Would you buy a car with no heat or AC if it meant saving the planet?

[Jonathan50]

Heat and AC in a car suck a lot of energy.

It's 103 degrees in the shade and the humidity is 99%.

What's the first thing you do after you start the engine?

It's -3 degrees with a wind chill of -25 degrees.

What's the first thing you do after the engine warms up?

Can you do that in an electric vehicle and still get decent range?

How about the total efficiency of the electric vehicle system then?

[Boojatta]

No, I'd rather use public transit.

[htuttle]

1. I already drive a 4-cycle scooter full time

So sure, no problem.

[Blue_In_AK]

2. We can do without the AC

but no heat up here in the winter could be deadly.

[Mojorabbit]

4. I disagree

you can always put on more clothing when it is cold. when it is hot you are SOL.

[Blue_In_AK]

31. I see your point...

...but at -40 or whatever, you need to put on a LOT of clothes. Not to mention the fact that your car windows would ice up really quick.

[JCMach1]

52. at 40+ the heat will kill you without air conditioning in your car

trust mine went out here in Summer one time on a 50+ day...

[DenaliDemocrat]

87. I second that.

In Fairbanks or Tok -50 or -70 are not uncommon. You need a heater up here. You can't wear enough clothes in that weather to keep you warm, and especially not the kids. If you have never felt what fifty below feels like you have no idea.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

97. Your windows will ice up without heat

you'll have to drive with one hand out the window, scraping ice.

Anyone who had an old VW in the winter will know that trick.

[politicat]

91. Not in the Mojave desert in summer...

I grew up in Arizona, and since the rest of the world refuses to accommodate desert dwellers by letting us work sensible hours in the summer (and take siesta during the heat of the day) we have to have AC in cars. Even with the windows open, a car in commuter traffic at 4:30 or 5 on a day that's 115 will hit 140, easily. That's deadly in a matter of minutes.

I was VERY lucky. I came close to killing myself several times because I could not afford a car with a functional AC and could not afford not to work. (Ten years ago, there was no real public transit in eastern Maricopa county, where ASU - my uni - was located. One bus every other hour going nowhere near anyplace people actually went is not public transit.) I had to have a car to get back and forth to my job. I finally quit after the sixth or seventh bout with heat exhaustion.

And I wouldn't bet on being able to do without heat here (colorado) now. If nothing else, I need the windows clear. (But I only see a drop in mileage, no matter how cold it is, when there's snow and ice on the ground. The heater does not seem to affect my mileage as long as the roads are clear.)

[uppityperson]

3. Depends on where you live.

Is public transit available? What is the temp/humidity range? No 1 right answer for every situation.

What heat/ac does an electric vehicle give?

[barb162]

38. Yeah, there are many situations where if you don't have heat

in the winter, the windshield and other windows start frosting up. It happened to me once when something got screwed up on the temp control panel on this one car. Or if it's extremely humid, the car windows get fogged

[napi21]

57. HA! I used to have a 1975 VW Bug. They didn't have any a/c,

and the heater was questionable even when they were brand new! I lived in Pgh. Pa. then, and almost every morning in the winter, I scraped the ice off the INSIDE of the windshield!

I now live in Ga. and I honestly believe I would die in a car without A/C in the summer heat and humidity. I think I could deal without heat in the winter, but not if I lived in North Dakota!

[Nicole]

5. No

I don't use the heater in my car but I do use the AC.

[Colobo]

6. No. I know how it feels to ride in a car with no AC

and I won't go back to that again. Ever.

[liberal N proud]

7. I live in Cleveland and vacation in Florida - Let me see

I don't think so~

Besides, Air Conditioning actually saves gas mileage. Windows down at 55 mile/hr caused too much drag on the car draining fuel mileage.

[Tesha]

74. Mr. Tesha did a controlled experiment last summer...

> Windows down at 55 mile/hr caused too much drag on
> the car draining fuel mileage.

Mr. Tesha did a controlled experiment last summer
using our '96 Dodge Caravan and found that, for
that car, there was absolutely no truth
at all to this claim. Running the A/C
ALWAYS cost three to five MPG compared
to the windows-up, A/C-off case. Lowering the
windows had no discernable effect on mileage
at reasonable speeds (e.g., 62 MPH).

Tesha

[Jonathan50]

85. I suspect that a van may not have the same effect from windows down.

Most vans are already very high drag vehicles.

The "windows down less efficient" scenario is mostly in cars which have a low coefficient of drag where rolling down the windows really does spoil the aerodynamic of the car.

[Tesha]

89. You may be right, but the Caravan managed...

You may be right, but the Caravan managed 29 MPG (~55 MPH)
on one of those runs, so it's not all that high in drag.

Tesha

[Jonathan50]

92. I find that the noise from having the windows down bothers me

A lot more than it used to.

I'm getting old enough where hearing loss is becoming an issue for me and I've found that along with hearing loss comes a sensitivity to some noises.

