Okay, I'm familiar with the summertime complaints about air conditioning when driving in battery mode--if you want to cool off you have to get yourself back with gasoline and hybrid efficiency goes out the pipe. But what about wintertime? In town/city traffic in northern New England's winters, does one freeze? Ordinary car heaters channel residual heat from the engine when you want it, using a blower fan. What happens when your car is being propelled by that big square lump underneath the cargo area and your gasoline engine is taking a nap? What say you 06 FEH and MMH owners?

 

Yea, I was wondering the same thing. There are two separate coolant loops, one for the ICE and one for the electronics. I was wondering which are sent to the heater core; just the ICE's or possibly both? If both, then one might get some heat when running just on the electric motor.

 

The little while that I have driven mine, temerature as low as 15 F... The heater worked great. It would cool off a slight bit if I was on electric for any extended period. But all in all works better than the 06 Escape with the V6 that I am temporarily using..

 

I'd assume its just the engine core thats sent to the heater. The electronics core doesn't get very hot, thats why there are two systems.

As for how warm it keeps you. I drove mine in Februrary and it was fine. The thing gets hotter then heck when the engine is running (I have to turn it down). The A/C loop just has alot less thermal mass to warm up.... when the heat is going and the engine shuts down you've got all the water coolant, and a huge metal engine block as a heat source. I'd imagine we'll find it takes a LONG time before we notice much of a loss of heat.

 

The heater worked great this last winter, I was dealing with temps in the low 40's & high 30's, so not quite New England(or Minnesota where I grew up) but it worked fine at the ski resorts too. Staying warm was never an issue. Certainly not like trying to stay warm in an old VW bug in winter time...Ciao!

 

Totally different from cooling. The heat is all stored up in all the metal and fluids in the engine, so you'll still get heat without the ICE running. And if things cool down enough to where you'd feel like you weren't getting heat, the ICE would come back on anyway to heat up the system and keep it up at operating temps.

With A/C, the only cooling you get comes from running the compressor which requires the ICE, and you'll notice the change fairly quickly when the ICE shuts down.

 

If I remember correctly, the water pump in these cars is electric so even when the car is in EV mode, water is still circulating through the cooling system, unlike an ordinary car where once the engine shuts off, no more hot water gets to the heater core.

I sometimes nap in my car when working the overnight shift. What I do is shut the car off, turn the ignition back to run and then run the heat. The heat puts out hot air for quit a while.

Last winter on the coldest days (below 0° F) , I was never wanting for heat. Granted you won't be in EV mode much anyway when it is super-cold so there really isn't much to worry about....other than the tank average taking a beating.

 

I was rather astonished last winter when I got heat quickly and plentifully, both with and without ICE, and that was in a typical Michigan winter; lots of subzero temps and snow.