Can you drive in EV mode with the A/C or heater running to keep you cool in summer and warm in winter? If so, how much does it change the range from the normal 13-14 miles of EV? I'm trying to determine how short of a commute I would need to have to not use gas while still driving normally and not giving up climate control use.
Yes, you can use heat and A/C in EV mode. I'd guess you'd lose a couple miles to either, but it depends on how hot or cold you want it, and what the ambient temperature is. Perhaps someone who has used one of the demo vehicles will chime in, otherwise search the forums, because this has been discussed a bit before as well. However, you can also have it get the car to the correct temperature for you while it's still plugged in rather than taking energy out of the battery - depending on your tolerance, you might then be able to turn off the climate control for some or all of the drive, or at the very least it won't have to work as hard.
I found very poor results trying to search the forum on this topic. Dozens of results found, but too difficult to filter through to find something that answered this question rather than just having matching key words found somewhere in the text of multi-page long threads. The car would be garaged out of the sun in the morning, so it would not need to be precooled much if it all while plugged in at home. However on the trip home, it would have been sitting in the sun for several hours away from an outlet if there is no EV charging station at the work site. The a/c would then need to be run at maximum cooling capacity for probably the entire trip home during the height of the summer. What I'm looking for is the worst case scenario of using the a/c a 110 degree summer afternoon on full blast continuously the entire drive back home. How much would it reduce the 14 mile range to use the climate control to it's maximum capacity? Should the driver be able to make a 6 mile return trip back in the afternoon if it wasn't recharged after a 6 mile trip to the work site in the morning without turning off or reducing use of the A/C in the summer or turning off the heat in winter?
I doubt anyone knows the answer to your question as I do not believe anyone here has gotten their hands on a production model yet. Keep in mind even when in "EV" mode under heavy load the ICE will still come on, so whether you can go gas free depends in part on your terrain, the speed you go, and how heavily you accelerate in addition to climate control loads. That said I don't think you're likely to force ICE use with the A/C (more likely with the heat IMO). Also running fans and the A/C compressor is more efficient overall than electrically heating an element in an electric heater so the effect may not be too extreme. I can tell you in my Volt I see about a 10% range drop when heavy climate control is required. If that holds true for the PHV w/o mechanical assist you'd see drops in range from 0.9-1.3 miles.
I'd say no, the range is 9-13 miles on a good day, 6 miles out and back without a charge in between would be pushing it. With the heavy cooling/heating loads you're probably closer to the 9 than the 13.
Here's the only cold weather report I've seen: http://priuschat.com/forums/toyota-...-cold-weather-video-review-prius-plug-in.html
If in ECO mode the AC compressor maxes out at 1.8kw. Running FULL POWER AC for 1 hour uses 7.8miles of range. if your trip home is 30 minutes, and the compressor really runs full power the whole time, then you lose 3.6 miles of range.
The GEN III has a solar pannel option that runs a fan to keep the air in the car at ambient temperature. I'm not sure if this option will be available on the PHV but if it is then that would greatly reduce the need for cooling after the car has been sitting out in the sun. Noel
I would definitely run in ECO mode to reduce electricity consumption. In the winter, it depends. The heating system can only provide so much heat before the engine fires up (in normal cars, your heat is actually from the engine and not a PTC heater which is why V8s tend to heat up the cabin faster than fuel efficient 4 cylinders).
OK, it seems like the car won't work well as an electric vehicle after all except in mild climates or if you are willing to suffer in heat or cold to try to maintain electric mode. Any kind of reduced capacity "ECO mode" A/C use will not be effective in 100+ degree heat after the car was baking in the afternoon sun. I would be surprised if the solar powered venting fan (if available) would be enough to make enough difference in areas that have very hot summers unless the driver is ready to sacrifice their own and their passenger's comfort to stay in EV mode. Also sounds like you can't expect to run the heater on a cold morning commute without being bounced out of EV mode.
web1b, Reports on both the Volt and the Leaf indicate they lose 1/3 of their range in cold weather, I see no reason not to assume the future Prius PHV won't do the same. But like 99.999% of the planet, I am guessing. (btw, I get about 40 MPG in winter, 47 MPG in fall and spring, and 42 MPG in summer. And I have VERY mild winters)
Why not use A/C for heating? It's more efficient, only problem would be extreme cold, for that you cold use normal heather.
I believe the PHV actually does do this - it's generally just called a heat pump at that point, but you're correct on all points (it's ~3x more efficient than electric resistive heating, and won't work when it's very cold).
My experience in my Leaf was about a 10-15% reduction (nowhere even close to 30%) of range for my 60 mile round-trip commute during freezing temperatures due to the heater/air conditioner being used. Here in the summer, I've been experiencing about a 10% reduction in range when using the air conditioner, but I've been playing around with different temperature settings to improve this to around 5% over my whole commute. This next winter I'll have more time to play with the temperature settings to see if I can improve the reduction in range to around 5-8%.
well the journos probably looked and saw "80 miles" then put the heater on max for 5 seconds and saw "55 miles", made a note in their notebook, and reported it as fact that range dropped that much. i reckon if they drove more than five minutes on max they'd drop it to a more human temperature, and the range loss would be nowhere near as high.