Who drives 55 mph?

Where I live, if you're going under 70 on the interstate, you are a road hazard. :)

[youthere]

8. I already drive a car with no heat or AC...

it blew early this summer and I haven't had the $$ to fix it.

[HooptieWagon]

17. LOL! I haven't had heat or AC

in my cars for years. I do miss having defrost tho...

Really though, the OP is wrong - heat doesn't use any additional power, it merely redirects heat that would be dispersed through the radiator into the passenger compartment. your heater is in fact a second radiator (a little item that's handy to remember when you're stuck in a traffic jam with an over-heating car... just turn on the heater full blast for a little reserve cooling for the motor). It doesn't cause additonal harm to the enviroment one iota. And ACs do use a little power, but in modern cars (which I don't have) the aerodynamics of driving with the windows open causes more drag (and power) than what the AC uses. The AC compressor takes only about 2-3 HP to operate, unlike old cars where it took 5-6.

[Jonathan50]

29. Notice I said "buy" a car..

Those who say electric cars are practical today neglect to figure in the heat and AC.

That's where electric cars fall down, they can't provide heat and cooling and still have decent range.

[HooptieWagon]

32. An electric car

by its very nature has to be very aerodynamically low drag - a coefficient of drag somewhere around .30 with the windows up. Turning off the AC and rolling the windows down causes more drag and takes more power... unless you're willing to drive around with the AC off and the windows up in 90 deg heat w/90% humidity.
And there are plenty of heat sources besides the motor... brakes for one example. Plus, if you are trying to coax the last bit of range out of the car you'd probably turn off the heat, stereo, etc anyway.

[orleans]

51. if i could afford one i might consider it. as it is ... ha! i can only dream

about having an ev

[Glorfindel]

9. Absolutely! I almost never use the AC anyway, even in south MS

and I really don't need the heater. Not much of a sacrifice on my part, I must admit.

[salin]

10. We react to what we know....

and we know heat and a/c. I drove in a couple of cars with malfunctioning heating/coolig systems and I *hated* it. But in reality - early vehicles did not have such conveniences. We could learn to live with it and adapt. But I doubt we would do so "by choice."

[Colobo]

16. The cars my parents had in Puerto Rico

had no AC. I grew up with them. Never adapted. :)

[Jonathan50]

60. Yep, Puerto Rico is hot.

I've only been there in the winter months, it's quite hot even then.

We went skin diving at Culebra right after Christmas a few years back.

Flamenco beach is the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.

[StarryNite]

90. Gorgeous!

The only things missing are a hammock and a couple of Coronas.

[Jonathan50]

100. What's really cool about it..

Is that in the winter there is almost no one there.

We went skin diving right off Carlos Rosario beach and there was literally *no* *one* there other than us.

The reef structure there is very large and impressive with lots of colorful fish.



We stayed at Mamacita's, a bar, restaurant, hotel combo, it was great.

[appal_jack]

11. heat doesn't use much energy

In an internal combustion engine car (including hybrids), the engine is already making heat, and the water pump is already circulating the coolant. By turning "on" the heat, you are only activating a 12v fan to blow air across the heater coil and into the cabin. Hardly profligate.

That fan is pretty necessary for defrost too. Back in my younger days I looked at a few vehicles without heat or functional defrosts (i.e.- air-cooled VW microbuses), and decided I didn't need hippie-chic that badly.

Now AC is certainly an energy hog, since its use brings a whole new compressor system on-line. I like AC now and then, but I could certianly live without it.

-app

[SteveM]

93. Excellent post. And it took how many posts before you said it.

Heaters are necessary and consume negligible energy when compared with no use. The point about defrosting is also well-taken. Many people are unfamiliar with the operation of their heater/a.c. equipment. If you run in the "defrost" mode (and some other settings), you RUN THE A.C. and scavenge the heat produced thereby. This is highly inefficient, but fast and should be temporary. Try using a setting (sometimes called "vent" with the heat control at the setting you want and the a.c. WON'T run. If you use the A.C., set it at a temperature where it will cut off periodically -- much more economical and will extend the unit's life by allowing it to "cool off" between cycles. Otherwise, if you run it for extreme cooling, the compressor will only occasionally turn off, thus overheating it and wasting gas -- most A.C.s don't cool down less than 25 degrees below ambient temp. anyway.

[Speck Tater]

12. Heat is not optional if you want to see out of your windows

Driving in the winter with frosted up windows is not safe.

[Xithras]

47. Not to mention illegal

When it gets foggy here in the winter, the only way to see out your windshield is to keep your wipers running and keep the defroster running on max. I used to own an old VW Beetle without functional defrosters, and the car was almost undriveable during the winter. I used to keep a squeegee next to the seat, and I would have to wipe down the INSIDE of the windshield while I was driving just to see the road ahead.

[Wilber_Stool]

13. The heat is free.

It's a by-product of the engine running.

