Won't hurt, but the many drain on range is in heating the cabin. EV drive trains don't have enough waste heat to do the job, so all the energy that goes to heating is energy taken away from driving. Which is why they see greater losses in the cold than an ICE car. A heat pump is better than resistance heaters, but there is little cold outside for them to collect for the cabin. They'll work harder to heat than to cool.
Up to a point. Now that our temperatures are finally out of the miserable zone, my EV range is starting to climb back to where it was in March when I got my Prime. I'm sure that the reduced air conditioning load is a big part of it, but the heat soaked battery could not have been helping.
Yeah, I didn't even try EV mode this morning - a whole 14 Degrees at 6:00 AM today. November 13! WTH? When it's this cold, I kick on the ICE - it does it normally at these low temps anyway - but if I do use EV mode, I shut off the heater and use the steering wheel heater & butt warmers to keep warm until I get to the highway where I switch to HV mode and crank the heat after the ICE warms up.
I don't have Hwy drive in my commute, so I usually starts my car and push HV button right away to get my morning defrosting done and do the initial warm up of the cabin. During past two winters, I was driving HV all the way in morning to save the battery for my afternoon commute on EV mode. This winter, I am going to test EV/HV switching on both morning and afternoon commute to see if I can reduce battery use for heating and thus increase EV range. Will see how it works.
Do you use the preconditioning while the Prime is plugged in, either while charging or before you leave in the morning? I'm not sure, but in frigid temps you might want to try using HV on your way to the Hwy too, so when you get there the ICE doesn't have to run in warmup mode at Hwy speed. The difference might not be spectacular, but you may notice some. My point is that warmup mode finished quicker the slower the car is moving for a bunch of reasons. The car also cools off pretty fast as those temps too.
I always use HV on cold mornings. I usually save my EV range for the ride home. BTW - once you turn on the windshield defroster, it kicks on the ICE anyway, so it's almost not worth trying to do much in EV mode if you want to be safe. Nothing worse than trying to drive with a fogged/frozen windshield. I've tried warming up the car before getting in via Entune but I only have an L1 charger so it drains the battery pretty significantly if I do that. If I get an L2 charger installed, that would be a definite advantage.
Dehumidify the vehicle before parking. Just open the doors or windows for a minute. The temperature difference will force moisture to escape. You don't need MAX defrost then (the button). Ordinary window blowing works fine then and it's all electric.
I don't think that will work on frost on the outside of windshield? I don't know about @bresna, but in my case morning defroster ritual is needed to get rid of frost on the outside.
I run another circuit out to the car and manually precondition with an electric heater when it's really cold out. Yeah, I also take whatever hit the preconditioner gives to EV range at 120 volt. I've haven't used preconditioning at L2 yet either. Me personally, I switch precondition on both when I start charging and before I leave, for whatever it does to both the traction pack and the ICE and motor equipment, if anything!
My tool of choice for outside frost. Snow Joe Edge Ice Scraper with Brass Blade-SJEG01 - The Home Depot I like it so much, I kept one for each car when we moved down here. Believe it or not, we get frost several times in a typical "winter." But mostly it's for when we go north in the winter.
Huh? You don't have a good ice-scraper? That scraping ritual here has resulted in a few that work really well. I have one with an extension, one with a built-in glove, and one for the really nasty stuff. I have a small squeegee too.
I usually carry 2-3 snow/ice scrapers, spray deicer, and a snow shovel in each car. This morning temperature was 16F, not too bad. But when the temperature gets down to single digit or below zero, scraping heavy ice on the windshield is a very hard chores. Any help by ICE generated heat blasting inside of windshield is welcomed.
One of these fine days I'll get the block heater installed and than have to run a third circuit for that.
Blah. Move to Minnesota, where we rarely get ice like that. Snow is great for recreation here. I remember living in Massachusetts and have memories of wet winters.
I lived in Minnesota though long time ago. I did not have PHV then, but yeah, I don't remember ever having to deal with freezing rain while up there. Freezing rain here is not that common either. The condition has to be just right for rain drop to be super cooled to cause the instant freezing. That does not happen often. My problem is more of regular powder snow at night. If it happens late enough after I come home, usually those are the easiest to fluff off the windshield with a sweep of brush. The problem arise when it starts snowing early enough in the evening while the car is still warm after I park on my driveway. Any snow that accumulate on the windshield quickly melt then freeze. This layer of ice is the hardest to scrape comes next morning, requiring blast of windshield defroster before I can even attempt to remove it.
Been there, done that! Just don't try to lift the windshield wipers up before they're completely released from the ice. I've ruined a couple of wiper blades that way.
Just ordered this ice scraper. My wife with arthritis have a hard time holding onto the grip of regular scraper. This one might be easier to operate. I will see.
So here we are, another 4 weeks later with about 28 charging cycles and my EV range is still only around 25 miles. I'm beginning to wonder if something else is going on here. If I'm really only getting 25 miles of EV for my electricity $$, I'm better off just running the car in HV mode all the time. 25 miles is less than a half gallon of gas in HV mode (at ~52 mpg) and with gas prices versus electricity prices, this is at the break even point.
