ReGas? You mean refill? Actually, if everything is perfect as it should be, no gas will ever leak the system.
Has anybody in the world ever refilled their fridge? No..
Same should be with vehicles. My old BMW has not been refilled with refrigerant for 19 years.
But actually, my dealer added some to Leaf. I'm afraid it might be scam, can't be sure.
They said it lost 75% of the gas. But AFAIK, system will never ever work if so much is lost. So who knows now
did they actually refill or just scammed me.
2014 Leaf.
What I can say that for HVAC to make some heat user HAS to switch on HEAT+AC mode (dehumidified heat)
So if only heating is activated, heat will not be generated as HVAC it tries to heat with HP only.
If HEAT+AC is activated, it tries to use compressor (that doesn't work) to dehumidify and PTC to heat up.
It is possible that refrigerant is low and system tries hard to make some work but is unable. If software is well
made it will not try to do that with low pressure and switch the system off.
Cars are subject to more vibrations that a home refrigerator and frequently the refrigerant will eventually leak out. If a fitting doesn't work loose, a small crack in one of the lines can develop.
My last car was one of the last with Freon (a 1992). I put off retrofitting it for a very long time, but eventually the A/C quit working because the Freon leaked out. I think one of the fittings had worked loose after 20 years.
Seems scam, especially after "inventing " 1234yf gas that practically doesn't have ANY positive sides.
Upgrading all cars in the world from 134a to 1234yf has... welll. no effect.
Being less than 5000 tons of refridgerant on the world per year. That is a drop in the ocean.
Especially considering 134a is pretty ozone-friendly compared to old chemicals.
There was all that hair on fire about Freon being the cause of the ozone hole, but nobody ever explained the mechanism how ozone was making from the surface to the upper atmosphere. Freon is a large, heavy molecule that is also fairly inert. It doesn't react with much and doesn't break down in the environment very quickly. Chlorine, which is the element blamed for breaking down ozone is highly reactive and any Freon breaking down near the surface is going to have the chlorine released react with other things near the surface and get bound up.
PBS used to have a program once a year on underreported stories of the year. At the height of the ozone scare they covered a story that one atmospheric scientist had made a pretty strong case the ozone layer breakdown was caused by the frequent shuttle missions at the time. Most rockets are liquid fueled and the exhaust is mostly water, but the shuttle used solid fuel boosters which produced a lot of chlorine as a by product of combustion and the shuttle flights flew right through the ozone layer with these boosters running.
Chlorine doesn't bond with oxygen when breaking down ozone. Chlorine gas does not bond with oxygen. Instead the gas acts like a catalyst accelerating the breakdown of ozone into oxygen molecules. Ozone is three oxygen atoms bonded together and the oxygen molecule is a pair of oxygen atoms. Left on its own ozone tends to break down into two atom oxygen, but chlorine speeds up this process. Sunlight causes some oxygen in the upper atmosphere to combine into ozone.
Ozone is being created and breaking down all the time, but under normal conditions enough sticks around to add a protective layer to the atmosphere. Chlorine speeds up the breakdown process which reduces the overall amount of ozone.
I haven't seen any follow ups to this story in years, but the ozone layer began to come back when NASA cut back on shuttle flights and they are now talking about it healing completely in our lifetime. The last shuttle flight was in 2011. There may have been some solid fuel rockets leave the atmosphere since 2011, but it's been very few.
I'm pretty sure the profit margins on the gases used now for coolants are much larger (the Freon that was banned was old enough to be public domain), so the chemical companies that make the stuff are probably pretty happy with the switch. The switch from 134a to 1234yf might have been driven by the patent status of 134a. I just did a quick search and it looks like the patent for 134a is due to expire in October 2020. It looks to me like they are doing the same thing pharmaceutical companies do when patents run out on their drugs, they come up with something which is virtually identical they can patent and charge an arm and a leg for.