[htuttle]

18. Not if you're driving an electric car

[MADem]

23. Time for ELECTRICALLY HEATED SEATS then.... NT

[don954]

27. actually you can put a heat exchanger on the motor and capture

enough waste heat to power a heater.. Your in even better shape if you have a liquid cooled motor and controller. I used to do EV conversions and that is how we did most heaters.

[Canuckistanian]

30. Exactly, it's waste heat that's been recovered

But htuttle is right. What do you do for heat in an electric car?

For an "engine" that produces no excess heat, what do you do?

Some of that battery power must be diverted for heat if they're going to be used in winter in northern climates.

[Salviati]

41. n/t

Whoops, replied to wrong person...

[Quakerfriend]

14. That's a good question for all. I will tell you that I lived

in Tempe, AZ in the summer of '81 when Mt.St. Helen blew. This made it very hot- 109F at night!

We had a car with no AC and black vinyl seats.

Before we could go anywhere we had to spray the seats with spray bottles full of cool water. I will never forget it!

[blues90]

15. I drive one and have for many years

My 1973 VW squareback and it never had a/c and the heater never did much at all . In fact I never had a car with a/c . You get used to things .

[MADem]

19. But it won't save the planet, and we know it. And HEAT is a BYPRODUCT of the gas engine.

We need to reduce our "carbon footprint" -- sure. But there are ways of being less intrusive. When I lived in the Middle East, we didn't have air conditioning like in America. We had a box on the roof, with a burlap bit of cloth and an electric fan in front of it, and water dripped on the burlap and the fan blew across it, and VOILA!!!!! cool air was introduced into the home. Evaporation! Wonderful! Of course, it only works in dry climates...but there are lots of dry climates that are unwilling to use it, because once in a blue moon they have a humid day...

What we need to do is cut the cloth according to the measure--and sort out what's important and what isn't. Maybe we can have warm clothes and electric seats to keep people cozy in electric cars...right now, in gas cars, the heat is a byproduct of the engine, so it's no big deal anyway. Letting the heat go out into the atmosphere instead of warming the car cabin is just foolish and unhelpful, using the current technology.

As for AC, there are many elderly who would die from terrible heat. The elderly should always have access to cool areas in the worst of summer. As should the very young. If you had to pick at all--why should people suffer? Why can't we find a way to cool people without fucking the planet? Geez, CAVES are a thought--nice, cool caves. Underground caverns...dig a few of those for people to retreat to...

We don't always have to 'spew' shit to be effective. IMO.

[Gold Metal Flake]

20. Questions

How much energy does the heater "suck"? Please quantify and cite your sources.

How much energy does the AC "suck"? Please quantify and cite your sources.

[Jonathan50]

33. Here you go.

http://www.glacierbay.com/Darphtm.asp

Increased heat output in cold climates - Based on research done by EVermont and others, it was determined that a minimum heater output of 5 kw (17,000 Btu/hr) would be required. The fossil-fuel fired heater would be compatible with both propane and natural gas providing much lower emissions than that of diesel-fired heaters.

[HooptieWagon]

34. Air-cooled VWs had notoriously inefficient heaters

A factory option on the european market cars in the fifties was a gasoline heater mounted in the (front) trunk. I've seen one, and it looked like a disaster waiting to happen. Not that the stock heat exchangers (and related CO fumes)were all that safer... at least they were so inefficient you never bothered to turn them on.

[VTMechEngr]

50. Ain't that the truth n/t

[JCMach1]

53. We had an air-cooled VW in 70's in Florida... our commute was 20min

The heater would just begin to work as you pulled in to park... Gloves and extra clothes were mandatory...

[gollygee]

68. We had one of those when I was a kid

It was a complete joke, and we really needed heat in Michigan.

[SteveM]

94. And those old VWs are gross polluters, valve burners in hot climes.

[Gold Metal Flake]

115. Where are the answers?

Don't you have the information?

[Jonathan50]

117. Here you go again, I pared away all the confusing stuff and left only the money quote.

From the link in my previous quote:

Based on research done by EVermont and others, it was determined that a minimum heater output of 5 kw (17,000 Btu/hr) would be required.


That's five kilowatts, five thousand watts of heater is the minimum required.

[Gold Metal Flake]

116. Where are the answers?

Don't you have the information?

[Thothmes]

64. Heat

The heater of a car dissipates far less heat than the radiator.

[Monkeyman]

21. I have my Hog and ride

[madokie]

22. it was customary to buy a pickup truck around here back in the forties and early fifties

without a heater. a lot of them the heaters were add-ons not built in.

[TwilightGardener]

24. No. Not in the Great Plains.

[don954]

25. That is a false economy

The heater has negligible energy usage, about 2 amps to run the fan. That's .02 horse power. The heat is waste heat from the engine, and even with a electric car, there is waste heat. The AC compressor typically uses around 1.5hp, so it takes more energy. It get so hot down here you cant even buy a car with no AC, so that's one thing i dont think would be an option.

