SHORT TRIPS? FAST WARM UPS? MPG?
 

So everyone knows that short trips with the engine cold give you horrible mpgs...

Heck in my ioniq today, a 5 mile short trip to get groceries and back with ''hypermiling'' netted me 29mpg. and its a HYBRID! obviously this was because the engine was cold and none of the fluids or parts were warmed up and at the best operating temp...

IS THERE A WAY to speed up this warming up cycle or get better gas mileage for shorter trips? would a winter heat block still help the engine warm up during hot summer months? does parking in the sun help the engine warm up faster? what other things or '' hacks'' can someone do to get better short trip driving fuel economy?

block heater if you have one and don't use the heater at all till its warmed up
use the seat heaters and steering wheel heater to keep you alive

im talking about with summer weather. obviously engine gets to optimal temps better when its 80 degrees outside versus 15 degrees. but theres gotta be another way?

Engine block heater, then the transmission.

Another way? Aggregate trips to include at least one longer one.

thats what im doing, trying to combine trips, but sometimes i cant

wondering if parking facing the sun would slightly help lol

Block heaters are good, but remember about their electrical consumption...

Putting a heating pad on the trasmission (as freebeard mentioned) and/or on the oilpan will supplement the block heater.

Block the grille so that the wind doesn't keep cooling the engine.
Also, thermally insulate the engine, so that it doesn't cool off too much while you are shopping.

If it is just a few miles, then cut heat or A/C. In fact, even the seat and steering wheel heaters WD40 mentioned will probably impact engine load more than your comfort.

If you have a plug-in hybrid, then keep the speed low, so that the electric assist has a larger share than the ICE.

Last, but not least - If it is not far, maybe you could bike there?
Or maybe plan a shopping carpool with a neighbor?

Prius has a coolant thermos that holds a large amount of coolant and keeps it hot from the previous trip.

Block heaters work. I've found that especially in winter, they save money overall, so long as you run them less than 2 hours or so.

I think it depends on the particular block heater. They all work, but the more the wattage the more heat you can get into the engine. In other words, if you run a 200W block heater for 2 hours you get 400Wh of heat, but the engine will be warmer if you run a 1,200W block heater for 20 minutes. It's still the same 400Wh of electricity you'll spend on, but the heat has less time to dissipate out of the engine.

Facing the sun helps. I have tried opening the hood so the sun heats it directly, but I don't know if that helps all that much and there's a chance the battery will be robbed, or maybe something else since my battery is in the trunk.

Also, if the interior gets really hot you could run the heater in recycle mode, especially if you have an electric heat pump since that can allow you to do this with the engine off. That way you add heat to the engine by passing the hot interior air through the heater core which then pumps the warmed coolant through the engine.

I don't think heated seats use all that much electricity. They might use only 40 or 50W. Of course we're talking summer now, but when winter comes heated seats are the way to go.

I never noticed much of a difference with blocking the grill, but I never was that scientific about it. I think maybe insulating the engine might be better. I think I'd like to use mineral wool as it's more flame resistant than fiber glass. Of course if you have an oil leak it will become a giant wick ready to be ignited.

I'd like to try an exhaust to coolant heat exchanger some day. One that goes on after the catalytic converter.

I love the idea of a giant thermos to put the coolant after a drive and then back into the engine before the next. Sadly, I don't get that warm of engine temps on my routes: I just got home from work with an engine temp of 104°F.

In Vermont, I found a grille block was the single biggest improvement for my commute in winter. That said, my car has a large engine with a lot of surface area.

I have an Ioniq with active grill shutters. In the winter it closes them automatically. So no point in a grill block for me

And I was specifically talking about faster warm up times even in summer. Hoping next year I can move out of my apartment and get a place that’ll allow me to plug in a heat block for winter time

I used to block heat every single morning, but the gains aren't that great once you get out of winter. You can have a toasty engine, but say your wheel bearings and transmission... anything else that rotates and generates heat, is still going to be cold. You can run a block heater, plus perhaps an oil pan and/or transmission heater, but the time and energy it takes may not be worth the tiny gains you'll get.

Frankly, more and more reason to go full electric. I keep looking at my Insight as a great candidate... just waiting for that smug little 1.0L to explode.

Does the Ioniq shutters block the entire front grill? Cars I've seen that have active shutters still have open areas.

