Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

240 X 20 = 960 Watts. If you pay a dime a kilowatt hour you spent less than a penny preconditioning assuming it tapped that line out on amps, which it probably didn't.

 

Video was good and fair.

 

I have no idea how 240X20=960.

20A breaker or not, it's drawing 12A. 2880 watts. 5 minutes of that is 240Wh. That would be 4 whole cents in NJ. So a full cycle (10 minutes) is about 0.5 kWh, which is about what I saw on 120 if I pre-conditioned and waited 10 minutes for the battery to catch up.

FWIW, I didn't own the car in the bitter cold but I was getting 36-37miles AER in the high 20s with a pre-condition in the morning and fairly miserly heat usage. On a sunny winter day, all the windows and my black interior work for you and the car was usually still warm inside at the end of the day.

WRT gwmort's kids, an observation I've made with my wife is that if the car is warmish when we get in it, reasonable ECO heat is fine. If it's freezing cold in there, only full blast Comfort mode is satisfactory. AC works the same way.

 

Yeah I don't know how 240 X 20 = 960, either. And I stared at the number and was like that really seems low...so I checked again for the equation on watts and I had it right so posted it. Why the heck was I reading 20 as 4? That is of grave concern to me.

 

for about $40 you can and its within the technical ability of me which means nearly anyone can do it.

My Nissan Leaf Forum • Metering my 240 Modded EVSE

 

Some new data:

With temperatures dropping I have enough days on the road using the heater now to report that I am seeing about a 20% drop in range. So instead of 35-45 AER I am getting 28-36 AER.

I believe it is the low 35 in the summer and the high 36 for now that is giving the impression there isn't a significant decrease, but to get those numbers I have to drive very differently (very aggressive in summer to get 35, almost hyper miling now to get 36).

I've been monitoring the power output levels of the heating system, and I don't expect it to work much harder even when the temps get even lower than they are now, which leads me to believe cabin temperature may have more difficulty getting into a comfortable range without preheating. Once the temperature is comfortable the eco setting doesn't have too hard a time of maintaining it.

On a side note I find the heated seats make a huge difference in my personal comfort, keeping me warm and toasty even when the cabin temp is brisk, unfortunately that doesn't help my kids in the back seat much.

I'll update again later in the winter to see if this holds true.