[spacelady]

26. only if everyone else does.

[HooptieWagon]

28. Headlights probably use more power than AC/heat

so we should all drive aound with no headlights to save the planet... yeah, right.

[SteveM]

95. No way: A.C. consumes much more gas when on.

[JVS]

35. I need heat.

[AlCzervik]

36. heat i can go without, AC forget about it, last summer the temp got to 118f

but yahoo said "Feels like 124".

[KharmaTrain]

37. Anyone On DU Older Than 35??? I Still Use 4/70 AC...

My first car was a '70 Ford Torino...it had heat...barely and that was it. No power steering or brakes...and black polyester interior that was sure to roast you in 30 seconds or less on a hot day. And I loved that car. The first car I had that had AC was a '74 Large Tin Dog and one used it rarely as the second you turned on that sucker the car automatically lost 20 MPH. Thus I long ago got into the habit of only using the AC when I absolutely have to...and then I'll still crank open all the windows first.

[Xithras]

48. In most of the country, AC is optional. In most of the country, heat is not.

Cars have had heaters almost since the very beginning. Heck, even wagons and carriages had heaters back in the horse and buggy days (usually coal or oil burning). When you factor in the wind chill generated on the exterior of a car when it's moving, driving on a cold winter day without heat can be lethal.

A/C is optional if you're willing to sweat a bit. I grew up with 4/55 A/C, and my first few cars came equipped with it. It works just fine, as long as you're willing to show up at your destination sweating and stinky. Society isn't quite as tolerant of BO as it used to be.

On top of that, opening your windows actually reduces the mileage of modern cars. Mythbusters did a piece on this a while back, comparing windows down milage with windows up+A/C milage. They discovered that modern cars are so aerodynamic that opening a window generates MORE engine drag than running your A/C, especially at highway speeds. In an electric vehicle, opening your windows would cut your range dramatically.

[Clark2008]

39. Um- the heat doesn't burn any more energy - it's already there.

The heater works by siphoning the heat from the engine core.

Now, the AC costs energy, but the heat basically just comes from the running engine itself. I would gather that an electric engine still creats friction, thus producing heat.

[Touchdown]

78. Correct. EVs use amplifiers.

The GM EV-1 had a 3 channel 100,000 watt amp, and was air cooled by the vents in the car and heat sinks on it. Imagine how hot a top of the line 7 channel home theater amp gets, and most of them are sub 5,000 watts. The EV-1's amp should get VERY hot.

[crappyjazz]

40. The few times a month I drive my car

in winter, heat, oh yes, I'm in Canada

in summer, I don't use the a/c

I mostly, walk, bike and bus

oh and up here we have this "clean air" emissions thing for our cars

[alfredo]

42. I'd need just enough heat to clear the windows. I don't mind

the heat.

[greenman3610]

43. You are buying Dick Cheney's Frame of the issue

and Ann "Liberals want you to use candles" Coulter.

That's bull. Technologies already on the drawing board will
match and exceed today's performance.

[murloc]

44. I'd dance naked in the street if it would save the planet

But it wouldnt.

Neither would banning ac or heat in a car.

Heat is actually pretty efficient and does not use more energy. Simply put, cars redirect heat from the engine into the interior that would otherwise be vented to the outside.

AC is a litle more complicated, but is still more efficient than lowered windows at speed.

[Oilwellian]

45. You must be young.

I could adjust to no air conditioning, but frigid weather? Older bones don't take it so well. :D

[SoCalDem]

46. One upon a time, those WERE options..as was a radio

:)

[AdHocSolver]

49. The technology exists for having A/C and heat in an electric car AND save the planet.

There are solid state devices that can produce heat or cooling, LEDs that use much less current can be used for lighting, and small motors that run on propane or sip gasoline could be used to run an alternator to power accessories. The problem is not "either - or" since the technology exists to have electric vehicles with all the accessories right now. The auto companies in league with the oil companies don't have any incentive to develop the stuff for mass production.

The movie "Who Killed the Electric Car" told about a test fleet of electric cars that GM built that were tested in California back in the 1990's due to California's requiring the demonstration of a Zero Emission Vehicle. The people loved the cars so much that GM had the cars recalled and destroyed. GMs excuse was that there was no consumer interest in the product. However, they evidently went overboard to slam these cars as being too costly and technically not feasible for widespread use. As I stated above, the technology exists to solve such problems.

Electric motors are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines, they are simpler and cheaper to build, require little maintenance, produce no significant pollution, have almost no maintenance costs (no oil changes, tune-ups, etc.), need no complex transmission to buy or maintain, etc. Much of the profit for the auto companies and the dealers comes from selling parts and maintenance for internal combustion engines in cars. That profit and YOUR EXPENSE would NOT exist if you drove an electric car.

[Jonathan50]

69. There are no heating or cooling devices for EVs that do not use lots of extra power.

More power than it takes to move the EV.

