Battery heater not working?

In the Gen 4 Charge Settings on the MID there is also an option to reduce the in car chargers output to 8 Amps instead of the Default Max. At the 8 Amp setting it takes the Gen 4 around twice as long to charge as it takes for the default max setting.
The lower (trickle ? ) setting could be helpful for manual control of charge speed when charging during very hot, very cold and ( very high traction pack internal resistance, like can also be seen in DrPrius app ).

I think it would be wise to wait until we see if that is also true with the battery heater turned on in charge settings. Although I agree it really good to know how the car behaves with the heater function turned off, too.

 

Car Scanner lists battery inlet temps in the app. I mention it because the first winter (which was before DrPrius supported Primes) I kept a ceramic space heater in the cabin to use while charging. The cabin got nice and warm, much like summer temps, but when DrPrius started supporting the Prime I found out that none of that heat was making it back into the battery case. I was bummed, because the heater doubled the electric from the wall during charging. But it was nice to get into a toasty warm cabin even with sub 0 F temps. But I could also fell every draft making it's way through the firewall and by about 10 miles all that warmth was gone.

Apology bout not getting the details of your testing right, I do agree that the 8 Amp charger setting is not really needed, especially in newer Primes, but I think it will be invaluable when the car and pack start to show their age in a few years from now and the pack internal resistance starts to show up / fluctuate more. Even at 6 years old I've already seen IR get wonky, and there are ways to settle it back down, if an owner takes the time to figure out how to.

 

Yeah, for a silent car, the heat pump is quite noisy. Same with my Model 3. While stopped when the heat pump is working overtime, my cars make more noise than a recent ICE vehicle.

 

Compressors are just noisy devices, and a heat pump trying to heat near the low end of its operating parameters will be working hard.

 

This thread is getting rid of the last bit of buyer's remorse I had on choosing the AWD HEV over the FWD PHEV. I was worried I would lose a big chunk of the PHEV benefits during the long winters here(up to 5 months of what KMO just went through), and it looks like that would've been the case. If I lived almost anywhere else in the US, the PHEV would have been the better choice, but I'm better served with the AWD and the extra $4k bucks or more in my pocket(if I could've even found a PHEV near me configured the way I wanted at anything close to MSRP).

 

I'm in Canada and our winter usually starts in early December and lasts until early April (those are the time the bike stays indoor). Our daily average temperature in December is -9°C to -2°C, January is -14°C to -5°C, February is -13°C to -4°C and March is -7°C to 3°C (yeah!). So, for those months, the average temperature is mostly above -10°C, so I can go without the engine. I think for me the PHEV is still a better fit than a HEV, especially since I have a BEV to compensate for when the temperature gets really cold. Keeping the vehicle heated while it's -20°C and I'm shopping is a game changer for me.

 

On average, I'm actually a few degrees colder than you, but our winter starts at least a month earlier. My November is only a degree or two warmer than your December. And my December is within a degree of your January.

I basically have five months where the average high temp of the day is +5C or below. Seven months where the average low temp of the day is +3C or below.

Why the hell do I live here? lol