Looking for some advice from more experienced owners about 'preconditioning'. Apologies in advance if this comes across as incoherent ramblings!
As I understand it, preconditioning warms the inside of the car and preheats the battery, meaning the car is already primed before you drive off and as a consequence this leads to increased efficiency. Am I correct?
I've read that the car should be plugged in when preconditioning - I assume this is so that the energy required to precondition is provided by the charging unit rather than the car's battery? Again, am I correct?
I plugged the car in last night and drove to work today after preconditioning and was suitably impressed by the efficiency. However, have I simply just used (and paid for) additional electricity to precondition. Would I have been any better off preconditioning without being plugged in, or perhaps not preconditioning at all?
How often do you precondition? is it all the time? Only under a certain temperature? etc... Does anyone precondition all the time in winter in the UK?
In case it makes any difference my daily commute is 28 miles each way, about 19 of which are on a motorway. I'm planning to ensure I start every Monday morning with the battery topped up to near 100% and then perhaps stick it on charge again mid week to get me through until going home on Friday evenings. I'd rather not plug it in just to precondition if i'm not actually looking to charge it but perhaps the answers to this post will educate me a little better. This week looks set to be a cold one for us Brits so it should be a good experiment for the new owners amongst us.
Thanks.
As I understand it, preconditioning warms the inside of the car and preheats the battery, meaning the car is already primed before you drive off and as a consequence this leads to increased efficiency. Am I correct?
I've read that the car should be plugged in when preconditioning - I assume this is so that the energy required to precondition is provided by the charging unit rather than the car's battery? Again, am I correct?
I plugged the car in last night and drove to work today after preconditioning and was suitably impressed by the efficiency. However, have I simply just used (and paid for) additional electricity to precondition. Would I have been any better off preconditioning without being plugged in, or perhaps not preconditioning at all?
How often do you precondition? is it all the time? Only under a certain temperature? etc... Does anyone precondition all the time in winter in the UK?
In case it makes any difference my daily commute is 28 miles each way, about 19 of which are on a motorway. I'm planning to ensure I start every Monday morning with the battery topped up to near 100% and then perhaps stick it on charge again mid week to get me through until going home on Friday evenings. I'd rather not plug it in just to precondition if i'm not actually looking to charge it but perhaps the answers to this post will educate me a little better. This week looks set to be a cold one for us Brits so it should be a good experiment for the new owners amongst us.
Thanks.