Afaik, it depends on a market.How can you tell if your Taycan has a heat pump? Was it an option or standard on MY20 4S?
Standard in countries where it is mandated.How can you tell if your Taycan has a heat pump? Was it an option or standard on MY20 4S?
Exactly my findings as well. The heat pump will scavenge heat from the drivetrain, and not from the ambient air. In my view this seems like a questionable tactic, at least in somewhat colder temperatures.I did some research about this. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
But to me it looks like this:
1) In most EV's (and I think also in the Taycan) the heat pump does not take heat from the outside air. It takes heat from the internal system: from the invertor, the motor, the battery.
That means that the heat pump heats the cabin, but cools the other systems at the same time. That is good for the invertor and the motor. But not necessarily good for the battery.
When do you use the heat pump? When it is cold. When you should keep your battery hot.
When do you need heat pump the most ? When doing roadtrips. When the battery should be warm to charge fast.
So in theory a heat pump is a good idea. But in practice, because of the way it is designed in most EV's, it does not help much.
2) I used the ODBII link to estimate how much energy is going to heat the cabine. Initially, to heat up a cold cabine, a lot of energy is used: 3kw to even 10kw. But let's assume you preheat. Or heat up the car at the fast charger. So you start with a warm car.
To keep the car warm (Eco mode at 20 C inside and about 0 to 5 C), I saw you need about 600 to 1000 Watt continuous.
For a 3 hour drive between charges this is between 2 to 3 kwh of energy.
Depending on the size of your battery this is 2.5% to 4% of the energy consumption.
If you could half this number by using a heat pump (which is very optimistic taking point 1 into account), this would be a difference of 1,25% to 2% extra range. That is 4 to 10km. So not really worth it.
From this I conclude that you better spend the money for the heat pump on a bigger battery.