External Electric Heat Experiment

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joules

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Nov 26, 2014
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I live in the New York Metro Area where winter temperatures can get down to single digits fahrenheit . My commute is 27 miles each way with a 50 /50 split between highway and back roads. In warmer months, where I do not use any climate control, I can average between 215 - 240 watts per mile. In the winter, I am seeing 240 - 300+ watts per mile with very conservative heat usage. I always per-condition my car at home using a hard wired Levition L2 charger.

For the past 15 months, I was able to charge at work using the Level 1 charger and could generally charge to 100% before heading home. Unfortunately my office building has changed their policy of allowing me to charge (for free or even paid) with the growth of more electric vehicles in the parking lot. (Mostly Teslas but even a few Ford Fusion Plug-In hybirds). It is still questionable, but building may install Level 2 chargers in the future which would be fantastic.

For now, I am left with either putting on full ski gear just to go to work during the cold winter months, or come up with an alternative method to heat the cabin safely without cutting into my car's battery and driving range.

I was able to get a hold of a few three year old UPS 70AH 12V AGM deep cycle batteries for free that were in good shape. I first investigated using electric resistive golf cart heaters and stringing them in series to give 36vdc or 48vdc. The cost for the heater that would put out about 5000 btu (drawing around 1.5kw) was just over $200. I would also need a battery charger. The 36v or 48v battery chargers seemed to be in the range of $250 - $350. A 12v 40ah - 100ah charger was around $130 - $200 but this would require more wired connections to allow charging in parallel.

I ultimately decided to go with a marine grade 12v inverter / charger capable of proving 1.8kw of continuous power and could charge at 40ah and trickle at 2ah. This would also allow me to use it during the summer on my boat or possibly just hard wire it in the future to a few circuits in my house in case of a power outage. For heat, purchased a small ceramic space heater that could draw either 900w or 1500w. Batteries would be hooked up in parallel to provide a total of 280ah at 12v (using 4 70ah deep cycle batteries). I would use short runs of 1/0 wire to connect the batteries.

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Yesterday I got all the parts I would need to do a preliminary hookup and test before trying to mount it in the car. It was late so I only ran the heater on the inverter for about 10 minutes. So far it all lookes good and the wires and terminals interconnecting the batteries and to the inverter did not heat up.

Tonight I plan to do a longer test to see if I can get about 20-30 minutes at 1500 watts and another 30+ minutes at 900 watts without totally depleting the batteries. I will report back my results soon. Hopefully once I get the heater in the car on a cold day (below 20F) I can figure out how much time I can realistically run at 900 watts and still be comfortable.

Still up in the air is where I would store the batteries in the car. Each battery weighs 60bs so I am looking at 240lbs. Initially I thought of putting them in the lower trunk area (removing the insert that makes the trunk area flat, but the total weight does make the car sag a bit. Ideally, the best place seems to be putting all four batteries on the floor of the back seating area for best weight distribution. I'm just concerned that it would render the back seat useless for any passengers (even for little ones).

Would be interested to hear any of your thoughts or answer any questions you might have on this setup.
 
Not sure if the FFE uses a resistive heater element exposed to the air or heats up some coolant and runs that thru a traditional heater core. If it's the latter you could probably plumb up either a propane or diesel "parking heater" and shoehorn that under the hood somewhere. For examples of what I'm talking about google "parking heater". I thought about this briefly until I saw how expensive they were and I remembered that I ride my motorcycle year round. So even with the heat off it should be comparatively toasty in an enclosed cabin.
 
It has been my experience that even when I don't use heat or defrost on cold days my Wh/mile is high anyways. I believe due to heating the batteries but not certain. I've only had my FFE for 4 weeks and in warm weather I was getting 220-250 Wh/mile (mostly highway at ~70 mph). In cold weather I get 360-400 Wh/mile with heater on full. One morning when the temperature was ~20, with a pre-heated car I went the entire 16 miles without heat or defrost to check the consumption and still used over 300 Wh/mile. So when the temperature is below freezing my consumption increases by 20-30% even without heat.

I would think adding 240 pounds, or essentially another person, might not save you much when the temperature is below freezing but I am certainly interested to hear how this works out.
 
Snowman said:
It has been my experience that even when I don't use heat or defrost on cold days my Wh/mile is high anyways. I believe due to heating the batteries but not certain. I've only had my FFE for 4 weeks and in warm weather I was getting 220-250 Wh/mile (mostly highway at ~70 mph). In cold weather I get 360-400 Wh/mile with heater on full. One morning when the temperature was ~20, with a pre-heated car I went the entire 16 miles without heat or defrost to check the consumption and still used over 300 Wh/mile. So when the temperature is below freezing my consumption increases by 20-30% even without heat.

I would think adding 240 pounds, or essentially another person, might not save you much when the temperature is below freezing but I am certainly interested to hear how this works out.
Tires lose pressure in the cold. The transmission fluid is thicker in the cold. Cold air is more dense which means you need more energy to push through the air. Those are all factors. In the Fusion Energi there is a significant increase in energy consumption due to cold transmission fluid. It appears to be thick as molasses when cold. Once the transmission fluid gets above 75 F the energy consumption drops drastically.
 
hybridbear said:
Tires lose pressure in the cold. The transmission fluid is thicker in the cold. Cold air is more dense which means you need more energy to push through the air. Those are all factors. In the Fusion Energi there is a significant increase in energy consumption due to cold transmission fluid. It appears to be thick as molasses when cold. Once the transmission fluid gets above 75 F the energy consumption drops drastically.
FYI even though Ford calls our transmission a "1 speed automatic" it would be more accurate to describe the transmission as a 1 speed manual with no clutch. Or better yet drop the automatic or manual moniker since there is no gear changing or for that matter disengaging whatsoever. In an automatic transmission you have pumping losses which increase drastically as the ATF viscosity increases with decreasing fluid temperature. This however does not apply to the FFE. Any increase in viscosity to the gear oil in the FFE transmission will have negligible impact on energy consumption compared to and an automatic transmission in an ICE hybrid. Many manual transmissions use ATF as their gear oil. This seems counter intuitive but I'm guessing the auto manufactures do this to save money. A smaller number of lubricants needed to be stocked?

Hybridbear, Assuming it meets the spec for your ICE car try Mobile 1 Synthetic ATF next time you change your transmission fluid. I don't have anything scientific to back this up, however in another car I replaced the ATF with Mobile 1 Synthetic ATF. The viscosity was noticeable thinner than normal ATF. So much so it worried me at first but then everything worked fine. I think the spec on that car was MERCON IV where I think the newer Fords use MERCON LV. I don't know what the difference is but I have read the two are not compatible! So this might not work for you.
 
triangles said:
Hybridbear, Assuming it meets the spec for your ICE car try Mobile 1 Synthetic ATF next time you change your transmission fluid. I don't have anything scientific to back this up, however in another car I replaced the ATF with Mobile 1 Synthetic ATF. The viscosity was noticeable thinner than normal ATF. So much so it worried me at first but then everything worked fine. I think the spec on that car was MERCON IV where I think the newer Fords use MERCON LV. I don't know what the difference is but I have read the two are not compatible! So this might not work for you.
The Fusion Energi has an eCVT of the ICE and two electric motors. There is no shifting or clutches in there. Since there is very little wear on the fluid Ford doesn't call for it to ever be replaced as scheduled maintenance and the eCVT fluid cannot be changed without special equipment that Ford dealers have.
 
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