Electric car heat! Liquid?

[Bicycle Bob]

I drove a HPV, with no heater and lots of heavy breathing. I found that it was enough to keep a flow of outside air to the inside of the windshield - no heating needed. You can also use anti-fog treatments to keep any condensation flat and transparent.

If you want to carry some heat, the best thing is a phase-change material such as Glauber's salt which will put out an even temperature for quite a while, and put out far more heat in the useful range than a jug of water.

[taco]

how about one of those kats heaters. they flow and heat and are controlled to 170deg.
hook that up to a short hose to the heat exchanger and a long hose or small radiator/tankmainly for storage (insulated and air blocked) back to the heater.

[IndyIan]

I vote for either bicycle bob's method, air flow, I use this for my snowmobile visor. Or the RV hot water tank. I know farmers are using methane from manure in place of propane, maybe you can buy it liquified in places?
Ian

[Christopher Jordan]

Interesting topic! Good reason for going out of my warm "cell"- it is unusual to be this cold, but I never used the heater in my 'el' I hit the wrong button a while back and 2 fans went on, so I knew something works, but I never tried it more than 5 seconds.

The 'el' is supposed to have two 400W heaters. I assume they are similar to hair dryers, but CA. is not a heater zone! Thanks for making me satisfy my curiosity to see if they work!

[electricrevolt]

Not to be contentious, but I feel the most efficient place for the ceramic heater in back on the shelf.

Folks have a difficult time getting it into the dash, then worry about fire hazard. And even then, the ceramic heater doesn't fully heat the EV and you're still cold in the winter. My friend had to hold his ceramic heater up to the windshield to defrost it.

We got sick of it and developed our own model Inline Water Heater (for sale) that uses the vehicles existing liquid heating hoses and climate controls. For $335, it's simple to install and natural to use. You'll find the EV heats up as warm as an ICE vehicle. Check it out on our website: Inline Water Heater

[dcb]

EDIT: read first post, this idea is basically where it started

well, assuming you have 120v power to the car for charging, you can "preheat" it much more efficiently (energy/money wise) than using battery power and for very little money (like $20, or free if you look around). Just need a small heater w/fan and a timer to start it heating shortly before you go (takes a little planning). Dont burn down your car/house/whatever.

[dcb]

Another thought, If you can use a plug in heater and get some air circulation over the batteries too, and insulate them from the outside, then there is some nice synergy of thermal mass and warm batteries.

EDIT AGAIN: probably not efficient to bring THAT much mass up to temperature every morning though.

Yah, automatic drip looks good w/a bit of reserve coolant and some fluid circulators And you definately want the thermos approach when not driving for max efficiency

the coffe pot is pretty easy to find, there are these things too:

[Old Mechanic]

I wonder if rain-x on the inside and outside might reducing window fogging.

regards
mech

[bennelson]

Wow - check the posting dates. I haven't been looking at this thread since LAST winter!

What I ended up doing for heat last winter was to just put a 1500 watt oil-filled radiator in the back seat. I set it on a timer to turn it on in the morning, running off a 120v extension cord.

The cord went out through the window, which was rolled up as far as it could go, while still letting the extension cord through.

That would allow moisture to escape (help keep fogging down!) but kept most of the heat in.

I would hop in, unplug the heater, and drive.
The radiator would stay warm for about 10 minutes or so, just from its existing heated mineral oil.

I have also found that my front defroster works great - Blowing cold air over the windshield helps defog just fine. However, my wife doesn't like the cold air blowing all over her! (I don't care for it much myself either!)

The car has no rear electric defroster. I think the car may have originally came from down south somewhere.

Last weekend, some of the EV buddies were working on installing ceramic heaters in place of their heater cores. Looked like a lot of work to do that.

What WOULD be great about a ceramic heater in place of the original heater core is that it would look stock, and offers the POTENTIAL of pre-heating.

If a car is using a 120V battery pack, there's no reason why a 120V AC heater element couldn't be hooked up in the car and designed to run off either wall power OR the batteries.

When hooked up to wall power, it could use a timer/thermostat to turn on the heat and warm up the car at an appropriate time. (It would have to turn on a fan as well) I would leave the controls set to blow air over the windshield for a "pre-defrost"

This would be a GREAT system for anyone who lives in the cold and could plug-in at work.