Discussion
I wonder if such a heater exists....
Battery operated either with replaceable/rechargeable batteries, or plug in to charge a built In battery unit.
Remote operated / app operated
So basically I can have said heater sat in the car, in the morning I can lean out of the door press a button, heater switches on I faff about eating/brushing teeth etc etc and come out to a toastie car.
Probably wishful thinking
Battery operated either with replaceable/rechargeable batteries, or plug in to charge a built In battery unit.
Remote operated / app operated
So basically I can have said heater sat in the car, in the morning I can lean out of the door press a button, heater switches on I faff about eating/brushing teeth etc etc and come out to a toastie car.
Probably wishful thinking
Converting electricity-to-heat is very, very efficient. But it does require a lot of electrickery.
Think about your average domestic electric heater.
Even a small one, or the lowest setting, is usually about 1kW - 1,000w. A typical car headlight bulb is 55w. How long would even quite a beefy battery last powering 20 headlight bulbs? Not very...
Battery-powered heaters are a non-starter.
Think about your average domestic electric heater.
Even a small one, or the lowest setting, is usually about 1kW - 1,000w. A typical car headlight bulb is 55w. How long would even quite a beefy battery last powering 20 headlight bulbs? Not very...
Battery-powered heaters are a non-starter.
TooMany2cvs said:
Converting electricity-to-heat is very, very efficient. But it does require a lot of electrickery.
Think about your average domestic electric heater.
Even a small one, or the lowest setting, is usually about 1kW - 1,000w. A typical car headlight bulb is 55w. How long would even quite a beefy battery last powering 20 headlight bulbs? Not very...
Battery-powered heaters are a non-starter.
A 1kW load would draw 83 amps. typical car battery at say 40ah would last half an hour.Think about your average domestic electric heater.
Even a small one, or the lowest setting, is usually about 1kW - 1,000w. A typical car headlight bulb is 55w. How long would even quite a beefy battery last powering 20 headlight bulbs? Not very...
Battery-powered heaters are a non-starter.
Often wondered why cars don't make more use of electric heaters to speed cabin warm up particularly diesels, yes there's fancier solutions but electric heaters are light, cheap and reliable, you probably just need to uprate the alternator a bit and if you really want to do it properly rig it to drop out under hard acceleration.
Hereward said:
Can you run an extension lead out to the car? If so just plug in a domestic fan heater and leave that running, will warm the interior in no time.
Or do it properly with a pre-heater : http://www.kenlowe.com/Heating.phpEberspächer do fuel-fired water preheaters too. Newer ones can be set to run on a timer so will come on all by themselves if you want, but I had two Eberspächer-style space heaters in a Tatra (with an air-cooled engine) some years ago and they were great. As well as pre-heating, you could leave them running while shopping on cold days and come back to a still toasty car. Advisable to turn off when at petrol stations, as they have a very hot exhaust.
paralla said:
Some Diesel VW's do have electric heaters. My old scirocco had one and so does my Tiguan. It's 1KW.
Strangely you have to have the A/C switched on and the temp set to max before it will turn on.
As far as I know pretty well all diesel cars have electric supplementary heaters somewhere in the water system otherwise in cold weather they'd never get warm. My old Merc has one in the block - it's 1.7kW - and older Ford diesels had them in one of the hoses.Strangely you have to have the A/C switched on and the temp set to max before it will turn on.
Many newer diesels also have PTC heaters in the air system so they blow warm air pretty instantly. My missus has a newish Tiguan and that blows warm air almost instantly. I've seen the various comments on forums about how it works, but ours doesn't seem the temp to need to be high or the a/c on - it just works.
Sheepshanks said:
L
As far as I know pretty well all diesel cars have electric supplementary heaters somewhere in the water system otherwise in cold weather they'd never get warm. My old Merc has one in the block - it's 1.7kW - and older Ford diesels had them in one of the hoses.
Many newer diesels also have PTC heaters in the air system so they blow warm air pretty instantly. My missus has a newish Tiguan and that blows warm air almost instantly. I've seen the various comments on forums about how it works, but ours doesn't seem the temp to need to be high or the a/c on - it just works.
I had my Tdi 170 scirocco for years before I realised the AC had to be on before the heater would work.As far as I know pretty well all diesel cars have electric supplementary heaters somewhere in the water system otherwise in cold weather they'd never get warm. My old Merc has one in the block - it's 1.7kW - and older Ford diesels had them in one of the hoses.
Many newer diesels also have PTC heaters in the air system so they blow warm air pretty instantly. My missus has a newish Tiguan and that blows warm air almost instantly. I've seen the various comments on forums about how it works, but ours doesn't seem the temp to need to be high or the a/c on - it just works.
My Renault Zoe has an electric heater... well it would do because the car is electric 
You set the timer and it pre-heats the car as it toasty and defrosted.. no more scraping. It uses a ceramic heater that is very efficient so it doesn't reduce the range of the car.
My Jag has not moved in 3 months since purchasing the EV..
You set the timer and it pre-heats the car as it toasty and defrosted.. no more scraping. It uses a ceramic heater that is very efficient so it doesn't reduce the range of the car.
My Jag has not moved in 3 months since purchasing the EV..
LordFlathead said:
My Renault Zoe has an electric heater... well it would do because the car is electric
You set the timer and it pre-heats the car as it toasty and defrosted.. no more scraping. It uses a ceramic heater that is very efficient so it doesn't reduce the range of the car.
My Jag has not moved in 3 months since purchasing the EV..
The Zoe has a heat pump (reverse cycle air conditioning) that uses a compressor. You are right that it is very efficient. You set the timer and it pre-heats the car as it toasty and defrosted.. no more scraping. It uses a ceramic heater that is very efficient so it doesn't reduce the range of the car.
My Jag has not moved in 3 months since purchasing the EV..
paralla said:
I had my Tdi 170 scirocco for years before I realised the AC had to be on before the heater would work.
In the Merc it can be set in the cluster menu to off, off with a/c button, or auto. To be honest, I don't know if the Tiguan is the same, as I said, in ours it just seems to work and we have the a/c off. Also there's two a/c buttons in our car (something like normal and high) so which one would need to be on?It's really odd that VW don't detail instructions anywhere if it is a/c button dependant as many owners would have the a/c off in winter.
cptsideways said:
Whaic/what/year/variant is that one then? Never knew they had them
That is on a 2004 (B5.5) 1.9 TDI Passat, so it would have been fitted to all TDI's between 2001 and 2005 of that shape.VW obviously continue to fit them and they give almost instant luke warm air. Prior to 2001 they fitted three glowplugs in a manifold on a coolant outlet.
In terms of how they work, there is a lot of forum folklore, I don't think anyone really knows. My view, certainly on my car is that you have to set the climate control above 26c.
Land Rover FL2 has a PTC heater and flaming effective it is. Can fire up from clock cold, and by the time have driven the half mile to the garage to fill up before heading off out it's already kicking out warm air. Another mile or so down the road it's getting nice and warm, completely automatic. 80 amp fused circuit so must be the order of 1 kilowatt.
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