Heating and cooling is simply not possible in EVs as they are commonly constituted today without an external power source for the heating/cooling.

An external power source negates any efficiency advantage that an EV might have.

I've spent the night in a snowed in car before. When I was about fourteen, my father, my brother and I were on a trip to North Carolina, we got snowed in on the side of the road in a sudden snowstorm.

We would start the car every so often, warm up the car with the heater and then turn the engine off.

In an EV, we might well have frozen to death

[Jonathan50]

54. Let's do some numbers..

Tesla Roadster.. $93,000

250 mile range @ 110WH/mile.

(250 * 1.609) / 110 = 3.66 KWh battery capacity.

3.66 KWh/5KW = .732 hours

.732 hours * 60 min / hour = 43.38 minutes of heat.

45 mph * .732 hours = 32.53500

Maximum range of the Tesla Roadster with the heat on, 32.53 miles @ 45 mph (commuting speed).

The Tesla Roadster has no heat.

Now we know why.

[Ian David]

55. I propose we convert our household air conditioners and refrigerators...

to stop dumping waste heat.

We should store that heat in some sort of "heat capacitor" that can be used to heat our electric cars.

[Skidmore]

56. I own a car with no AC, but heating you need if for nothing else

than to keep the windshield from frosting up. Perhaps you don't breathe, but I do.

[EstimatedProphet]

58. Mine doesn't have heat now

So I guess that's a "yes"

[TheFarseer]

59. I lived in Houston and my AC went out

I didn't want to spend the $$$ to fix it, but after a couple weeks of arriving EVERYWHERE sweating like a pig, I broke down and spent the $750 to do the job :(

[gollygee]

61. We need heat in the car in Michigan

we had a car whose heat didn't work once. It was a nightmare. We'd breathe and it would make the windows get all frosty and we wouldn't be able to see.

I could live without AC and I have before, but not heat.

[NaturalHigh]

62. No.

It's actually LESS efficient to drive down the highway with your window down than to run your AC. With your windows rolled up and no AC in the hot sun, your car can easily get up 140 degrees. I'm not going to fry myself to save a few miles per gallon. I also don't feel like freezing in the winter.

[Thothmes]

63. Heat/AC

I never buy an automobile with A/C. Heat is a different story. Since the engine is heated to 180 degrees, it is heat that is lost. Essentially you are using a waste heat heat exchanger. This is a relatively efficient use of heat that would otherwise be dissipated in the radiator. Also use to drive a car that warmed air by passing it over the exhaust manifold. Did have a jeep for a couple of years that had no heater in it. Hard to take during the winter. Would also consider it unsafe,
spent most of time driving thinking about how bloody cold it was, rather than focusing on driving.

[Bridget Burke]

65. No AC would lead to lots more Road Rage here in Houston...

Drivers shooting each other is a sloppy way to reduce traffic.

Commuting by bus & light rail is the coolest way to go. My way!

[femmedem]

66. I'm 44 years old and I've never had a car with AC.

Never missed it, either. Sometimes I've wished for cars with better heating but you know what? Bundled up with a hat and mittens, it's never been that bad.

If people aren't willing to forgo heat and AC in a car, this doesn't bode well for our willingness to make the far larger sacrifices necessary to prevent environmental catastrophe. :scared:

[lectrobyte]

67. No heat for me would be a problem, but I didn't own a car with AC until I was

30 or so, so AC is no biggy. But when it's 22 degress and frosty, no heat would suck.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

70. Heat no, AC yes.

Most of the cars my family have owned don't have air conditioning - here in the UK it's much less common than in the US.

But a car without heating wouldn't be possible to safely use, much of the time - for one thing, you couldn't demist the windscreen.

But I'd imagine that heating a car uses much less energy than cooling it - surely you just blow air over the engine or something? Can anyone with more knowledge of cars than me (i.e. anyone with some knowledge of cars) confirm or deny this?

[Jonathan50]

72. With a normal internal combustion engine

You just use the cooling liquid (which is at about 200 deg F) to warm the car.

In an electric car, you either have to use the battery power for heat or you have to have an auxiliary heater fueled with some kind of fossil fuel.

In the UK, you don't really need a heater.

You can get by without AC, in the US as long as it's OK to show up at work all hot and sweaty. Not an option in many businesses.

Even in NYC, which is fairly far north, 90+ degree days with very high humidity are not uncommon in the summer.

Down here in the south where I live, 100+ with 90% humidity is not unheard of.

I've also seen it below zero F down here too, so heaters are pretty much a necessity even down here.

I've even seen the canals down in south Louisiana freeze over with all the nutria running around on top of the ice.

[lithiumbomb]

71. heat uses no energy in a car...

Except the blower, which is negligible. A car heater uses coolant from the engine's cooling system to heat the car. It's fluid that's already hot, it's just diverted into the passenger compartment to heat it up. Just ditch your automatic transmissions instead...

