It is very – it is extremely – cold here in SW Virginia. As in 13 degrees – not counting the wind chill. Today is the day that the Honda Prologue EV I have been test driving (which you can read more about here) gets picked up and – being a considerate guy – I went outside to try to clear the windshield, which was shellacked with ice from the storm that blew through the other day.
In an EV, you do this by turning the power (rather than the engine) on, to power the heater/defroster. The problem is this costs power – electricity – which is a problem because that costs charge and so, range. If the EV does not have much charge/range remaining, you risk not having enough charge/range to get where you’re going if you try to use the electrically powered heater/defroster to clear the glass (and warm up the cabin).
Holy conundrum, Batman!
As it turns out, running the heater/defroster burns up a lot of power. When I first turned the Prologue on, the indicator said about 100 miles of range remained. Even if that is off by the usual 20 percent (in my experience with EVs) it was still just enough for the driver who is supposed to come pick the Prologue up today – and leave me a VW Jetta, thank God – to hopefully make it into town 30 miles distant where there are “fast” charger kiosks.
After about 20 minutes of “idling” – by which time my 23-year-old truck (or any gas-engined vehicle, for that matter) would have completely warmed up and completely cleared the windshield using the heat that costs nothing to use that’s generated by the running engine – the Prologue’s windshield was still partially shellacked. The rear glass defroster had cleared nothing.
I checked the dashboard range indicator and saw it was down to just 80 miles of estimated driving range remaining. Enough to make it down to Roanoke 30 miles distant – and to a “fast” charger.
Assuming it’s working.
It is not uncommon for these “fast” chargers to not be working. Especially in the bitter cold. Then the situation is critical – because there may not be enough range left to get to another (hopefully working) “fast” charger. So I decided to turn the Prologue off and leave it to the driver to deal with the ice-shellacked windshield, figuring he’d prefer to deal with that than deal with not making it into town – or to the next “fast” charger because he ran out of range.
Burning through 30 miles of range in 20 minutes of just “idling” – to clear the windshield and the rear glass – is extraordinarily energy consumptive. As already mentioned, it costs nothing to use the heater/defroster in a vehicle with an engine because the heat is a freebie in that it’s not costing you anything extra. Your driving range does not go down because you have the heater/defroster on. And it costs very little gas to run the engine at idle – to heat up the cabin and clear the windshield – while you wait inside the house for it to warm up. Also, that warm-up does not take as long. My truck’s heater provides heat enough to clear the windshield within 10 minutes of cold start. The Prologue’s heat was still tepid after 20 minutes of “idling.”
An additional – a preceding – problem that worsened this problem of having to decide whether to leave the car with an ice-shellacked windshield or maybe not enough range (charge) to make it to a “fast” charger is that the Prologue I was sent to test drive did not come with a home-charge cord. This wasn’t because the last journalist who drove the car forgot to replace it. The Prologue doesn’t come standard with one.
I was astounded to discover this – which I did after a drive that left just over 100 miles of estimated driving range remaining, according to the dash display. I had assumed – I had planned on – plugging the Prologue in at home because I always have done just that with other EVs and because I do not like twiddling my thumbs at “fast” chargers for the 20-30 minutes it takes to draw a partial charge.
I prefer to wait – at home – where at least I can do other things while I’m waiting.
But I couldn’t do that this time because no cord came with the Prologue. That meant having to drive back into town to the “fast” charger – and wait there while it did. Assuming the “fast” charger was working. If not, I’d be the one stuck because I might not make it home and even if I did, once there, Honda would have had to flatbed the Prologue to the “fast” charger.
So I elected to just leave it parked for the driver to pick up.
Here’s hoping he makes it to the “fast” charger. And that he’s dressed warmly.
. . .
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Good grief 30 minutes would get me a toasty warm car and both the front and rear view windshields cleared of that stuff, Eric. And, i would also have a warm heated seat too…no subscription required.
Auto starts are a wonderful thing in these parts. And unlike the new factory installed ones that only run for 10 minutes and only allow you to restart your car twice, one from an auto trim store does not have such limitations. Articles like this regarding EV’S show the glaring reality that they are not fit for cold weather in any way, shape, or form. Keep your gas guzzling truck, Eric. Not only will you stay warm you can even carry extra gasoline with you if you get into a bind.
The 1929 Ford model A was the first car to offer a heater as an option. More fit for purpose than any ev.
Hey, what’s this business of cold weather in Virginia?
Global warming is here, so you have to believe it is global and it is warming. Just shelter in place, have to stay warm, caught outside with no heat is going to be fatal.
Pray harder, believe global warming is real. Your lying eyes will see the light.
13 degrees is darn chilly, the answer is to drive your car a couple of more hundred miles, plenty of heat from the engine to warm up the outside air will help.
Do it for the children on the streets.
On a side note, I was thinking that maybe, if you had to, you could put some cardboard over the windshield and anchor it down with the wipers… But what I’m seeing here is the wipers are both on one side?! WTF?
Those absurdly long wiper arms look like they came off a daddy longlegs spider.
BAD! I would stay away from that crap. Is it made of chitin? Were insects harmed in the making of this Prologue? 🙁
13*F here and my 8 year-old lead-acid battery started my V-8 just fine!