The whole area except one little tiny one inch area thing at the very very bottom that I don’t know what it’s for

One more thing to quicken engine warmup are coolant heaters that run on glowplugs. For example, from a Citroen Xsara:
https://autopecas.norsider.pt/conten...00-a-2004.jpeg

The glowplugs use your 12v electrics to heat the coolant while you drive. Also these 50-150 watts put an additional load on your engine, on 1 hand warming it up even faster, on the other hand increasing the risk of draining your battery if you do it constantly on short trips.

I found these two old threads:
glow plug based coolant heater
Engine suplementary heating - Reduced comsumption/emissions/interior heating

I guess a full winterization wouldn't rely solely on a glowplug-based heater, so it might also require other approaches. Electric fan if the vehicle was fitted with a mechanical one instead, some sort of grille block being also desirable, maybe a higher-capacity battery such as those Optima ones which are often pointed out as having both a higher energy density and suitability to harsher environmental conditions.

Bicycles exist.
No warmup, no fuel consumption.
If you're unfit or lazy, E-bikes are also a thing.

it was cold and clearly you havent seen how crazy oregon drivers drive. especially with legal weed and all drugs decriminilized, including meth, cocaine, and heroine. there are bike deaths almost every day here in the state. id rather jog on a side walk than ride a bike on public american roads

I tried biking to work in Vermont. When the wind is coming over the lake, gusting at 40mph+, with a wind chill in the -30's, it's a tough ride. Nevermind the ice, and the other drivers.

Believe it or not, I really tried.

Bikes are allowed on sidewalks in Portland except for the downtown core (SW Jefferson Street, Front Avenue, NW Hoyt Street and 13th Avenue). If it is like California, I imagine bike thefts are a big problem so you'd want a cheap beater with bolt-on seat post (not quick release) and a decent lock running through the frame and both wheels. And if its like here, be prepared to get the stink eye in most grocery stores when you walk in with a backpack.


In the US, there's a motor vehicle fatality an average of once every ~67 million miles driven. Bike miles aren't tracked as accurately, but 1250 people died in 2020 in an estimated 2.3 billion rides. If the average ride was 5 miles long, that would be a death every ~9 million miles. So riding a bike is at least 7 times as deadly as driving a car.

It is probably even more deadly since there are more passengers in cars than bikes and many of the vehicle fatalities were pedestrians, cyclists, and unbelted passengers...

To be fair, people travel far greater numbers of miles in cars. Time for time, bikes look a lot better.

Where I live, riding bikes on the sidewalk (when there is a sidewalk) is illegal. So you have to ride on the street or highway along with the cars usually. There are some bike paths, but not a whole lot of them. Then you have the SUV/Pickup frenzy with everyone not caring who or what they run over. Off the top of my head, I can think of 5 different pedestrians or bicyclists that were ran over near my house in the past 16 years. All 5 were hit by a pickup or SUV. 3 of them died and two survived. And yet I still took my bike today, a little over 4 miles round trip.

Are wheel chairs also illegal? {Grinds my gears]

Bikes are speed-matched to pedestrians more so than cars. Grocery stores have no standing if they charge 10 cents for a paper bag with sketchy handles.

One thing I forgot to say though is that at least two of the cyclists that got ran over were in the wrong. So you could say it wasn't the SUV or Pickup driver's fault. I remember once I had to slam on the brakes when I was driving a full sized bus just to avoid running over a cyclist that ran a red light... in front of my bus.

Isn't driving on drugs still illegal?
Doesn't the police do anything about that?

Either way, for such short trips I don't usualy get the car out unless there is a good reason for me to do so.

Not realy, a pedestrian moves at 3-5 km/h typicly.
A cyclist moves at 15-30 km/h in flat land typicly, with the increasingly popular E-bikes going 25 km/h.
That's 3-10x the speed.

In residential areas or cities, cars go 30-50 km/h.
Meaning they are 1-3,3 times as fast as cyclists.

In addition to that, visibility on sidewalks is notoriously bad, making it less safe to cross roads or driveways there.
The safest place to ride on a road without dedicated cycling infrastructure is in the middle of the lane.
This gets you out of the door-zone, increases visibility and prevents close passing.

Hah!

I was recently in Detroit. There, many vehicles smell strongly of weed, or have visible smoke rolling out of the windows while people are driving. Perhaps 1 in 10 vehicles simply does not have a license/registration plate on the car. Around 1 in 3 drivers in the area does not have the legally required insurance.

I would wager the police let these things go, because:
1) They risk their lives by stopping someone for a traffic citation, and
2) There is so much crime that they have to prioritize other things.

Isn't the police over there already equiped with military style equipment?
Also given the amount of fatalaties, it would seem like action needs to be taken.
Plus the fines for the drivers would likely be quite the revenue source for the city as well...

