In my Model 3 I can get nearly instant heat since it is electric. Does the Y's heat pump give rapid heat or does it take a minute for it to warm up? How hot is the air? Overall thoughts?
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Model Y heat? How effective is the heat pump?
- Thread starter ratsbew
- Start date
bchan911
Member
Coming from ICE cars I'm pretty impressed at the heat. Drove home from a night shift after parking the car in an aboveground open garage in the 5 degree C weather and the HVAC took maybe like a minute to turn on after I pressed the power button. The initial air that blew out was warm and with the seat heaters the interior came to a comfortable temp in a couple of minutes.
Long gone are the days when I would idle my car before leaving for 5 minutes blowing cold air out at max fan speed and the heat dial turned to max and not get any meaningful heat until I was driving for another 10 minutes.
Long gone are the days when I would idle my car before leaving for 5 minutes blowing cold air out at max fan speed and the heat dial turned to max and not get any meaningful heat until I was driving for another 10 minutes.
I had a Model 3 and loved how instantly hot air was coming out the vents. I traded that for my Model Y and so far, I'd say that the air is just as hot and starts almost as quickly (20-30 seconds maybe). The temps are still very moderate here, upper 20's to lower 40's, so I'm curious to discover how it does in the middle of winter when the temps are in the single digits or below 0 F.
While we have seen anything below 30 degrees yet, I'm really impressed with the heat pump. Its usually warm before I put it in reverse and I end up having to turn the temperature down a few degrees within a few minutes. My last car was an 18 Volt with just a resistance heater and it took atleast a couple of minutes to feel warm and took several minutes to get hot.
I haven't hit really cold temps yet, but I've had a couple times already that it's been 30F outside and about 40F in the garage. The car has sat overnight (so stone cold battery and fluids) and I've preconditioned it. At the same time I decided to change the charge level up 5% and I left the car like this for 10 to 15 minutes. It was pulling ~7.5kW from my NEMA 14-50 and almost ALL of that power was going to the heating system. After 15 minutes the car had not increased even 1% charge level, so that heating system was pulling A LOT of energy to warm the cabin and battery. I haven't noticed much of an efficiency increase at 28 to 40F temperatures, but the heat seems perfectly fine and starts blowing warm within about 25 seconds.
I suspect the range we'll see improvements because of the heat pump is more like 50 to 60F, otherwise I think we're seeing a lot of heat being generated just from the compressor and other electronics, which is mainly a 100% efficiency.
I was initially worried the system would take awhile to get up to temp or would have issues maintaining temperature. That doesn't seem to be the case, but I still think in very cold temps (20-ish F) we'll see at least a few kW/hr used in just heating (basically what Model 3 would use) and when the car is bone cold I think we'll see 5 to 7kW being used to bring everything up to temperature initially.
Edit: Some actual numbers from TeslaFi
37 minute charge
Used 4.49 kWh
Added 1.36 kWh
Efficiency 30.3%
Conditioning on for 26 minutes
So in 26 minutes it used 3.13 kWh to heat the car. That's approx 7.22kW that the system was pulling. After that I turned off the preconditioning and it looks like 1.36 kWh was added to the battery in that next 11 minutes which works out to a rate of 7.41kW. Those values seem to make sense for 32 amps at an average of 234V. So again, rest assured that the compressor for the heat pump and the "waste heat" in a lossy mode from the motor(s) [does it use both, or just one?] can pump out A LOT of heat. BUT, don't expect much energy savings there compared to a resistive heating system. The trip I did right after this conditioning and slight charge was 19.5 miles long with an outside temp of 37F (at night, so no heating from the sun) and an inside temp of 67.6F (with seat heaters on) and was 323 wh/mi. Mainly low speed city roads (25 to 35 mph) but a one or two mile segment up to 70mph. Honestly right now I'm not impressive with the efficiency, but cold weather can do that to you. I've only had the car for about two weeks and we had a cold snap hit just days before I got it. If I can maintain 300 to 320 wh/mi on highways from April to September I'll be MUCH happier since my range will be like 235 miles, which is a nice increase from my ~180 miles on my SR+. Currently though, I expect long highway driving will probably result in over 350 wh/mi, or an effective range of maybe 210 miles. I'll try to put together a range test next weekend... I don't really feel like being away from the house on Halloween.
I suspect the range we'll see improvements because of the heat pump is more like 50 to 60F, otherwise I think we're seeing a lot of heat being generated just from the compressor and other electronics, which is mainly a 100% efficiency.
I was initially worried the system would take awhile to get up to temp or would have issues maintaining temperature. That doesn't seem to be the case, but I still think in very cold temps (20-ish F) we'll see at least a few kW/hr used in just heating (basically what Model 3 would use) and when the car is bone cold I think we'll see 5 to 7kW being used to bring everything up to temperature initially.
Edit: Some actual numbers from TeslaFi
37 minute charge
Used 4.49 kWh
Added 1.36 kWh
Efficiency 30.3%
Conditioning on for 26 minutes
So in 26 minutes it used 3.13 kWh to heat the car. That's approx 7.22kW that the system was pulling. After that I turned off the preconditioning and it looks like 1.36 kWh was added to the battery in that next 11 minutes which works out to a rate of 7.41kW. Those values seem to make sense for 32 amps at an average of 234V. So again, rest assured that the compressor for the heat pump and the "waste heat" in a lossy mode from the motor(s) [does it use both, or just one?] can pump out A LOT of heat. BUT, don't expect much energy savings there compared to a resistive heating system. The trip I did right after this conditioning and slight charge was 19.5 miles long with an outside temp of 37F (at night, so no heating from the sun) and an inside temp of 67.6F (with seat heaters on) and was 323 wh/mi. Mainly low speed city roads (25 to 35 mph) but a one or two mile segment up to 70mph. Honestly right now I'm not impressive with the efficiency, but cold weather can do that to you. I've only had the car for about two weeks and we had a cold snap hit just days before I got it. If I can maintain 300 to 320 wh/mi on highways from April to September I'll be MUCH happier since my range will be like 235 miles, which is a nice increase from my ~180 miles on my SR+. Currently though, I expect long highway driving will probably result in over 350 wh/mi, or an effective range of maybe 210 miles. I'll try to put together a range test next weekend... I don't really feel like being away from the house on Halloween.
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Octovalve ties all of that together. There are coolant loops that connect the heat pump compressor to motors, battery, cabin, radiator, and inverter. Depending on what the system needs, it can pump heat into or away from any or all of those areas. Obviously you also have a chiller in there and related AC components.
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