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Winter Driving in an EV - Part 2 - All about heating
135 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to the Plug In For More podcast! Mike, Tom, and Bryant are here to help you on your journey to an Electric vehicle future. Each episode we discuss current events, trends, and a specific topic of education related to EV's. We bring together a diverse experience set, and pair it with guests who are experts in the field. For even more information on EV's, check out www.EVUniverse.com.
This episode is part 2 of a 3 part series looking into issues facing EV owners and winter driving. The episode examines heating systems in Electric Vehicles and why they are so much different from their ICE counterparts.
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Transcript
Introduction to Heat Pumps in Winter Driving
00:00:00
Speaker
This particular episode of what we're going to be looking into is heat pumps. And this is part of our part two of our three-part series in a winter driving. We already talked a little bit about an overview of the winter driving in the previous episode. This one, though, is focused solely on heat pumps. And we sat down there in Jones and talked with him about the different heating systems that go into electric vehicles, how it compares to a gas vehicle's heating system, and why it's different, how it's different.
00:00:28
Speaker
And it's a good lesson, and it's very, very informative. One thing we'll just, everyone keep in the back of your mind on, some cars have, some EVs have heat pumps, some of them don't. Tom is buying one in northern Michigan that doesn't, and so we'll see how that fares, what Aaron has to say about that. So, listen in, hope you enjoy.
The Purpose of 'Plug In For More'
00:00:50
Speaker
Welcome to Plug In For More, brought to you by evuniverse.com. EV Universe is your one-stop shop for all things related to the electric vehicle. Here on this podcast, our goal is to educate, inspire, and hopefully make your transition into the electric vehicle marketplace a lot less intimidating. And now, here are your hosts, Mike, Tom, and Bryant.
Mike's Ford Mach-E Build Date and Shipping Concerns
00:01:16
Speaker
Big news for me, I finally got an email from the Ford Motor Company about the Mach-E. I am scheduled to have my Mach-E built the week of December 12th. And so if it's built, you're going to get it January, hopefully sometime mid to late January, I guess. I mean, I think of all of the delays that we've been dealing with with Ford is that
00:01:40
Speaker
you know, the shipping delays as part of it. And I've been hearing and seeing horror stories about cars that have been stuck on, you know, parking lots and either Dearborn or Kentucky or wherever else. And the car sat there for a month. So I hope that doesn't happen to me. And the car gets quickly shipped from Mexico to Michigan and.
00:01:59
Speaker
I get it, but I think a month is probably a safe, reasonable guess. Yeah. I mean, one thing I'm super curious about, and if you listened to our earlier podcast, you know this already, but Tom's father put in
00:02:11
Speaker
reservation for a Maki moments, minutes after Tom did at the same dealership. And his is coming in too. I'm curious, even though his is being built a week, I think is what you said earlier, a week later. A week later than yours, when he will get his, and if there's a shipping delay, if he'll, he will actually have it before you do. And if he does the,
00:02:39
Speaker
The response there, we should record that so everyone can hear it on how much bragging he will be doing. And my temper tantrum? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, we don't want to display that. That might be too much for everyone to handle, I think. Oh, man. But I wouldn't be surprised if somehow they end up getting delivered on the same truck. Mm-hmm. But then you can fight them for who's got the first spot at the dealership to pick it up.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, he can have his. So that's exciting news for that. I'm looking forward to it. I spent a little bit more time looking at the new Chevy Silverado and then also the BMC Denali, which the Denali just came out, which I thought that thing was gorgeous. Obviously, they're very similar trucks.
00:03:27
Speaker
You know, they're, they're pretty neat. I like the interior. That was the thing that, um, kind of surprised me the most on how cool that looks. So that Denali EV that they did the announcement for, they did the same time as the announcement. They did the reservation as well, and they closed the reservation banks after 15 minutes.
00:03:48
Speaker
And the GM announced that they're going to make just under 10,000 of those trucks. So I'm assuming if you got into that 15 minutes, you're one of 10,000 for the reservation. I got mine in the first 30 seconds. Yeah, mine took a little bit longer, maybe first two minutes, something like that. But we were trying. So we'll see what happens.
00:04:09
Speaker
you're listening to the plug in for more podcast. If you're looking for information on electric vehicles, electric vehicles components or information on how to reduce your carbon footprint, look no further than evuniverse.com. evuniverse.com is your one stop shop for all things related to electric vehicle.