“…The Prologue I was sent to test drive did not come with a home-charge cord. ”
That’s just rotten. It sounds like a nickel-and-dime effort from Honda that this doesn’t come standard. And yes, hopefully your pick-up driver doesn’t end up a corpse-sickle.
It’s damned cold here in Az this morning, too. Not like you’re getting in the East, but still uncomfortably frigid.
I might have to get out there and drive a V8 to warm my globes.
Never before were the words made popular in the early 80’s more relevant:
“YOUR MILEAGE (err, range) MAY VARY”.
No, no, that should be updated to “Your estimated range WILL vary…wildly”.
Next iteration:
“Just stay home, because it’s too much of a hassle to go anywhere in an EV”.
Probably won’t be long till they just replace the fine-print with a graphic of an extended middle finger and large letters spelling “FUCK YOU”.
We could see new advertising slogans, like:
“Drive Fuckswagen, because we say”.
🙂 And a graphic of a guy sitting on a curb: “Fuckenstranded”.
LOL! Gooten vun!
Serfs need to accept that if they want the privilege of private transportation, they need to drag their asses outside in the cold and scrape those windshields. Doing that will warm you up and burn calories. Also, what right do we plebs have to travel in warmth and comfort? That sounds like something reserved for party apparatchiks like Gavin, Nancy, and Orange Man’s good people.
And boy, Newsom and crew are sure adept at warming up the place, Norman!
Big Joe just outlawed Gas Hot Water heaters to fight man made climate change which we all know is USDA Grade A bullshit. But…………….. we let them do it. They are at war against us and they’re winning. This is exactly what armies do when putting siege to cities or nations. With all the stuff they are banning, soon you won’t be able to buy matches. They are not improving the grid,,, not building new power plants,,, nothing. For some reason people seem content with allowing this soft kill.
Adding to all this they are reducing food production by claiming fake and gay diseases. They have been killing thousands of chickens and cattle and pigs. They’re even finding fake salmonella and other diseases to reduce fruits and veges.
Eric has a nice spread. Soon living the rural life will not be attainable due to limitations of power and transportation. Just melting ice from a windshield is too much,,, hell they were doing that 100 years ago. Just trucking goods from one city to another will be impossible or super costly. Internet and other niceties will be scarce as power will become intermittent. Sure, it’s okay now but we are sticking it to our c h i l d r e n and we apparently don’t care much. Me? I’m old and on my way out. It’s those with a decent lifespan left that better worry.
Only the strong survive and clearly we are not in that group when some feeble old man with dementia and hasn’t a clue can determine what we can and cannot have.
Could you imagine if “the planet” were really so delicate and frail that anything we could do would change the climate?! Billions[supposedly] of years and black holes[supposedly] and cosmic forces, but some cow farts and few parts-per-million of the residue of some burnt gasoline are going to somehow destroy it all…horror of horrors.
I mean, what kind of a maroon would fall for that? (Only one indoctrinated by Hollyjewood and government schools).
And the hypocrisy! So driving is going to kill us, but yet there’s no end to distributing the money extorted from us at every level of government to their favored rent-seekers to endlessly construct new roads and upgrade existing ones, and to send things into “outer space”; and to wage wars on every continent; and to have 100 people are 70 tons of equipment respond when Shallaleekwa calls 911 because little Deyshawon has a tummy ache, because he was eating the peeling paint off of the window sill while mommy was busy cooking up some meth.
Unfortunately this is the newest telling of an ancient story. The previous round had the priestly class getting peasants to sacrifice innocents to volcano’s or toss them in ovens to appease their heathen gods. Only the names have changed, and the stupid half of the population goes along. Especially if you give them a “degree” so they believe they’re the smarter half.
Cold weather is the Achilles Heel of all EV’s, hasn’t been much above the 20’s here for the past week and forecast into the next. Hope all the EV fanbois like driving with a parka and don’t have to go very far.
It’s been in the teens here the last several mornings too. Strange, I haven’t seen any EVs out and about like per usual. Guess the EV fans left their toys at home?
‘The Prologue’s heat was still tepid after 20 minutes of “idling.”’ — eric
Some EeeVees have heat pumps which can warm the cabin efficiently in cool weather, down to 40 degrees or so. But at 13 degrees, the Prologue almost surely is using a small auxiliary electrical resistance grid — essentially a little toaster — to warm defrost air.
Chances are the ‘engineers’ specified a tiny little toaster to conserve range. It might NEVER clear the windshield in 13 degree range.
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t take those range estimates seriously. They are calculated by an algorithm, whose assumptions can be way off under extreme conditions.
‘Open the defroster door bay, Hal.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Eric.’
Hi Jim. The only solution is to retrofit an EV with one of those gasoline fired heaters out of a Bug. Careful routing of it’s chimney is a must though. I know that would work as I know someone who converted one to run on propane and installed it to heat his tractor’s cab better.
I was thinking more along the lines of Apollo 13. We’ve got to save every ounce of power left on bus B for re-entry! That means the boys will be mighty cold up there. Better suit up for an EVA to clear the windshield.