Good point, although keep in mind that the commute from work back to the house will be the "without block heater/lower MPG" variety. Correct?
So that may chop your calculated savings in half, unless it's substantially warmer at the end of your work-day.

I still think it makes perfect sense for cold winter climates.

 

Oh good point although Richardson, TX will never require it, eh? In my job I typically leave the house and don't stop driving until I get home except for the 30 minutes or so when I stop half a dozen times or so a day to fix computers. After driving an hour then a stop of 30 minutes is too short to allow the car to cool down so it is still warmed up when I resume driving. For people who drive 30 miles to work once then 30 miles home at the end of the day then yes you are correct ... so you'd need to drive 4 months of winter travel instead of 2 months. There might not be 4 cold winter months where the potential person lives but in 2 years there are at least 2 cold months or in 4 years there is one cold month. Keep the car long enough and the benefits roll in.

I'm still floored but the amount I save in gas since I drive a lot of miles. The previous car averaged 20-25 mpg and I drove the same distance so averaging 48 mpg now (creeping upwards slowly until Winter I imagine) means more than half the gas is used. 30,000 miles a year / 20 mpg = 1,500 gal * $2.20/gal = $3,300 in gas for the old car but 30k/45 mpg=665 gal*2.2/gal=$1,465 in gas for a savings of $1,835 PER YEAR. That is about 4 months of car payments -- I pay 4 months and get 4 months for free. MAN do I love this car. Oil changes at twice the interval also reduce that cost by half. It just gets better and better.

 

The block heater pulls about 400 watts. You will not recover the cost of the electricity with the gas savings. But the block heater is still a great addition in the winter. Warms the car up nicely in a hurry. Most people put the heater on a timer and run it for 3-4 hours for warmup.

 

400 Watts? Are you sure? That seems way too high. I mean - a window unit air conditioner only draws 500 Watts over a season. Can this be true? Are you talking about an all-season rating of 400 Watts?

 

Darren, it is indeed approximately 400 watts. Bill is not wrong.

Just for giggles, my HCH-2 block heater is actually drawing 352 effective watts.

Cheers;

MSantos

 

But is that "per night" for the wattage rating? Also, you probably don't need to have it plugged in all night so just a Light timer for 3-4 hours would be sufficient. I won't know until next month when it gets installed though but thanks. So I'll have to recalculate based on these numbers. I guess I will not Supersize my meals in the next month to make up for leaving the snowy mornings with hot air and Auto-Stop capabilities. I don't mind doing that.

 

I have a block heater installed on my HCH2. Idid the calculation on electric use and came up with 400watts x 3hrs equals 1.2kwhrs per night times the cost per kw equals .10c per night at .085c per kilawatt . so for 30 days a month that makes for just over $3.00 amonth. Well worth it.
that 5000btu air conditioner has to draw about 10 amps at 120v which would be about 1.2kwhr.

 

I should really qualify my statement here. Of course, whether or not it pays depends on the cost of electricity vs. the cost of gasoline. With gasoline prices in the US where they are today, and with electric rates where they are in most places, it will not pay. But if you live somewhere where gas prices are very high compared to electric prices, it could potentially pay off. In a thread on this subject last winter, I stated that my electric rates were about 8.5 cents per killowatt-hour. Someone on the east coast replied with his electric rates - 17 cents per killowatt hour!!

I need to sit down with my data and provide some details on how much of a mpg or l/100km change the block heater makes. This will only be for my situation, which is city driving. Keep in mind that the block heater only helps gas mileage for the first few miles - only until the point where the car would have been warmed up fully anyway...

 

Perhaps you do not need to incur the extra effort Bill. It would be a little too much work to be fully meanifull for most of us.

While fuel economy is of principal concern to all of us, so is engine wear and damage to the emmission equipment, increased polution , etc, etc. Because of this, we all price the real cost and payoff differently. To justify or reject the use of a block heater we have to factor in these elements.

Historically, block heaters were primarily a solution that helped ICE powerplants startup in cold weather. The second objective to lessen engine wear and the trailing benefit was increased FE.

It is not wrong to recommend the use of a block heater to anyone who owns a modern automobile based on the reasons I mentioned - particularly to a hybrid owner. It would be wrong however, to frame the use of a block heater only on the basis of immediate monetary cost.
How else can we justify buying a hybrid vehicle when there are plenty of alternate choices with lower a TCO? For most of us we're moved by alot more than immediate costs - perhaps a bigger picture... no?

Cheers;

MSantos

 

We all have different reasons for installing a block heater. For me, it was to heat the interior faster in the mornings so I don't have to listen to the wife asking me why I sold her car that had heated seats.

Mileage, engine wear, emissions, Auto Stop are all ADDITIONAL benefits.

Not hearing my wife shiver . . . priceless!

Ron in SoCal