How Do Heat Pumps Work in EVs?
00:04:29
Speaker
So we're talking about heat pumps and heating systems and vehicles, whether it be gas vehicles to electric vehicles, to heat pumps, to whatever other systems that are out there and what exists. And really just hoping that you can open our eyes to that, Aaron, and give us a down and dirty explanation of what we're dealing with an electric vehicle. Yeah. I think when we look at ICE vehicles, they've kind of got it easy.
00:05:00
Speaker
The literal thing that makes them go is an explosion. So with explosion comes heat and with heat comes transfer. So, you know, when we look at an ICE vehicle, it takes the coolant that's desperately trying to cool off these explosions.
00:05:18
Speaker
And just transfers that through the cabin of the vehicle radiant heat comes out And is blowed kind of like you know, just blown through like a hairdryer ice vehicles. They've got it a little bit easy But what we're kind of seeing and we've seen heat pumps before in the EV world It's not something that's kind of new to it. I think The first the first one to have it was the leaf the Nissan leaf and that was right around 2013 and
00:05:46
Speaker
is when we saw them introduce a heat pump. It was pretty rudimentary, but it was really similar to what we see in houses. So I think the easiest way to kind of understand how our heat pump systems are gonna work in our electric cars is kind of look at where it all stemmed from. It's all stemmed from household applications. If we can understand how heat transfer is in a house, we're gonna easily understand how heat transfers in our cars. It's like, you got in Michigan, Tom, you've got a furnace, right?
00:06:16
Speaker
Right. Yeah, so us in the south, we don't have a furnace. And that's because it doesn't actually get super cold. When we look at how heat pumps work, what they are doing is they are not generating heat. Their job is not to make or produce any kind of heated air, they're actually going to transfer heat energy from the outside world.
Challenges of Heat Pumps in Extreme Cold
00:06:41
Speaker
So
00:06:43
Speaker
When we look at air conditioning under the house, it's more like putting a hot can in a cooler full of ice. So you're taking a hot room and the air conditioning system is there to extract all of the heat from that can. So when we look at heating the house, it's kind of like when you put that can in your hand. So now the system is involved with removing the cold
00:07:13
Speaker
from the can and taking the heat from your hand. So we're going to do that by pumping pressurized refrigerant into the house because anytime you pressurize a gas it's going to get hot. So you send that pressurized refrigerant into the house and it is going to pull all of the cold molecules out of your house
00:07:36
Speaker
You're going to send cold refrigerant back outside and its job is to pull the heat from outside. So the reason the South can use it is because the South has like normal weather where it doesn't get cold. We don't need to generate heat and then the weird occasion that it gets below like 30 degrees here, which is cold to us, we have emergency grids that will help kick on and do emergency heating.
00:08:01
Speaker
And we see that application kind of transfer to cars too. Well, you know, we see a lot of heat pump systems that come with a backup heating grid for super low temps.
00:08:14
Speaker
Now you guys up in the Arctic Circle, which is the northern parts of these states, you guys need something that generates heat. The only problem with a furnace is that it still is going to need natural gas or propane. The cool thing with the heat pump is it doesn't need anything. I mean, it is literally using the outside world and you're able to build an AC system, an air conditioning system in the same system as your heating element. Really the way they do that is kind of making a two-way system.
00:08:43
Speaker
So if you need to do air conditioning, you pump pressurized refrigerant to the outside to gather cold molecules to take into the inside. And then you flip the flow, and then you have pressurized refrigerant going into the house to pull the cold coming that is in the house. So it's a clever system. They use a reversing valve that will actually kind of target where the refrigerant is going and how it needs to cycle through the system.
00:09:13
Speaker
We see a lot of those in our cars, too. So heat pumps are weird. You can watch 20 different YouTube videos on it and try to figure out the best way to understand it. But the way that it works for me is that I'm going to take this heat and I'm going to move this heat somewhere else. And I think that's kind of like the three-year-old understanding.
