Heating on in autumn and winter: Does the car consume more?
Created: 09/23/2022, 09:30 am
By: Marcus Efler
In the cool season, the car heater warms up the interior.
Whether and how much energy this costs depends on the type of vehicle.
Summer is gone, cool autumn air is coming - and soon winter.
People's clothing is changing, and so is the function of the air conditioning system in the car.
It just kept the vehicle cool (provided it is used correctly), but now it is supposed to warm the interior to a comfortable 22 degrees.
Not an easy task, especially since the thin sheet metal skin of a car offers no insulation whatsoever.
But how does the warm air flowing out of the ventilation grilles affect the consumption of the car?
In view of the high fuel prices, drivers of models with combustion engines are thinking more than ever about how they can save fuel.
But the all-clear is clear for them: the generation of heat is part of the principle of petrol and diesel engines.
Gasoline engines in particular give off a lot of heat after the cold start phase, and the machine has to be cooled down at great expense.
The heating heat is excess energy, which consequently does not result in increased consumption.
Nice and warm in the car – but where does the energy come from?
(Icon image) © Baitong333/Imago
Heating on in autumn and winter: Does the car consume more?
It looks a bit more differentiated with modern turbo diesel engines.
These work so efficiently that there is not enough waste heat for rapid heating.
A parking or additional heater is therefore a popular extra equipment, which of course then sips from the tank.
However, not much: With half a liter per hour, the additional consumption remains manageable.
It is completely different with electric cars. In the cold season, the battery cells work less efficiently than usual anyway, the power consumption increases significantly, the range decreases.
The additional generation of heat for the driver's warm feet then consumes even more of the reserves.
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A standard five-kilowatt heater logically consumes five kilowatt-hours if it is switched on for an hour.
Assuming a charging price of 50 cents per kW, that would be 2.50 euros per hour.
Or to put it another way: With a consumption of 20 kWh per 100 kilometers, every hour of full heating costs a range of around 25 kilometers.
However, even in electric cars, the heaters do not run non-stop all the time; in practice, half the time is enough.
Innovative heating systems also provide relief: the BMW iX has surface heating under the windscreen.
Similar to a tiled stove, the convection heat generated in this way heats the air faster and more economically than the usual blower.
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Heating on in autumn and winter: Does the car consume more?
In addition, many electric cars have a so-called heat pump, either as standard or as an option.
To put it simply, these remove excess heat from the ambient air and feed it to the heating circuit.
However, they are not equally effective in all types of cars.
Most likely it is still up to the driver himself to reduce the heating consumption of electric vehicles and thus increase the range.
In many electric models, for example, he can program the heating so that it warms up the car before it starts in the morning – while it’s still connected to the wall box and (hopefully) using cheap domestic electricity.
Switching on the seat heating is also much more effective than running the heater fan: With only about 100 watts, it consumes just two percent of this.
