Warming up the car in winter

Yes, they asked me if I wanted it and I was a little surprised because this was the first time a dealer asked me this question. Here they usually put it on the car by default and i always thougt that they wouldnt let me buy a car without a block heater.

 

yes, i wouldn't think many cars would start very well in that kind of weather without one!

 

Here, each year we have a few nights at -40 and you can feel it's really cold and dry. Your nostrils tend to stick but at least it's never winding at these temps. The clutch pedal on my old corolla is taking a lot of time to get back to it's position and the tires freezes in their resting position so when you take the road the car is shaking!

 

wow! the coldest i've seen is around 5 below, no sure i could handle any colder. as it is, i keep dreaming of florida.

 

IIIIIIMMMMMM dreaming of a whiiiite xmas

 

Yep! that -40 below snow just has a special crunch to it, doesn't it!

 

supposed to get 1-2" tonight.

 

4 to 6 on wed for me

 

However, I think I saw something about operating temperature in the user manual. If my memory is right, you are not supposed to charge the car below -22°F. (-30°C) Just be cautious about that. It's better to use more gas that day than to harm the batteries.

 

With the plug-in, there hasn't been anything routine to get a metric from. Of course, the inconsistency of winter snow & ice makes that pretty much a meaningless measure anything. However, I did measure an interval of 8 minutes with the 2010 when stuck in a nasty commute home two winters ago.

Today's driving was more of a "normal" circumstance. I drove to mom's, back home, to work, then home again. The total distance was 45 miles. The resulting average was 63 MPG. Considering that included 3 cold starts (18°F from mom's, 10°F from work) and just a single charge, I'd say that was pretty darn good. The outcome of that same situation with my 2010 would have been about 20 MPG less.

 

do you have a block heater john?

 

Nope.

 

since john does not have a block heater, he cannot answer your question. perhaps someone who does would be willing to do some testing.

 

I have a small kitty on my engine, does that count?