00:09:42
Speaker
And so what I'm hearing in essence is that the heat pumps, since they're not creating heat, they're just moving heat while they may be more efficient, they're not as effective in extreme temperatures. So that's pretty much on the spot. A lot of car companies have come out and said that their heat pumps will start to
00:10:07
Speaker
start to lose efficiency, not efficiency, lose heating ability around 17 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's kind of when we start seeing them back up with, you know, support heaters or how they're going to do that to help. And companies that do not have backups, they are trying to figure out a way for their heat pump system to heat itself. So it's a really hard software, it's really hard
00:10:37
Speaker
system to build and it takes a lot of money but they're working on it. But the reason heat pumps are super important to the EV world is because cold climates suck and not just like for as a human but just for cars. I mean you look at lithium-ion it hates the cold. All you're doing is increasing resistance as long as the temperature drops. So
Impact of Cold Weather on EV Range
00:11:04
Speaker
Let's take like a 2019 Chevy Bolt. They were non-heat pump system. So on a 70 degree day, you're looking at like 261 miles of range. That's a good day, good weather. Drop that down to 32 degrees, and now you're looking at about 186 miles of range.
00:11:24
Speaker
Wow. So that's 29% range drop. If you drop that to zero degrees Fahrenheit, you're getting 120 miles range. So 54% range loss with 70 degrees of temperature bias. So is that just because of the battery, the negative impacts of the cold on the battery, or is that also accounting for heating the vehicle?
00:11:44
Speaker
Well, it's got, yeah, it's both. So what you want to do is you want to keep your battery packet around 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit. That's where the lithium resistance is the best. It's the best for charging, best for performance and efficiency and actually driving the vehicle. But then you're also trying to keep the cabin warm. And most of this cabins, you know, it kind of depends on, it's just going to be like,
00:12:09
Speaker
picking hairs, but cloth via leather or versus leather. And trying to warm a cloth soaked cold is harder, in my opinion, than warming a very solid leather seat. So a lot of these entry level cars that are coming in with cloth, it takes a lot longer to warm the cabin. And then you've got heated seats, you got heated steering wheels. I mean, cold climate, you're doing everything you can to stay warm.
00:12:37
Speaker
Because it's not I mean they had their own functions where you can like in an ice car where you would go outside and start the car and let it run Mm-hmm. You can do that with most EVs, but it's just sitting there just pulling all of that energy and so cars without heat pumps Have we either called them resistive heaters?
00:13:01
Speaker
A type of resistive heater is going to be a positive temperature coefficient heater, which is what we see in link Tesla's and bolts. They're fancy candle warmers. That's all they are. You plug them into their high voltage circuit. A coil gets hot. It goes to a ceramic blade. The ceramic blade brings heat to the cabin. And the crazy thing is it's 100% efficient. It does its job 100%.
00:13:30
Speaker
There's no thermal loss. So it's a great alternative. The only problem is you still need power. That's kind of where we see the downfall of that. So let's say a car with a heat pump will produce about one kilowatt of power while the PTC heater vehicles are going to take about three kilowatts.
00:13:53
Speaker
So we see about a 300% efficiency increase on systems that are using heat pumps. So in these, in these coldish climates, it works out fantastic. Um, it's just, it's just a great system. So Mike and Brian have been teasing me about the Mach-E not having a heat pump, but what I'm hearing is being up here in the Arctic circle, as you put it.
00:14:18
Speaker
I'm probably going to be better off having my vehicle be adequately heated with a traditional PTC heater than a heat pump. I think that there's a couple of different methods that car companies can be going for this.
00:14:33
Speaker
So from my understanding, the reason the Mach-E and the Ford Lightning are coming without heat pumps right now is because they are platform-based. So they're built off of a chassis that's already pre-built. So I believe what's the Mach-Es on the Escape chassis and the Lightning's on the F-150 chassis. So just packaging-wise, there was no room for the heat pump.
00:15:01
Speaker
That's why we can kind of see like Tesla's running it, or Nissan's running it because they built a car to be an EV instead of having a car and making it an EV. Gotcha. So we look at what the industry has kind of deemed the king of the winter.
00:15:21
Speaker
Weirdly enough is the BMW i3, the little toaster that could. I used to work for a BMW and I loved driving them home. You have to drive them every once in a while when they sit on the lot. I thought they were cool, the interior was great, but man, the skinny bicycle tires up front when you're going 70 on the highways, just a tad bit scary.