[Tesha]

73. Heat in a fuel-based car with a mechanical engine is no waste.

If your car runs on just about any kind of fuel
that you put into it (gasoline, diesel, methane,
or hydrogen) which you then burn in a mechanical
engine, then waste heat is a fact of life and using
that heat to heat the interior of the car is no
expense at all. The alternative would be that the
car throws away the heat directly to the outside
world via its radiator.

Fuel cells are a bit different; many of those
are efficient enough that they won't throw off
much waste heat (although the control electronics
will certainly create a little bit of heat).

And batteries are, for our purposes, just fuel
cells that carry all of the chemical reactants
already installed inside the battery, so they're
much like fuel cells in this regard.

Air conditioning, of course, is an energy consumer
in any situation.

Can we do without heat and A/C? It's a lot easier
to say "yes" when the weather is moderate than
when it's -10 or 110. But here in New England,
one can certainly live without A/C in the cars;
I've done so off-and-on for my entire life.
I've done without heat occasionally as well,
but that really impairs the car's drivability
in inclement weather (as the windshield fogs
up and then ices up).

Tesha

[woo me with science]

75. Would you give up olives to save a baby bunny? nt

[Ganja Ninja]

76. You don't have to give up either.

All you have to do is settle for a smaller car that gets off the line slower and supplement that with mass transit. Besides cars don't produce the majority of the CO2 from fossil fuels. It's power generation that's the biggest contributor.

[Thirtieschild]

77. Old enough that I've driven lots of cars without a.c.

Did fine, even in Atlanta's humid summers, with what we called wings (those little side windows cars once had) open. Got kind of hot at stop lights but we handled. Of course, most cars no longer have wings, which would make a big difference. Also once had a Renault Dauphine (horrible car) without heat. Drove from NOLA to D.C. without heat during a cold wave (left NOLA the day Kennedy was inaugrated and it was cold). Dressed warm and did fine, even our two babies. And yes, I would buy a car without heat and a.c. We pretty much live now without heat and a.c. in the house - last year kept the thermostat set on 60 (couldn't afford the cost of propane), now use a woodstove for heat and the temp in the summer is usually cool enough that we almost never use a.c. When we were young we even lived in NOLA without air conditioning, but that's another story.

[Jonathan50]

79. It seems that the general consensus is that heat is a must have

While AC can be done without.

The problem is that having either one kills the idea of an electric vehicle as a practical everyday form of transportation for the great majority of people.

I know that people down here in the south where I live are extremely unlikely to buy a car without AC.

[Solon]

80. I had a car with no AC or the Heat worked for 10 minutes...

Both broke, but it was a Convertible, and I didn't worry about overheating in the summer, just put the top down, and the heat would dissipate rather than accumulate in the car. However, winter was a problem, the heater was temperamental, the fan would run, the air would be cold, at first it would be warm, about 10 minutes, just BARELY enough to defrost the windshield, but after that, it was useless, so I would turn it off. In winters where it was well below 0 degrees, it was hard, but manageable. I just wonder if I ever saved on Gas during the summer when I had the top down, I don't know, the car, a Celica, was pretty efficient already, I could run it for a week and a half on a 10 gallon tank, about 35-40 mpg or so. I watched a show of the Mythbusters where they tested whether the AC was more or less gas efficient than having the windows down on an SUV, they used two identical SUVs for the test, on a racing track. The car with the windows down actually ran out of gas first, the one with the AC on, and windows up, lasted for a good 15 laps more, about 3 miles, before it ran out of gas. I don't know how this relates to convertibles though.

[Jonathan50]

81. I've had a couple of convertibles..

I had a 61 Plymouth Sport Fury convertible and a 63 Sunbeam Tiger convertible sports car.






Getting stuck in traffic with the top down on a hot summer's day was no fun at all.

I suspect that a convertible with the top up and the AC on is more efficient at highway speeds than one with the top down.

[Solon]

82. I learned to wear light colored clothes, and a white baseball cap on those days...

plus sunglasses, and I was fine. Plus, I don't know about the aerodynamics, its possible that companies like Toyota test their convertibles, to see if they dramatically increase drag when they have the top down. Its possible that they don't, I remember seeing ANOTHER Mythbusters episode where they proved that keeping the tailgate of a truck up reduces, rather than increases, drag on the truck, a bubble of air forms within the truck bed when the tailgate is up, reducing drag, and increasing fuel efficiency, its possible the same effect is used in modern convertibles. Don't know, I probably should look it up.

[Jonathan50]

84. There is an awful lot of turbulence in the cockpit with the top down

The energy to propel that turbulence comes from the car's forward motion through the air.

[mdmc]

83. personal risk makes my tummy hurt

It is very hard to make positive changes..

[DenaliDemocrat]

86. I live in Alaska where its -40 sometimes

No. I would never buy a car without a heater in it. I do not have an air conditioner though...don't need it.

[snooper2]

88. People should watch the mythbusters...

First of all, heat is a byproduct in an electric or gasoline automobile, so is a mute point...

