My car is a diesel so it takes a long time to warm up in the winter. They added an electric auxiliary heater to compensate. The air is really hot within seconds.
Comment on Life is hard
nova@lemmy.wtf 11 hours agoin a lot of newer cars they can actually use the A/C to heat and cool the car, rather than using excess engine heat or an electric heater which is especially helpful when it’s cold and you’ve only just started the engine!
MissingGhost@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Fun fact (well, I suspect you know this already, but some didn’t, I had discussion with someone arguing with me that this is not true):
AC and a heat pump are basically the same thing, AC is just pumping the heat outside instead of inside.
Also when you say modern cars I am assuming you might be talking about EVs. Using a heat pump requires less energy than using resistive heating so it could be energy saving measure.
ICE cars on the other hand can get the heat from engine “for free” (not really, but since the heat will be produced anyway whether you use it or not, so why not use it?) so a heat pump might make a bit less sense in them.
AspieEgg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
My car is an EV, so it definitely does this because there’s no excessive engine heat to use.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 hours ago
I assume you mean EVs with heat pumps? I don’t know of any ICE vehicles that do this, seems inefficient to waste mechanical or electrical energy when you have perfectly good waste heat to use upon reaching operating temperature (though you may need to use an aux heater before reaching that, particularly on diesels)