00:15:45
Speaker
but they they kind of worked out a really good system and by that they they use both resistive heating and a heat pump system so the heat pump system is only for the cabin where some other systems are going to use heat pump for
00:16:03
Speaker
all of the car. So cooling, powertrain, battery. They only use it for the cabin. And that pulls efficiency, I guess, a lot higher. They are. They're a lot more efficient because now the heat pump's only pumping into the cabin. They can use a smaller heat pump. And we see this system roll over into the i4 too, but the i4 heat pump is 75% more efficient than we saw in the i3, which is crazy.
00:16:31
Speaker
So they use resistive heating to actually warm the battery pack in the powertrain and waste heat from the powertrain. They're doing both and then it is a backup. They can use resistive heating to help warm the cabin. It's pretty genius in my eyes just because cars are gonna need heat pumps. I mean, year of December and January, you're gonna need something a lot warmer than the heat
Automakers' Heat Pump Innovations
00:17:00
Speaker
pump.
00:17:00
Speaker
But what's your medium temp in September through November? Yeah, we're in the 60s, 50s, 60s. So you just need that little oomph to give you a little bit better range. Yeah. But I mean, a lot of companies are doing it. Kia, Hyundai, they're the EV6. And all all-wheel drive IONIQ 5s have heat pumps.
00:17:30
Speaker
Basically the same setup as a household where they have a reversing valve and it runs through the whole Battery powertrain and cabin The rear wheel drive ionic 5 comes with a resistive heater in the cabin Let's see the ID 4 is weirdly enough in the rest of the world They have heat pumps, but in the states they do not have heat pumps interesting
00:18:00
Speaker
Any idea why? I'm guessing they didn't really expect the sales margin to be there. I mean, heat pumps are expensive to install in the cars. You can get a manufacturer to print a PTC heater, I'm sure, for a quarter of the price of a heat pump system. Because, you know, you're going to need a valve, you need longer AC lines, you're going to need a whole different expansion valve setup. It's an expensive hobby.
00:18:27
Speaker
I mean, heck, I think that's why Tesla stayed off for so long. We see a lot of EV companies kind of raging war against range calculations. And when the EPA does their range analysis, they don't take into consideration your winter efficiency. They care how well you did on a flat ground at 70 degrees with certain elevation, you know?
00:18:52
Speaker
So Tesla was like, I'm not going to really get any more numbers. If I do a heat pump, it's going to cost me $300 something million to build it. We don't really want to do it like everybody else is doing it. And then you saw Tesla owners in Canada start to just get so many. Norway. I mean, Norway's got like 10 to 20% of the vehicles on the road or Tesla, something crazy like that.
00:19:19
Speaker
And then they're like, all right, we got to do something to try and help. And Tesla says that their heat pump system, and I didn't get if it was Celsius or Fahrenheit. I'm going to say Fahrenheit because they say it, it should work down to negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit. And the way that they do it is they actually have two loops of refrigerant. So one refrigerant is meant to warm the other one. So instead of having a backup heater, they have a backup circuit.
00:19:49
Speaker
which will continuously ride and warm it up, warming the vehicle up. Now, Tesla doesn't have the best record for heat pumps, let's just say. I've got multiple failures at the beginning of this year. The Canadians were not happy with us at the beginning of this year.
00:20:04
Speaker
Um, and you know, that was due to not wanting necessarily call it oversights, but one of the issues was that snow was keeping open a grate. Like as you would drive, it would open up the grate and it would just stay there. Um, but I mean, all of these things have been repaired, replaced, updated via software. You know, we've got a, we've got an interesting winter coming ahead of us for Tesla to see how this heat pump system's working because now it's not only in the model Y. Now it's in the three.
00:20:34
Speaker
It's on the S and it's on the X. And I mean, just the huge batch of EVs that we've seen launched this year that haven't even seen winter yet. Like, I mean, Hyundai and Kia, they should be golden because they've had, I mean, the Kia Soul EV had a heat pump since 2015, I believe.
00:20:57
Speaker
And then the Kona had it, I believe the old ionics had it. So they, they should have their bearings. Like they should have it pretty enough to get through the winter. But I'm interested to see how Tesla fares, how.
