Winter in Toronto

[2016Electric]

Hi, just want to share some cold climate experience, being in my first winter with the Soul EV.

The other day I took my daily commute to work (50 km one way) in -23C. I had a comfortable +19C set for the heater, and at arrival the car had used 44%. The best I had during summer was 22%, so half the mileage at below -20C is probably what could be expected.

I have also noted that slowing down is not as beneficial for the consumption as it was during summer, and obviously that's because the heating system gets a greater share of the total consumed energy. I was monitoring the heater consumption during the trip, and it was between 3.5 - 5.0 kW most of the time.

Interesting and thank you for the info. So far, we have been averaging somewhere between 19 and 20.5 kw/100km. That's in the Toronto area. Granted, we have had a very mild winter this year (so far).. coldest day was -15c but the car was still a toasty 22c inside and consumption was not bad. We have the heat pump model though.. which works great to limit power consumed by the heater.

Is yours a heat pump equipped model too?

 

[Elmil]

Yes, it's a heat pump model (2015). I actually doubt that the heat pump is doing much at -20C, but this might be a challenge for the Soul Spy and OVMS projects to find out..

 

[2016Electric]

Agreed - air source has some limits at that temp.. BUT since the refrigerant plumbing runs through the inverter etc. I'd guess it still pulls some waste heat from those components. I know that at -15, I was seeing about 1.5 kw draw from the climate system... suggesting most of the heat was coming from the heat pump. That's probably close to the lower temp limit though and much lower would require some resistive heat.

 

[Elmil]

Agreed - air source has some limits at that temp.. BUT since the refrigerant plumbing runs through the inverter etc. I'd guess it still pulls some waste heat from those components. I know that at -15, I was seeing about 1.5 kw draw from the climate system... suggesting most of the heat was coming from the heat pump. That's probably close to the lower temp limit though and much lower would require some resistive heat.

:idea: Thanks for pointing this out! - It just hit me that I noticed the heater power going down when accelerating, and slowly increasing when returning to light load.. looked strange at the time, but this is probably the explanation! More waste energy gets available for the heat pump when accelerating, and you can actually see it on the screen! Need to check it out more if the cold weather stays.
So, these heat pump mechanisms actually levels out the consumption difference between high speed/low speed even more... and the advice to get most range in extreme cold is - Don't drive slowly, unless you turn off the heat.