Quote:
Originally Posted by bennelson
Since you can charge at home or work, you may want to just pre-heat your car. It makes it real comfy to hop in a warm car on a cold day.
I use an oil-filled 1500 watt electric radiator on a timer. That will hold enough heat in the thermal mass for a 4 mile trip too.
I also built a heated coat for about $5, and got a heated steering wheel cover. ($20 brand new at the store, or $5 brand new at the THRIFT store.)
Doing something like that would give you luxury heat, and you wouldn't need to run the 600 watt heater from the batteries, but you would always have it to fall back on.
I LIKE the neat tricks you can do with EVs, like running the heat before otherwise having the car on in a closed up garage. Don't try that one with a gasser! |
I do preheat with a 1500 watt electric heater on a timer. It is set to heat for half an hour before I leave for work. It is hilarious watching everyone scrape their windows while I drive off in my defrosted ELECTRIC car! But I think your oil-filled heater (with heat retention) is a much better option.
What I could do it split my heater coils in half for a low/high option, but I don't feel like it right now. I could also get a heated seat cover and only turn the car heat on to defrost when necessary. Doing this just for the kWh/mi numbers seems a bit silly though. It's really not that cold here on the coast - usually above freezing. It's more the 100% humidity that keeps fogging up my windshield that is annoying!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daox
Since you can charge at work and at home, perhaps you can stop after the bulk charge is done? Your cells should be above sulfation voltage (I think) and you would extend the battery life and increase efficiency.
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I stopped charging the last time once voltages started shooting above 14.2V or so which is why my last efficiency was so high.
I don't think AGMs suffer from sulfation (when leaving them discharged) the way floodies do, do they?
Once my 84.0V Kelly 7210 arrives I am hoping that the absorption stage will be much shorter - like 5 minutes or so. It will maintain 14.0V/battery and pull back current slowly to maintain this voltage, down to 2A when it switches to float (81.0V). But I will check efficiency after only charging once per commute next week when I am back from vacation.
I am also figuring out what to do with my accessory battery. Now that my battery pack charging happens so quickly, my junky trickle charger doesn't keep up. I have a spare 18.5V 75W laptop charger that I might hook up to it just so see what happens. Hmmmm.