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Heated steering wheel loss of range
- Thread starter Mandalorian
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LightningShow
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If you drove for 10 hours straight at 30mph getting 3mpk you'd go 300 miles and use 100kWh. If your steering wheel was on the entire time it would use 0.6kWh. That would drop you efficiency from 3.00 mpk to 2.98 mpk. That's a worst case scenario. More likely that the steering wheel drops your efficiency by 0.01 mpk or less. It's not even measurable on the display.
MBM
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What was the difference in temperature on the days of using the heated wheel versus not using it?
From my experience, the drop in efficiency you noted sounds completely normal or expected due to colder weather. I’m in New Jersey and I’ve already seen a 10 to 20% drop just over the last few weeks with the colder weather arriving. Maybe just coincidental that it’s occurring now after the heated wheel.
From my experience, the drop in efficiency you noted sounds completely normal or expected due to colder weather. I’m in New Jersey and I’ve already seen a 10 to 20% drop just over the last few weeks with the colder weather arriving. Maybe just coincidental that it’s occurring now after the heated wheel.
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Mandalorian
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chl
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Never noticed any change in range or m/kWh with my 2012 Leaf due to the heated seat or steering wheel, both came standard.
The heated steering wheel does reach a point where it stops heating even though the button still says it is on, and it cools down a bit. I found that if I toggle the button OFF then back ON, the heat comes back, useful when it is really cold.
The range drops about 5-10 miles on my guess-o-meter if I use the cabin heat, which is pretty much useless on the Leaf - resistance heat blown around but would take forever to really warm the cabin, so I never use it. I just park the Leaf in the direct sun for 5-10 minutes and it gets nice and toasty inside.
My average energy use is in the 4.8mi/kWh range consistently for around town driving, if I go out on the hwy it drops quite a bit.
The range on an 80% charge I see on the guess-o-meter in the Leaf is about 70 miles, but with non-aggressive driving techniques, slow accelerations, coasting with regenerative braking going down hills, cruise-control on on flat stretches, the guessed-at-range on the meter goes up.
Sometimes I drive to the grocery store starting with 52 miles range, travel about 7 miles round trip and come back with 49 miles estimated range. On really short trips, a couple times I came back with more range than I left with - according to the guess-o-meter.
Anyway, it seems strange that the heated steering wheel on the lightning would cause a noticeable drop in estimated range or actual mi/kWh either...it should be negligible according to Watts law, etc.
But maybe it is a software calculation issue and the watts used by the HSWheel are weighted wrong in the calculations? To err is human but to really screw up, you need a computer (wrongly programmed - like NASA's 1999 Mars probe which confused meters with feet).
"In September of 1999, after almost 10 months of travel to Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned and broke into pieces. On a day when NASA engineers were expecting to celebrate, the ground reality turned out to be completely different, all because someone failed to use the right units, i.e., the metric units!"
" NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday. (Sept. 30, 1999)"
Rocket science.
The heated steering wheel does reach a point where it stops heating even though the button still says it is on, and it cools down a bit. I found that if I toggle the button OFF then back ON, the heat comes back, useful when it is really cold.
The range drops about 5-10 miles on my guess-o-meter if I use the cabin heat, which is pretty much useless on the Leaf - resistance heat blown around but would take forever to really warm the cabin, so I never use it. I just park the Leaf in the direct sun for 5-10 minutes and it gets nice and toasty inside.
My average energy use is in the 4.8mi/kWh range consistently for around town driving, if I go out on the hwy it drops quite a bit.
The range on an 80% charge I see on the guess-o-meter in the Leaf is about 70 miles, but with non-aggressive driving techniques, slow accelerations, coasting with regenerative braking going down hills, cruise-control on on flat stretches, the guessed-at-range on the meter goes up.
Sometimes I drive to the grocery store starting with 52 miles range, travel about 7 miles round trip and come back with 49 miles estimated range. On really short trips, a couple times I came back with more range than I left with - according to the guess-o-meter.
Anyway, it seems strange that the heated steering wheel on the lightning would cause a noticeable drop in estimated range or actual mi/kWh either...it should be negligible according to Watts law, etc.
But maybe it is a software calculation issue and the watts used by the HSWheel are weighted wrong in the calculations? To err is human but to really screw up, you need a computer (wrongly programmed - like NASA's 1999 Mars probe which confused meters with feet).
"In September of 1999, after almost 10 months of travel to Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned and broke into pieces. On a day when NASA engineers were expecting to celebrate, the ground reality turned out to be completely different, all because someone failed to use the right units, i.e., the metric units!"
" NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday. (Sept. 30, 1999)"
Rocket science.
Good morning! If you send over a DM with your VIN and Ford dealer info, I can look into your concerns on my end.
WildBlue
Well-known member
So unfortunately my truck already had zero (never turn off) from the factory. I think this setting affects how long the heated steering wheel is on when you press the button to start it. This isn't the behavior I want to change, but rather stopping it fr cooling off shortly after it has started. Perhaps there's another setting or maybe it isn't adjustable, which would suck.
Edit (11/29/2023): As a follow up to this post, I went ahead and set the steering wheel temperature to maximum (39C) per the Forscan values posted earlier in this thread. My thought process was if I set the temperature maximum higher then the wheel heater would probably cycle more often to try to maintain that temperature and that's what the truck now does. While it does cool off still, it starts heating back up quicker and so the average temperature of the wheel stays higher. While not the solution I wanted, it's the best we can seemingly do until Ford does it right. So for those of you wanting a more consistent higher temperature wheel, give this a try.
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