Mythbusters did a very interesting show once to determine if you get better gas mileage with windows down, A/C off; or windows up, A/C on.

They did this around an oval track at 55mph with two identical SUVs both with a full tank....

The one with the windows up, A/C on went 20-30 miles farther........

Drag can be a real drag......

[NoGOPZone]

96. I'm halfway there already

I've never owned a car with A/C

[LSK]

98. too bad no engineers in the world exist anymore

I'm sure that if there were still a few alive, they would INVENT A SYSTEM FOR ELECTRIC CARS.

Also, please explain to me electric heaters and refrigerators. I know they dont exist but theoretically they could.

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[Jonathan50]

101. Electric heaters and refrigerators plug into the wall..

Where there is plenty of energy available.

With an electric car, all the energy is in the battery, which doesn't carry all that much energy to start with.

Don't you find it at all interesting that those who attacked me on my other electric vehicle thread are entirely absent on this one?

I asked the question about heaters and ACs in EVs multiple times on the other thread and never got a single reply.

That's why I started this thread, to make the point that a practical car needs at least a heater.

[LSK]

102. I think I addressed it in the other thread

That engineers will solve the problem. I dont know the specifics.

I dont understand why you continually try to attack an industry in its infancy that can possibly stop Global Warming and help us survive peak oil.

Whats your solution? Horses and covered wagons?

[Jonathan50]

106. I'm not attacking the industry..

I'm attacking those who promote it blindly.

The worst thing you can do for a product is oversell it and electrics are being oversold right now.

Until electrical storage devices are *much* more capable of storing an electric charge than they are today, EVs are going to remain without heating and AC.

Unless of course you get an externally fueled heater.

Which sort of defeats the purpose of having an EV in the first place.

[tammywammy]

99. No thanks

The drag created by having to have the windows down in the summer will waste more gas than using the AC.

And when it's not hot, I only use the vent.

[treestar]

103. Yes. I would hate not having the AC, but people drove cars

for decades before it was ever invented for cars.

[Phentex]

104. I rarely use the heat

I run the A/C year round. If my spouse and kids are freezing, I will run the heat, but it's rare that they are all in my car at the same time.

[Balbus]

105. No chance in hell.

Which is exactly what AZ is in the summer - hell.

[MindPilot]

107. How about a manual transmission?

That automatic uses far more energy than the AC. Power steering is another significant load on the engine (unless you allways drive in a straight line. So are the electric cooling fans necessary for transverse-mounted drivetrains.

But to answer your orginal question: Yes I would because I live in a climate where it's possible to do with out heat or AC. But getting those two things to work are part of what it will take to make an electric vehicle commercially viable. Give engineers some money and turn them loose--they will come back with a solution.

[Jonathan50]

108. Automatics have gotten a lot better than they used to be.

Our car is a '93 and it has four forward gears and a lockup torque converter, all controlled by a digital computer.

Not as efficient as a stick, but not that much worse either.

Actually I prefer a stick in a small car.

Just about all cars have electric cooling fans these days and those that don't have an engine driven fan that uses more energy than the electric fans, sometimes they even have both.

[sendero]

109. In an internal-combustion car...

... heat is almost free. Only the energy required to blow the air is consumed. A/C uses a few horsepower to operate, so it does consume a few percent of the vehicle's overall energy use.

On an electric car, heat will be expensive as a portion of the cars total energy use, because there's little free heat from the engine.

[IDemo]

110. Of course Teslas have heaters

As well as 'heated sport seats with inflatable lumbar support'. And air conditioning.

From a post on Tesla's site, "Blowing Hot and Cold" by Brian Randall, 'Test and Validation Manager':

First, the heating. This is relatively straightforward. We replace the heater matrix, which would have had engine coolant running through it, with an electric heater that has 400 volts running through it. The clever bit of the design is to ensure that we have a safe system that also minimises the drain on the car’s battery pack (or Energy Storage System (ESS), as we call it).

So we use what’s called a Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) heater. It’s basically a resistor that increases its resistance as it heats up, thus limiting the current it can draw. That way it will never get too hot. Why do we use 400 volts for the heater? Well, unlike every other car, we’ve got 400 volts available, so we might as well use that — it means considerably reduced currents along the cables that run from the ESS at the back of the car to the heater at the front. And with the heater capable of pumping out 4 kilowatts, that should keep the cabin nice and toasty.

At the other end of the scale, we have fitted our cars with an all-electric air conditioning system to keep things cool. This uses a compressor similar to the one in a domestic fridge — only ours is blue and works off 400 volts. It’s at the front of the car, and pumps the refrigerant through the chiller unit in much the same way as a standard car’s system.

He also points out that the reason your father's Oldsmobile has quite the heating capabilities is because it is much less energy-efficient:

With a conventional car, cabin heating comes from the engine coolant. Because the average gas or diesel engine is so inefficient, about 30 percent of the heat generated during combustion is transferred to the engine coolant, giving a ready source of heat to warm the cabin.

