[JasH]

I am considering ordering an i3. Living in the South East of England we do not get severe weather, but low winter temperatures do occur at times.

2 options appear to address this:

1/ Auxiliary cabin heating system £530
2/ Winter package £260

Does anyone have more information on these? Reading the price list indicates that (1) is "simply" a heat pump, and (2) is seat and battery heating.

Questions:

a) Is (1) just the heat pump?
b) How much will a heat pump really help with range, when typical temperatures when using heating are 5-10 Deg Celsius (40F - 50F)?
c) Is there normally no battery heating in the i3?
d) How important is battery heating in an electric car at these temperatures, or a few degrees lower?


Thanks

[dirtbike59]

Not sure about your market but are you looking for a BEV or a REX. That with change up the heating system a bit. In the temps your talking about I would not see the need for battery heating. If you were below freezing then you might want it. Hard to say right now. I havent gone through winter here in the usa with one of these yet.

[JasH]

I should have mentioned I am looking at the normal BEV i3, not the REx.

It does drop below freezing, for probably about 10-15 days per year. But not usually too far below.

[jadnashuanh]

The heat pump shouldn't really be much different in draw than the ac you might use in the warmer climates except that it might have to run longer - depends on how hot or cold it really is, and your cabin settings along with the solar load.

In the USA, the heat pump is standard in all the models (at least the BEV - I haven't looked at the REx as much). I ordered the cold weather package, so I have the seat heaters (don't remember what else that may include in it). I would expect those will decrease range, maybe a fair amount if run on high.

The car will warm the batteries up by itself during running, but if you precondition it before leaving while it is on a charge, you'll not use battery capacity to do it. At least now, unless you've set a departure time and delayed the charging, if the car is at full charge, even if the EVSE is still attached and you ask it to precondition, it won't turn the thing back on until the battery level gets down to less than 95%, so it might not come back on.

It'll be a few months before I am likely to experience cold enough to check it out here.

[Rapcat]

Originally Posted by JasH

I am considering ordering an i3. Living in the South East of England we do not get severe weather, but low winter temperatures do occur at times.

2 options appear to address this:

1/ Auxiliary cabin heating system £530
2/ Winter package £260

Does anyone have more information on these? Reading the price list indicates that (1) is "simply" a heat pump, and (2) is seat and battery heating.

Questions:

a) Is (1) just the heat pump?
b) How much will a heat pump really help with range, when typical temperatures when using heating are 5-10 Deg Celsius (40F - 50F)?
c) Is there normally no battery heating in the i3?
d) How important is battery heating in an electric car at these temperatures, or a few degrees lower?


Thanks

You'll want the heat pump. It is a heating system that uses a sort of "reverse Air conditioning" system and uses only 20% of the power than the traditional hearing coils. It still has the heating coil system as well, but the heat pump makes heating a lot more power efficient in the car.
I live in a warmer climate, but if I lived in a cold climate then I would definitely get the heat pump. I have the heat pump because I have a US BEV model.

Battery heating is important. Preconditioning will heat it up prior to takeoff, and the battery naturally heats up when drawing from it and when charging it. But initially it is important to heat it. The car will automatically draw the necessary current to heat up the battery while driving even if you don't precondition. The electronics keep the battery at optimum temp without any user intervention.

[JasH]

Thank you all. Annoying though how yet again we in Europe get ripped off - paying more for less.

I had not realised the heat pump was so much more efficient - using 20% of the energy of normal heating!