AVI OnDemand

Amusingly, he spends the gen 2 part of the article pleading with folks to use the proper, high dialectic lubricant. Good thing we never have that problem with the transaxle!

 

Excellent article, Jimbo Palmer, and a very good primer on how the Prius HV system works.

 

-30-55 degrees in Pennsylvania??? I don't think so.
I believe your thermometer wrong.

You should check for blockage at the heater core, or possibly a damaged engine thermastat.

 

Look closer, that's not a - sign.

@dig4dirt Sounds like you are getting the normal proper block heater experience. Your c has a heat harvester in the exhaust- I'm not sure the other models of Prius had those, but it seems to be a very effective gadget.

We did not put a block heater in ours- I am a strong proponent of the technology, but since ours is in an unpowered lot most of the time it wouldn't get enough utilization to matter.

 

There was a company that made and "instant heat" unit for the real VW's.
It hooked directly to the battery, and AFTER you started the car, you turn it on and you
had almost instant heat. Then when the exhaust was hot enough, you could turn it off.

 

Several companies. Stewart-Warner produced kits for USA-dealer-installed aux heaters for VWs for many years.

Eventually VW noticed and offered it as a factory option. Eberspächer was the OEM for the factory option, and they still produce auxilliary heater kits for aftermarket installation to this day.

 

Why all the fuss for a warm car & engine when you're aren't living in a location that gets very cold in the first place? Engine block heaters were designed for places like the far north with long periods of extreme sub-zero temperatures where you had to install an Engine Block Heater to keep the coolant from freezing and ruining your engine block, water pump, etc.

As someone who works outside every day in the rain and sometimes snow, the temperatures that get down into the 30's are not that cold if you dress appropriately. Where I live we're in the low 40's most of the year and most of the people I know who complain about being cold are not getting enough exercise and not taking care of their body in order to have a happy healthy long life. And granted, every time I head out into a garden to work, the first 10 minutes are miserable, but just like a car, after that everything warms up and I have no issues felling relatively warm for the rest of the day.

If you don't think a Prius will not heat the car up enough, put on warmer clothes and get your heart pumping more more, aka: live a way less sedentary life!

 

Folks, don't forget (or miss) why @dig4dirt started the thread. It's not about the block heater or about making heat per se. He just mentioned the block heater because it's clouding the issue which is his attempt, by testing, to confirm the existence of a resistance heater in the radiator or some other part of the cooling system that comes on in low temperatures with max demand for heat.

I think if I was doing these experiments, I would not plug in the block heater so as not to inject variables that can confuse the results.

 

Obviously, you never had to work in the cold!
It's freezing when it hits the 60's! I was in Germany, It gets cold! You do NOT warm up after 10 minutes.
OR 10 hours!
30 degrees is freezing, and it gets cold in Pennsylvania, and stays cold for days, weeks at a time.
If you put it on recirculate, it keeps the colder air out and heats faster.
I searched for the type of heater they had for the real(air cooled) VW's, but couldn't find it. I guess they
just don't make it anymore.

 

I warm up after 10 minutes of gardening, as long as it's not in the 20's, I'm good to go for hours. The real issue is all the ways capitalism makes money off of making people "comfortable." It's so out of control that there's so many fragile people who don't go outside for more than a minute or two... This is not normal or healthy and leads to getting sick way more often...

About 15 years ago in UK they created an outdoor preschool & kindergarten for the littlest kids. All day every weekday their parents would drop them off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon and these kids were outside the entire time learning about environmental science, gardening and most of all play!

They quickly found out that these kids were much healthier and got sick less often then kids trapped inside. We've alot to learn about staying healthy in a society that's more interested giving you meds for whatever your problem is, as well as wearing only one layer of clothing year-round. And exercise... Well, given the current obesity epidemic, exercise is just something you think about but never do.

 

All of that, still to decide on the speed of one fan and the position of three flaps according to whether I want it warmer or colder. You can tell it's a neural net from the way it keeps making the choices I wouldn't, just like I had another annoying human sitting in the car.

In every generation of Prius where I know the answer, the answer is "yes, there's a supplemental electric heat element". Early on (Gen 1 and I think 2) there could be two, depending on the market climate: one PTC element built right in to the heater core, and one mounted in the duct to the footwell air exits. I think the Gen 3 liftback just has one big one; it can come on at three levels, which you can play with in Techstream. I don't know about the c for sure, but it would be weird if it didn't.

Gen 3 liftback has an "ECO" mode that, among other things, disallows the electric supplemental heat. So if you want that function enabled, you can't be in ECO.

The element itself is in the neighborhood of 700 watts. This is a small fraction of the roughly 5300 watts of heat extractable from the coolant once the engine is warm. So it is a pretty subtle effect. I have never been able to feel it in the air blowing on my hands or face and say "yeah, that's noticeably warmer." But it is noticeably faster at starting to defog the windshield when the engine is cold. So I do exit ECO mode when doing that.