Incidentally, you also lose energy down the exhaust pipe and into the oil, as well as through a number of additional avenues. So you end up with only about 30 percent useful “go forward” from that expensive gallon of gasoline. This number is an estimate — it depends on type of engine and how you drive the car, but it illustrates to some extent why the Tesla Roadster is more efficient.

[Jonathan50]

118. The money quote again..

And with the heater capable of pumping out 4 kilowatts, that should keep the cabin nice and toasty.


250 miles * 1.609 kilometers per mile = 402.25 kilometers

402.25 kilometers / 110 Watt Hours per kilometer = 3,656 watts or 3.65 Kilowatts

3.65 Kilowatts / 4 Kilowatts per hour = .9125 hours or 54.7 minutes until the battery is flat.

And you haven't even driven it anywhere.

[IDemo]

120. Your money isn't worth much so far

It's plain you're not very good with numbers. The battery capacity is about 56 kilowatt hours, not the 3.65 you state. You also assume that the heater will be kept fully on for the duration of the trip. I live in a cold part of the country, but even on a very cold day, the heater is on full blast only long enough to get the passenger compartment up to temp, then lowered.

You failed, on a previous thread, in trying to argue that electric vehicles are less energy efficient than internal combustion powered vehicles. They are not only more efficient in well-to-wheel analyses, but doubly so. The numbers, graphs, and sources were provided to demonstrate this. The US Department of Energy and Argonne National Laboratory were cited by myself and in The 21st Century Electric Car, Tesla's white paper on the subject.

If you have an argument to make against EV's (or anything else), you need to provide real facts and one or more sources, instead of making things up or shifting the argument.

[Jonathan50]

121. Does the Tesla Roadster

Have a heater?

Yes or no.

[IDemo]

122. Yes. That was stated very clearly in post #110

In the headline and in the post.

[liberalEd]

111. I take my dogs in the car

And there is no way I'd have them in a car without air conditioning in the summer. Even if I were to subject myself to that, I would never do it to dogs.

[Jonathan50]

119. I have friends with two pure blooded wolves..

They never leave them at home even though they have a large fenced yard.

What they have done is taken their much beaten up old Suburban and placed a window AC in one of the back windows and they carry a generator on one of those little platforms which plugs into the trailer hitch.

Voila', you now have cool wolves in the middle of the summer.

The wolves have chewed every bit of plastic or fabric in the Suburban into minute bits. There is nothing left in the interior but metal and quite a bit of that has teeth marks in it.

Needless to say, nobody ever messes with their Suburban, the male wolf is about 240 lbs.

[liberalEd]

125. Your friends sound sorty scary :)

Oh not because they own wolves. I'm just in awe of anyone who can install and run a window air conditioner in a car. :)

[Countdown_3_2_1]

112. I'm keeping my AC.

If anyone gets upset, I'll plant a tree or something.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

113. Not without heat, but the car I have no has no AC...

I'm used to it. It's not that big of a deal. I leave the windows down during the day. If anyone wanted to steal my car, they'd be doing me a favor.
We have to have heat in the car for defrost and so I don't have to wear my uncomfortable jacket while I'm driving.
Duckie

[Ilsa]

114. Road rage would increase here. In south Tx I can manage fine without a heater,

AC is another matter for the worst part of the year, July through September. It is also very humid where I live, and I'd be drenched in sweat before getting to my destination.

[ddeclue]

123. Factually wrong...

Firstly a regular car with a regular internal combustion engine does NOT use any substantial energy to HEAT because it uses the waste heat which it must dispose of anyways. Indeed rejecting the waste heat into the cabin reduces the need for cooling and if you could run the heat all the time you could reduce the size of your radiator and the attendant cooling drag necessary to circulate air over it.

AC uses energy but not as much as the cooling drag associated with rolling down the windows.

Buying a car with no AC in it will NOT "save the planet"... be reasonable not a drama queen...

Buy a smaller more fuel efficient car if you want to help.

Finally, it would more useful to ask the question:

Would you buy a car with a manual transmission if it meant "saving the planet"?

My Camaro has a 5.7L V8 LT1 engine but still manages to get 32 miles/gallon on the hwy in six gear with the cruise control on because it has a six speed manual transmission with a wide range of gear ratios as opposed to most people's 4 speed automatic transmission cars.

Doug D.
Aerospace Engineer
Orlando, Fl

[Raine]

124. No

I remember cars before AC and they were HELL on earth!

[liberalEd]

126. The best way to defrost the windshield

is to turn on the air conditioner. I don't mean to defrost from actual frozen frost on the outside. I mean from unfrozen condensation that forms when moist in-car air hits cooler glass.

Turn on the AC, and that stuff is gone in seconds.

[HooptieWagon]

127. Wadded up newspaper

makes a servicable emergency defrost - inconvienient, but better than a misted windshield. Also good for cleaning windows.