Pre heating in the morning

This has become relevant where I live as it is clear the ICE kicks in to warm the car first thing if no pre warming.
The problem is I cannot get pre heating via the phone app to work reliably.
More often than not despite connecting to the car and activating the heating button on the phone the car is often cold when I get in 10 mins later. Sometimes it works perfectly.
I do not use the app for any other purpose ie no timings are set for charging etc.

Any ideas?

This car has a few quirks eg having to have car in park to use power tailgate.

Anything similar with preheat function?
Thanks

I use the application running under Android in the same way and it has been fine - so far. I'm certainly not aware of any constraints on when it can be used.

In passing, I'm not sure I agree that having to have the car in Park before the power tailgate will operate is a "quirk" - seems like a sensible safety mechanism to me!

Acm said:

This car has a few quirks eg having to have car in park to use power tailgate.

Anything similar with preheat function?
Thanks

Click to expand...

You can always open it manually from the outside whilst driving!!

jaapv said:

You can always open it manually from the outside whilst driving!!

Click to expand...

I would love to see a video of this.


Alan

Acm said:

This has become relevant where I live as it is clear the ICE kicks in to warm the car first thing if no pre warming.
The problem is I cannot get pre heating via the phone app to work reliably.
More often than not despite connecting to the car and activating the heating button on the phone the car is often cold when I get in 10 mins later. Sometimes it works perfectly.
I do not use the app for any other purpose ie no timings are set for charging etc.

Any ideas?

This car has a few quirks eg having to have car in park to use power tailgate.

Anything similar with preheat function?
Thanks

Click to expand...

Is the preheat program via MMCS correctly programmed? You can easily check to see if it's a problem with the car or the app.
I agree with the others that powered tailgate opening only when in P is a good thing!

alan said:

jaapv said:

You can always open it manually from the outside whilst driving!!

Click to expand...

I would love to see a video of this.

Alan

Click to expand...

Something like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcPMMwfvAfo

If you open any door (including the boot) at any point in the 10 minute preheat cycle it will stop and will NOT restart again. Also, I'm not sure if the timed preheat will work if the car isn't plugged in to the mains? There may be other factors that cause it to stop, haven't read the manual lately.

I don't know where you (the OP) live, but I'm in the South of England and I don't find that one 10 minute preheat cycle raises the temperature that much. It's enough to be noticeable but I wouldn't exactly call it toasty! And even after a full cycle and a bit, ICE still starts more or less immediately if I have the heating at say 22°C and/or heated seats on. That's with the mornings being between 1°C and 5°C this week.

To be fair, maybe it works harder when the ambient temperatures are lower - I'm sure I read on here recently about someone in Norway finding it quite effective.

Thanks for most of replies
Re tailgate, car stationary would be better but I'd like to stick to subject.

I had already noticed opening door would interrupt preheat and it wouldn't start again. Another quirk I think.

Anyway with the app, it definitely works well some mornings with nice warm car and sometimes doesn't work at all. Until now I haven't gone into the program via the screen in car but have just set it now to come on every morning at 750. Hopefully that will do the trick but clearly doesn't answer cause of intermittent function with app.

Cutting pre-heat on opening any door is a documented feature.

jaapv said:

alan said:

jaapv said:

You can always open it manually from the outside whilst driving!!

Click to expand...

I would love to see a video of this.

Alan

Click to expand...

Something like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcPMMwfvAfo

Click to expand...

Now we know why women are not allowed to drive in Saudi

I'm also a bit disappointed about the wireless heater. First it's really hard to judge if the heater has been running or not since there is very little difference in temperature inside, or maybe I have never got it to work!? Can you somehow see in the history data to have it confirmed? Can you hear from outside that it's active? The user interface is also not optimal. The wifi has an extremely low range and I cannot use it at all and why is it not possible to program when you like the car to be hot? Now you can only set one slot of 10 m heating and it feels that this will not be enough when our real winter starts...

Anyone has an idea of how to improve?

