Dear Lazywebz... (Automotive Edition)

[bjarvis]

Last night, as I was driving home from a night shift at the data center, I was thanking $deity every, oh, 10 seconds or so that the passenger cabin of my Civic was warm & toasty despite a nasty windchill factor in our region. Most conventional gasoline & diesel engine vehicles use heat from the engine's operating combustion to warm the passengers and defrost the windshield.

How do the Prius, Leaf & Volt warm their human passengers?

I suppose those with an internal combustion engine could run the engine to generate heat but that would have a huge impact on gas mileage. They could use their battery power to run electrical heating elements; I have no idea how much of an impact that drain would have on their range.

Can anyone with first-hand knowledge enlighten me?

Comments

[apparentparadox]

When it's cold outside, I know that our Prius ICE runs more than at other times. I'm not sure, however, how much of that is to generate heat for the passenger cabin or because it takes longer for the engine to warm up (and it has to be warm to do the nifty turn-off-and-on-in-an-instant trick).