Certainly, but they get in trouble when they opt to "shoot first, ask questions later". Many American citizens are also equipped with military style equipment and believe "laws" are for other people. :rolleyes:

Parts of the US are close to lawless.

Not to be rude or political, but why are seemingly so many people over there batsh*t insane?

I haven't figured that out myself.

I'd guess it has to do with the long cultural history we have that an individual's wants and beliefs supersede the collective agreement. That, and there isn't a whole lot of trust in the government, which is often seen as a separate ruling class.

I believe we're getting off into the weeds though. Things are as they are, for better or for worse. Point being, it's sometimes dangerous to cycle, and enforcement of laws is spotty.

I'm hard pressed for an explanation that isn't rude or political.

The strategy used by the [corporate] British East India company 180 years ago with Opium is now being used with Fentanyl. The Dutch and British East India Companies were the first corporations, born bloody and rapacious. Now there are corporate entities indistinguishable from national governments,

Furry mammals don't stand a chance.

You can find either exceptionally good people even in places where you'd be supposed to think of the locals as a bunch of SOBs, just like you may go to a place where people are often seen as cool and end up with a bad impression of someone. But nowadays there is basically nowhere you can go and not expect to find at least someone who is effectively insane...

Portland is the biggest city with the “ defund the police “ and “ ACAB” movement. Cops don’t do anything here

It's half the State, but barely squeaks into the top twenty. They don't do anything anywhere there's a corrupt DA.

Autobahnschleicher -- This country gets a lot of bad press.

You have to discount the false flags, like the one just entrapped in El Paso. There's an ongoing push to take the teeth out of the Constitution. See what's happened to Scotland Australia and New Zealand?

Meanwhile, $178,000 Javelins are reselling for $30,000 in Europe.

Most of the cop-bashing "influencers" are either thugs or can hire some private security to deal with the actual thugs, and eventually the private security will be better equipped than the local police, having access to better guns for instance. At least in Brazil I see it.

More stuff besides insulation
 

Hey again Phase!

So I see that warming your car quickly *has* been on your mind already! The insulation mentioned in the other thread is one route and a good one for short trips. It definitely reduces warmup times and improves FE, but for a 5 minute trip it would be maybe a +10%, or +3 mpg in your example. Worthwhile but not spectacular.

Another route is using the Toyota Prius trick. They take the hot coolant fluid and shunt it to a thermos when the car shuts off. Then they put it back into the coolant reservoir when you start up again. This only helps between multiple quick trips, i.e. the car doesn't warm up faster, it "loses heat slower", so to speak.

Engine block warmers, the glowplugs mentioned earlier, etc. will all work. They will give you a better mpg reading on your dash, but won't necessarily be more efficient. Meaning, you still need to spend energy to power the heaters, and (if factored into the mpg equation) is still crap net fuel economy. It's just consuming two different types: gas and electricity. To truly get more efficiency one would want to harness some natural or ambient resource for "free".

If we want the coolant to always be at operating temperature near start, then a crazy but workable solution is to use the solar oven effect. Trap a dark fluid under a clear surface and it will raise temperature quickly. Then circulate it with a heat exchanger to your coolant fluid. Some simple electronics could ensure the right temperature, and making it solar powered ensures it only comes on when the sun is out.

The main potential drawback is thermal expansion issues between the engine and coolant. Meaning, if the coolant is too hot and the engine is too cold, they might be out of spec relative to each other on startup. So it might make sense to run the "heater fluid" through the oil and across the engine as well, to try to warm up everything "evenly". The best solution here would be to find a way to use the actual coolant pump while the car is off. That may not be possible with some engines; some use the stroke cycle itself to circulate fluids. Fortunately, every hybrid I've ever seen has a separate coolant pump, because they want fine control for efficiency reasons.

Alternatively, you could use a fluidless solution, go full solar, and use something iike the Glowplug heaters mentioned earlier. Basically harvest sun for electricity to directly convert into heat. That has possibilities if you ever plan on using the electricity for anything else, whereas the fluid solution is effectively a secondary radiator.

Huh. This could actually have real applicability. If we were to view this purely as a heating problem, then the most efficient solution is to use a heat pump. So you'd use the solar power to extract heat from the heating fluid and force it into the relevant components. That not only gains the COP factor for efficiency, it means the solution would work to much lower temperatures than the solar solution alone. The heat pump could also have dual use to heat the cabin, which is much needed in cold climes.

Cheers.