PTC Heating - field reports

[Zapatero]

Hi, there are already some solutions on this Forum. I would like to bundle them in this Threat and especially get some field reports of people who already put the heaters in their cars.

I'd like to start with two heaters:

The 800W 12V Heater that Arber mentions in this threat. Can anyone tell, if it is sufficient in his car to get at least a bit of warm air?


viewtopic.php?f=9&t=335&start=25


OR:

will it be poissible to use 2 pieces of 220V Heaters in a row to put 400V on them and use those with my high voltage system?


Hoping for your input. Thanks, Philip

[SciroccoEV]

This was my solution in the 1984 Scirocco running at 192V. I used a pair of 240V PTC cores obtained from cheap fan heaters.

Cores were switched in 4 stages to give some control. Peak output around 4Kw.

[arber333]

Hi, there are already some solutions on this Forum. I would like to bundle them in this Threat and especially get some field reports of people who already put the heaters in their cars.
I'd like to start with two heaters:
The 800W 12V Heater that Arber mentions in this threat. Can anyone tell, if it is sufficient in his car to get at least a bit of warm air?
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=335&start=25
OR:
will it be poissible to use 2 pieces of 220V Heaters in a row to put 400V on them and use those with my high voltage system?
Hoping for your input. Thanks, Philip

For that to work you need to have at least 1kW in DCDC power available. The heater i mention pulls 55A out of the system and can create a good hot breeze. But after some distance this tends to waste in the sorrounding air. Also after a while it smells like old socks .

I stand by my dinosaur burning Webasto . Otherwise normal 2kW washing machine heater can pull 5kW from 360Vdc! That is respectable power and if you keep the water circling you get really the equivalent of OEM EV heater.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=335#p3783

[johu]

For sake of completeness I'll add the resistive heater in Polo.
The element is taken from a cheap electric heater. It has two 230V AC "coils" producing combined 2kW of heat. When put in series they match the 500V nominal voltage of Polo pretty well. I used a DC-DC converter and an IGBT to switch it on and off and I have rewired the over temperature switch to turn off the IGBT, not the actual heater current. Because the switch is not DC rated and would just produce an arc.
It certainly demists the windows and keeps passengers warm down to like 0°C outside temperatures. Below that it struggles, also because of the large voltage sag at these temperatures. P=U²/R, so 2 kW@500V becomes 1.3kW@400V.

[arber333]

Dang! I managed to lock out my dinosaur burner somehow. I will need to take it in for servicing. I guess disconnecting fuel pump while operating will cause immediate lockout which needs to be solved by connecting it to PC.
Maybe now is the chance to try the PTC element in my car .

[prensel]

Do we know anything about the VW Golf-E or Audi E-Tron EV heaters like this oneL
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-VW-Pa ... 3918875033

Looks like it just has HV connections, nothing else ?

[Bratitude]

Do we know anything about the VW Golf-E or Audi E-Tron EV heaters like this oneL
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-VW-Pa ... 3918875033

Looks like it just has HV connections, nothing else ?

and a lv control connection. might be PWM controlled. Hard to say.

Also this thread is about ptc matrixes, not water heaters.

[Age]

The water heaters in VAG GTE / E models are controlled via LIN-Bus. I have the pinout somewhere. If anybody is interrested, I can start searching in my digital mess...

[prensel]

The water heaters in VAG GTE / E models are controlled via LIN-Bus. I have the pinout somewhere. If anybody is interrested, I can start searching in my digital mess...

Yes, i'm very interested in that info if you have it.
Looking into buying such unit as too see what is possible.

[jon volk]

Im using one of these Smart car heaters from EV West.
https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_ ... do308rlr83

It fit into the OEM heater box of my E30 easily and puts out a good amount of heat. It certainly doesnt get as hot as my ICE vehicles, but on this 24*F morning, it was comfortable by the time I got down my street. I once I seal up some open firewall holes it should do even better on days like this.

[celeron55]

Dang! I managed to lock out my dinosaur burner somehow. I will need to take it in for servicing. I guess disconnecting fuel pump while operating will cause immediate lockout which needs to be solved by connecting it to PC.
Maybe now is the chance to try the PTC element in my car .

If it's Eberspacher, the PC software is downloadable and you can use a cheap VAG-COM clone to connect to the K-line communication wire.