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Question about the heater


garymkrieg
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I have a Cmax.  The heater uses one or both of 2 options:

 

a) an electric heating element to warm up the coolant in the heater core (small section of the radiator)

b) the gas engine which warms up the entire coolant and the stuff in the heater core.

 

If you are driving EV only, the electric heating element will warm up the core fluid only.  If you start the engine the coolant will circulate and you will see the "engine temp" gage drop instantly as cold coolant is mixed in with the warm stuff.

 

Once the engine is warmed up 100%, then the heater uses only heat from the engine coolant and not the electric heating element.  If you turn on the heat and start the engine at the same time (say EV later), then you burn battery and gas warming up the coolant using both sources.  Its best if you have to use the engine to wait on the coolant to get hot (engine up to operating temp) before turning on the heat if you won't want to waste your HVB.

 

-=>Raja.

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When the ICE does not run, it uses the electric heater to heat the coolant.  There is a separate coolant loop for the heater core, isolated from the main coolant loop for the ICE.  The heater just heats the coolant in that smaller loop.  When the ICE runs and warms up the coolant, its uses the coolant from the main coolant loop to heat the the car.  The heating element is not used.  The heating element uses a lot of electricity to heat the cabin, up to 5 KW.

Edited by larryh
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However it can behave strangely as I experienced when the ICE was running & the coolant was hot but the car insisted on using the electric heater & isolating that loop which caused that loop of coolant to drop from 185 (from the ICE) down to 140 (electric heating of coolant). This is very odd behavior which I hope won't be a pattern.

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