Parking/charging heating and 12V

Hello, i am sourcing a 2nd hand i3 to be used also as temporary sleeping place for my passion: night photography.

There are so many queations i have that probably i am going to rent one in my next trip to test some of the features i am interested in, and the confort of the solution.

I don t have so many alternatives on the market for the given money and car size really...

So i am here to directly ask for the top priority items i am concerned by:

1)Heating\cooling. Can i use the climate control while in parking for extended periods? (Ideally hours at low rate)? Does charging or not charging change something?

2)12v loads. Can i charge my photographic equipnent overnight? Is there any trick to do so?

I know the heavy impact on the batterz that this may cause but in some occasions it can be helpful to trade some range for a better support of my activity.

I hope i did not miss any thread on this, i made some unsuccessfull research before posting.

Thank you in advance.

Placing the car in the READY state would allow the HVAC system to work until the battery ran out. If you chose a REx version, that would include running the engine for probably another few hours, maybe more. But, if you left the vehicle 'off', the HVAC will only work for about 30-minutes at a time, and then, you'd have to restart it. Depending on the ambient conditions, you might be able to go a while in between uses.

The 12vdc supply only stays on for maybe 15-minutes after the car shuts down, so you'd have to leave it in READY state or restart it again to continue to charge. Depending on your power needs, a big battery pack designed for that may be easier. A friend has a 20Ahr capacity one he uses in Mexico where the power isn't super reliable that has saved him more than once.

Note that if heating is your main issue, the BEV is more efficient since it has a heat pump whereas, the REx does not and only generates heat directly on a 1:1 basis from the battery pack. On the BEV, it's probably in the 3-4:1, depending on how cold it is outside, until it has to fall back on the resistance heater once the heat pump becomes too inefficient.

Hi, thank you for the very accurate answer.

The 12v loads may be a problem, yiu are right.

Do you know how much keeping the car in ready consume?

Also when in charge can i use the heatin/clima as long as i want?

I'm not positive, but I do not think the car will let you do a lot if the EVSE is plugged in...I'm certain that it won't let you switch out of park, and won't get to the 'full' ready state...not positive about the HVAC system. SHould you try, it generates an alarm sound and a message that you're still plugged in. When I've accidentally done that, I wasn't really looking at what else was running in the vehicle.

When you go into the ready state, there's a bunch more things activated than just the HVAC system since, essentially, it is really ready to drive. The daylight running lights and all computers are turned on including the displays (I think, you can turn off the central one, but not the one in front of the driver). Actually driving/moving the vehicle is the largest power user, so sitting there in ready, but not doing anything, may not be really all that much of a load...not that easy to tell directly. If you do rent one to try, you can put up the battery percentage readout and time how long it takes to drop, say 10% or so. It should be fairly linear, but will be steeper initially while it conditions the cabin, so the longer you run it, the better your result may be.

I have wondered about some of these things myself. I just picked up a 175Wat inverter with 2 110V AC plugs and 2 USB ports. It plugs into the cigarette lighter. I thought I'd try running an extension cord into the house and powering some LED light bulbs to see if I could have 110V power in an outage. I will try tonight if I remember...

I don't remember the fuse on the i3's 12vdc socket, but I think you'll find that inverter may blow the fuse...you might want to look it up and have a spare. 175/12 is almost 15A and I think it's a 10A circuit.

This could be an issue . To stay in 'Ready' state I believe you need to be sitting in the driver's seat .

CanisLupus said:

To stay in 'Ready' state I believe you need to be sitting in the driver's seat .

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If one exits through the passenger door, an i3 will stay in drive readiness state. Before storing our i3 for 6 months, I wanted to decrease its battery pack's charge level from ~90% to ~50%. While I was washing our i3 and lifting it onto jack stands, I turned on the A/C to Max and turned on the high-beam headlamps to discharge the battery pack. For this to happen, the car had to remain in drive readiness state, so I exited and entered the car via the passenger door which worked great.

Others have stated that merely buckling the driver seatbelt behind one's back before exiting the driver door will leave an i3 in drive readiness state.

That's interesting! How long did it take to discharge 40% SOC with AC and high beam?

Thank you Alohart for the clarification re: Ready state .

isd88 said:

That's interesting! How long did it take to discharge 40% SOC with AC and high beam?

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I didn't time it, but it was probably between 2 and 3 hours (60 Ah battery pack).