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| Good question Adrian. The Volt has a series of advice screens that are available when you are in Park that give good hints. I will summarize what we do to minimize the extent to which you use E power for heat. First of all the car has remote features that can be controlled from an iphone or ipad. The best thing to do on really cold days is to remotely start the climate system while the car is plugged in still. The next thing to do is to use the seat heaters as much as possible. After that use the climate control on ECO. There is a power meter that tells you how much energy you are allocating to the climate control. One thing few non Volt owners realize is that on really really cold days the car will turn on the gas engine for short periods in order to maintain temperature to make the battery more efficient. So on many really cold days even if you are fully charged the gas motor will turn on for about 3 minutes to generate heat for the battery. It actually recycles the interior air for this purpose. So it will often produce cabin heat off the gas engine to warm up the battery. After you get going a bit it turns off and you are back on battery. My wife would report that on really cold mornings she might lose 3 miles or so of range to run the climate system. We NEVER run the climate system in comfort mode. The seat heaters work really well.
Edited by joeatdawn 2/22/2012 21:17
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Chevy Volt Cost analysis one mans opinion
