ajdelange
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- A. J.
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2019
- Threads
- 9
- Messages
- 2,883
- Reaction score
- 2,317
- Location
- Virginia/Quebec
- Vehicles
- Tesla XLR+2019, Lexus, Landcruiser, R1T
- Occupation
- EE Retired
I don't believe we are communicating. The decision to provide heating is based on the simplicity and low cost with which it is done vis-a-vis the benefit it confers which is the very important one maintaining vehicle occupant comfort with improved range (relative to cabin heat) in cold weather. A few watts can do the job of a few killowatts. That's a very big deal for BEV drivers. Reduced cold weather range is still a favorite bete noir of the FUD crowd.So you believe just on the fact that seat heating would use less energy that this company would not give the option for seat cooling ?
The efficiencies of the heating system have nothing to do with the decision to install cooling as cooling is not used when heat is on and vice versa. But the same rationale would be used in making the decision to install it. What are the costs and what are the benefits? It is very easy to include a piece of resistive wire in almost any structure. it is a lot more difficult to include air ducts or coolant tubes. This makes it more expensive. As to the benefits, I don't know. I do know that a warm bum and back can render one quite comfortable in a cold cabin to the extent that one can turn the heat way down but I don't know that the converse is true or the extent to which it is true because, while I have had several cars with heated seats I've never had one with cooled. This tells me that when the engineers/marketers do the trades the benefits are not deemed worth the costs. If they were actively cooled seats would be more commonplace.
BEVs in hot weather present many problems to designers. The hotter is is outside the vehicle the more energy is required to pump the motor, inverter/rectifier and battery heat overboard. This reduces range. As is well documented the Tesla systems run out of capacity to the point where they take all the cooling and divert it to the battery. There is, in these cases, no cooling source which could be directed to the seats. Rivian's thermal designs may have more or less capacity than Tesla's but as the same physics rule both I think one of the things steering these manufacturers away from actively cooled seats is that cooling is harder to come by than heating.
So how about a passive solution? Something like the Canine Cooler Bed if you know about those. Here again I think the answer is complexity, cost, and weight.
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