Ah, good point. Moderately cold (by California standards!) and dry is best for just using the heated seats. If you've got fogging, that definitely has priority. But still, you can save a bit on energy if you don't have to heat the entire cabin quite as much. With my Roadster, which is rather drafty under the best of circumstances, trying to heat the cabin can be futile. The Model 3 should be much better from that perspective, but then the cabin is also a teensy bit larger.
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Not for me. In cold weather my core overheats while my extremities freeze. At thirty degrees below zero Fahrenheit in North Dakota my butt never felt cold. My hand and feet, however, a sailor wouldn't have sufficient vocabulary to describe how unhappy I was. Heated seats would just make me sweat, making my hands that much worse.
Your Roadster is drafty? Gosh. I've never felt a draft in mine. Well, unless the top was off, or I was using the mesh top. I loved the mesh top in hot, sunny weather. But with the solid cloth top I never felt a draft. As for the heat, granted, Spokane is not North Dakota, but we do get occasional sub-zero (Fahrenheit) days, and it takes about 60 seconds for the cabin to get warm. It takes a bit off the range, but after 5 minutes I have to take my hat and gloves off and crank the heat way down, even in very cold weather.
I don't drive all that much. With 320 miles of range, I could leave the heat on high and the windows open and probably never go much below 50% on the battery in the Model 3.
At cold temperature, your body is trying to keep your core warm, so it reduced the blood flow to your extremities and made them cold. If you have external heat source going to your core, your body will realized that it doesn't need to work as hard to keep core warm and releases more blood flow back to your hands and feet.
That's how it's supposed to work. Sadly, my body is defective in multiple ways. When I hike, my body generates heat that keeps my core very warm. But blood still does not get to my hands in sufficient quantity to prevent them from freezing if the weather is cold. I get way too hot in my core and way too cold in my extremities. Shedding layers helps prevent the core from overheating, but the hands get even colder, even though the core is still plenty warm.
I need a total body transplant.
ℬête Noire
Active Member
@Need
That's sort of an upside down way of looking at it. To keep your core warm you keep your extremities warm. Mitts (NOT gloves, they can be worse than nothing), a toque, and dry, warm (but not over insulated to the point they sweat) footwear and you can easily walk around in shorts and a light shirt at around the freezing point if your body has had a week or so to acclimate to cooler temps....and you've got the right mental outlook to respond to the sensations of briskness with moving normally rather than tensing up your muscles and trying stay warmer by "turtling".
Sitting in a vehicle in colder weather is a bit tricker business because you can't move as much but keeping your muscles relaxed rather than hunching/turtling is still key....and footwear becomes doubly so a thing. The seat's going to heat up shortly, anyway.
IMO this makes heated steering wheels a higher priority than seats. *shrug* Physical contact with a cold object wicks a huge amount of heat out of your hands, unless you're wearing something like leather over liner mitts.
P.S. I wish my Bolt would remember between off/on cycles that I turned the heat seaters to (off) rather than always defaulting back to Auto. I get that you wouldn't want them to be left to 1 of the 3 on levels between power cycle but I find that rather infuriating, really, that I can't just tell it to never bring them on.
That's sort of an upside down way of looking at it. To keep your core warm you keep your extremities warm. Mitts (NOT gloves, they can be worse than nothing), a toque, and dry, warm (but not over insulated to the point they sweat) footwear and you can easily walk around in shorts and a light shirt at around the freezing point if your body has had a week or so to acclimate to cooler temps....and you've got the right mental outlook to respond to the sensations of briskness with moving normally rather than tensing up your muscles and trying stay warmer by "turtling".
Sitting in a vehicle in colder weather is a bit tricker business because you can't move as much but keeping your muscles relaxed rather than hunching/turtling is still key....and footwear becomes doubly so a thing. The seat's going to heat up shortly, anyway.
IMO this makes heated steering wheels a higher priority than seats. *shrug* Physical contact with a cold object wicks a huge amount of heat out of your hands, unless you're wearing something like leather over liner mitts.
P.S. I wish my Bolt would remember between off/on cycles that I turned the heat seaters to (off) rather than always defaulting back to Auto.
I get that you wouldn't want them to be left to 1 of the 3 on levels between power cycle but I find that rather infuriating, really, that I can't just tell it to never bring them on.
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You people are all doing it wrong. Turn on autopilot and put your hands down your pants to keep them warm.
He said instead of cranking up the heat, not turning off the heat altogether. When it's cold I either have the cabin temperature set to 70 with the seat heaters or I have to set it to 74 if I don't turn on the seat heaters. It definitely saves energy. (Besides which, generally here it's at its coldest when it's dry, so your point about fogging windows isn't necessarily true.)
ℬête Noire
Active Member
I have NEVER felt the need to run cabin heat that I wouldn't need to anyway to combat windshield condensation (water or frost). I suppose if systems were designed to dehumidify at any cost to temperature (willing to drop it to whatever temp to dry things out, relative humidity wise) and keep moving so much air that it keeps transpiration away from the glass that could be different situation? But short of that, nah. Even more-so if you've got more than one [still breathing
] person in the car.If you feel the need for seat warmers [on an ongoing basis] then you're going to be getting "steamy" shortly.
I'd have given my eye teeth for a heated steering wheel when I lived in North Dakota. I'd never use heated seats, but I'd have used a heated steering wheel seven months of the year.
ℬête Noire
Active Member
I'd never owned one living in North North Dakota (Canadian prairies) but when I went back for a visit during a cold week in February I got a Jeep rental with it and I damn near cried thinking about what I'd been missing all those years.
Jim R
Member
I'm going to heat the cabin in the normal way. If it takes more energy, so be it. For me, heated seats are for those cold days (probably not seen in California) of about minus 20F.
david_42
Member
Living in Portland, OR heated seats are a moot point, but fog on the windshield is a very real problem nine months of the year. I was baffled when our Kia kept running the A/C in the winter, but apparently it is to remove moisture from the airstream, which is then heated, drying it out further. This only applies in the Defrost mode, but it took some getting used to.
We can preheat the cabin (so I've been told) while it is plugged in in the morning.
I turn on my heated seat when it is under +60F in the morning. Is that wrong?
It is really good for your lower back for long commute!
ℬête Noire
Active Member
I turn on my heated seat when it is under +60F in the morning. Is that wrong?
It's not wrong if you enjoy it.