00:21:15
Speaker
The i4 also has resistive heating to help in super cold weather because I believe it was either Hyundai or BMW that said 17 degrees Fahrenheit is when the heat pump just stops. The other cool thing that BMW is doing, and I'm waiting
Tom's Mach-E Winter Concerns
00:21:33
Speaker
to get more research on, hopefully we can go play with one here soon, but the iX, it's using radiant heating off of the door panels and off of the trim panels.
00:21:45
Speaker
So it's, I mean, from what I can understand, it's still a plug in heating. Um, but it's going to be, Oh man, I used to have a house with a gas heater compared to electric. Yeah. And that radiant feel of just like the gas heating coming in and just, uh, it's going to be so cozy in that car. It's not going to be fair. Like it's gonna, they're going to need one of those wake up alarms. If you start drifting off lines.
00:22:14
Speaker
But it's cool to hear that tech moving that way. Like the radio, the panels, I never would have considered that. I think it's honestly really cool. And, uh, you know, I was just driving today. We're in the mid forties here in Northern Michigan, and I had my heated seat and heated steering wheel on and it was like, man, this is really nice. It's cozy. So the mock ease that I'm getting, they eliminated the comfort technology package for 2023. And that includes the heated seat and the heated steering wheel.
00:22:44
Speaker
That's cool. Right. I thought you were going to say they got rid of it completely. I was going to be like, what? Sure. Well, they did. Well, the car that I ordered, they did like, I ordered it with heated seat and steering wheel. They eliminated the package and they said, yeah, too bad, Tom, you don't get that anymore. And if I wanted to upgrade to the premium, which wasn't available when I originally ordered back in March of 22, I could have done so and got at the heated seat and steering wheels, but that was like an $8,000 upgrade at that point.
00:23:12
Speaker
So like I'm going to get it to maintain the MSRP of the 22 that I ordered back in March. But if I wanted to switch packages, they're going to make me pay the 2023 MSRP, which is the $8,000 price bump between the package increase and the MSRP increase from 22 to 23.
00:23:33
Speaker
So you're still I mean you're still paying MSRP on it. All right. I am I'm expecting that it'll be minus the $3,000 comfort tech package that I asked for that is no longer coming but now I'm gonna be in a spot where I have this maki that's a standard range battery and It doesn't have a heat pump and now I don't have heated seats or heated steering wheel and
00:23:57
Speaker
So I'm going to have to be banking on a lot of preconditioning while I'm plugged in, which is OK. I mean, it's not ideal, perhaps, compared to other vehicles. But for my first one, it's going to be a learning curve. Well, and I think when we look at battery and powertrain heating, that's still going to be pretty efficient. I mean, they'll take waste heat from the powertrain
00:24:23
Speaker
And I'm sure at some point in that system, they've got somewhere that is heating coolant. It's gonna suck for cabin heating.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's gonna suck really bad for cabin heating. And I mean, I think the advice for consumers who have cars like that is exactly what you said precondition, you know, plug your car in overnight, go ahead and start preconditioning. If you can set a set time, start preconditioning about two hours before you get in the car, just do it at a nominal temp that would be fine for you like 70.
00:24:57
Speaker
And then if you need to get in there bumping up the 7274 Then that's a good idea like 69 is not a bad cabin temp
Adapting to Winter Driving in Mach-E
00:25:05
Speaker
to get started in you know You don't have to get in the car at 85 degrees and be ready to leave, right? And I think that's gonna be even harder for people who keep their vehicles outside of a garage Because you're but if you can do it while you're on a charger then that's that's gonna be huge. Yeah, I
00:25:24
Speaker
And, and that's all going to be part of learning curve for me. Like I've yet to live in a house where I've been able to keep a car in the garage ever. That's why I'm used to scraping a foot of snow off my car in the winter, calling it good or letting it run for a half hour. So that melts off. Yeah.
Preview: Tires, Traction, and Rolling Resistance in EVs
00:25:39
Speaker
So in two weeks, listen into our next episode where I'll sit down again with Aaron Jones and we're going to be talking about tires and traction and rolling resistance and all of the factors for electric vehicles that come with winter driving and those topics. We'll keep Aaron busy the last couple of days. I think he likes it. Yeah, he's a good dude. He's such a good dude. I really enjoy working with him. I like him a lot.
00:26:04
Speaker
Thank you for listening to plug in for more. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. In the meantime, check out the one-stop EV Marketplace, evuniverse.com. Until next time.