EVkris said:

I'm also a bit disappointed about the wireless heater. First it's really hard to judge if the heater has been running or not since there is very little difference in temperature inside, or maybe I have never got it to work!? Can you somehow see in the history data to have it confirmed? Can you hear from outside that it's active? The user interface is also not optimal. The wifi has an extremely low range and I cannot use it at all and why is it not possible to program when you like the car to be hot? Now you can only set one slot of 10 m heating and it feels that this will not be enough when our real winter starts...

Anyone has an idea of how to improve?

Click to expand...

You are correct, after 10mn of heating its difficult to judge if its really heated or not.
Because of the short wifi range I have to activate the preheating from my bedroom. No big deal but when the bedroom window is open I can hear relays clicking when I start preheat. I can also hear a low sound from the PHEV indicating a fan running etc.
You can pre-program the preheat timers but read the manual, its not straight forward. My dealer acually adviced me not to use this function.
The 10mn limitation is in my opinion just stupid. In winter when we usually experience temperatures below -10dgC 10mn are nothing. We need atleast 30mn just to get softer ice on the windows. It should be possible to preset anything from 10-120mn.
My advice is to start preheat several times, its anoying but it works.
I know that one of the guys in the Norwegian forum has contacted Mitsu about these issues. They can all be fixed with a firmware update.

I think the heat achieved is determined by what you leave the heater set to the last time you turn the car off.

Kev.

Don't think so, there were a few posts about that earlier in the year and I think it was established that preheat ignores the climate control settings.

I will contact Mitsubishi about this to hopefully get some software update to improve the capability. Since I have the charger connected over night I can easily run the heater for more than 10m without jeopardising my EV driving range. I would also like to see the function that the battery warm up is running when the charger is connected and the battery is full. For this it would also be nice to be able to set the planned "take off" time, instead of specifying the heating 10 m before.

/k

The heater timer is pretty easy to use. At the moment I have just set it for 10 mins just before I leave home during the week. If it gets colder then it is trivial to set two or even three 0 minute timers back to back.

CJ

Having thought about this bearing in mind the helpful replies, my car is probably cold some mornings because the warming period is only 10 mins. On colder mornings I have been activating the heater earlier to give it longer but of course that won't work with a limited 10 min program.

This is another quirk insofar as there should be no battery problem with longer warm ups as long as car is plugged in.

Anyway have set it to go on at 750 every morning as I usually leave at 8.

Thanks for all the helpful replies

This is another quirk insofar as there should be no battery problem with longer warm ups as long as car is plugged in.

Click to expand...

Just bear in mind that even if it is plugged in you will lose some battery charge as the heater drains the battery faster than the charger can top it up.

It's a rock and a hard place unfortunately, although I agree with others that it ought to be possible to set a longer preheat time - my morning journeys are often well within 1 charge's range so in deepest midwinter I would gladly trade a little range for a warmer car.

If it gets colder then it is trivial to set two or even three 0 minute timers back to back.

Click to expand...

I didn't think this was possible with app as it stands? Will have another look now.

I do not agree that the heater will drain the battery faster than the charger can refill. When having a normal cabin heater (electric fan running on 220V) they are normally around 1000 W in power. The charger is using and delivering roughly 2200 W (10 A times 220 V) constantly. If not the built in heater is extremely uneffiently designed (warming up the outside) it would not take more than half the power delivered by the charger. Power available would not be a problem! Why not extend the 10 m or have the user to set the take off time and have the car adjusting the inside temp to something suitable like 15 deg until this time. /k

maddogsetc said:

This is another quirk insofar as there should be no battery problem with longer warm ups as long as car is plugged in.

Click to expand...

Just bear in mind that even if it is plugged in you will lose some battery charge as the heater drains the battery faster than the charger can top it up.

It's a rock and a hard place unfortunately, although I agree with others that it ought to be possible to set a longer preheat time - my morning journeys are often well within 1 charge's range so in deepest midwinter I would gladly trade a little range for a warmer car.

If it gets colder then it is trivial to set two or even three 0 minute timers back to back.

Click to expand...

I didn't think this was possible with app as it stands? Will have another look now.

Click to expand...

As per my message above you can set three timers back to back for preheat for 30 mins

CJ