How "climate control" of a Toyota Prius (and other hybrid cars) works for camping & sleeping!

hey guys here i'm going to show you how it is possible to sleep inside a toyota prius or other hybrid cars i'm not sure i'm not positive about that but you can sleep inside with the air conditioning or the heat running all night long without the gas engine idling all night long so this is my prius that i have converted into a camper i made a video of me giving a tour of this i will put a link in the description if you want to watch it basically i took the back seats out i built the sleeping platform that goes right here this is where i sleep at night this is my air mattress and uh yeah if you watch that video then you know that um i'd already described how you can sleep with the ac or heat on all night but here i'm going to go into detail about it a little bit more so here i am inside my prius um this is what it looks like before i go to bed my dog sleeps right here and uh yeah so i can set the air conditioning or the heat anywhere from 65 to 85 degrees from up here here's the controllers up here and um what it does is it will maintain that internal that temperature inside the car in here all night long and the gas engine will only kick on uh on average i've timed it on average about every five to 10 minutes for about 20 to 30 seconds and i'll start with how the air conditioning works so you can set the temperature like i said you can set anywhere from 65 to 85 degrees see there's the temperature i can go all the way up to 85 or all the way down to 65 and it will maintain that temperature and um the way the air conditioning works is uh it runs off the hybrid battery okay the hybrid battery is a very large battery pack in the center of the car and the gas engine charges the hybrid battery so when the gas engine kicks on what it will do see there's the hybrid battery uh it's about see it it's about it's pre it's about a third full right now so when the hybrid battery gets low the gas engine will kick on and it will charge it up to about a third to half full again um with in about 30 seconds it's really impressive it you know it's like a huge jolt of electricity to charge up that big of a battery that quickly but it does it and so basically it's giving you like 10 minutes 5 to 10 minutes worth of electricity in 20 to 30 seconds of the gas engine idling and that's how the ac works and you can run it all night long the gas engine doesn't idle all night long it just you know occasionally kicks on and the heat um the heat is i don't know exactly how the heat works i've had people tell me that um the heat is indeed electric and they were certain about it and then i've had people tell me that it's the way the heat works is it has to heat up the coolant and the coolant cycles through the engine and then it uses that as heat either way um the the heat kicks on about the same amount uh it kicks on every five to ten minutes um for like 20 to 30 seconds and the heat is slightly less efficient you use slightly less gas or slightly more gas in the uh when you use heat and also you know the bigger of a temperature difference than it is outside then the uh the more gas you're going to use and so yeah that's how the climate control feature works it's really great it only uses like a dollars worth of gas a night i would guess maybe even less which is way cheaper than a hotel room or even a campground and i can tell you that people that live in their cars or they live in an rv or a van or anything like that i can tell you that they would love to have this climate control feature it is for those of us that live in our cars this feature is gold it is so nice to have this i mean the hot summer nights like this is one of the reasons i bought a prius it's kind of the main reason my last camper conversion was a subaru like a a regular gas car it was a subaru and um the summer nights i was like stumped i couldn't get cool because it you know summer nights it would be like 80 degrees and i would be in my car and it would be even hotter inside my car than it is outside because you know your your body heat just like reflects and everything i'd have the windows down i would have fans blowing on me and i still couldn't get cool and my dog would be panting all night and um i learned about this climate control feature of a prius and i was like wow that is incredible um and that's why i think the prius is really the best car among other reasons but that's one of the main reasons i think the prius is the best car um for people that live in their car and um a few tips i was going to give is one is you want a carbon monoxide detector one of these on the ceiling i have this mounted on the ceiling um just in case there's an exhaust leak like under your car somewhere this will beep if you know there's any carbon monoxide leaking in the car another thing is uh this little uh space heater that i just bought um the reason i have a space heater i just got this at walmart it was ten dollars at walmart and it's only 250 watts and uh well first the way i'm able to power this is i have a power inverter and the power inverter connects to the 12 volt battery and the hybrid battery charges the 12 volt battery um so basically i can run this all night long and the the the same thing happens where the gas engine will just charge up the hybrid battery and um yeah so the reason i got this is because i wanted to see if it was more gas efficient than the heat um and i to be honest i think it is um it's not going to blow your car out with intense heat by any means but i am really impressed at how well this little thing works um like as soon as you turn it on within like 10 seconds it's nice hot heat coming out and um yeah uh it it appears that the gas engine only kicks on i think about like once every 10 minutes with this thing which is awesome and it kicks on a lot more than that when i set the heat up there and uh yeah i haven't done any official tests on it um you know of seeing which one is more gas efficient but um yeah i'm really impressed with that little heater and i made a video explaining how the prius can be used as a generator if you want to learn more about that i'll put a link to that video in the description if you want to watch it another good thing to do is um whenever uh you're it's a day where there's a lot of uh steam you can see steam coming out of your muffler when the when the engine is running that's usually like on cold days um you can check for exhaust leaks by looking under your car and just checking the uh the catalytic converter uh where it goes all the way and meets the engine like way up at the front and then look at the whole exhaust pipe all the way down to the muffler and if you see any steam coming out anywhere that's an exhaust leak that's something that needs to be fixed it can be an easy fix you can just take it to a muffler shop and they'll you know they'll weld it right right up patch it up right quick and also the other thing i was going to say is i haven't been using the heat ever since i got this i mean i i rarely ever i mean i haven't even been really sleeping with this thing on much and the reason is because i have a zero degree sleeping bag um it's in that red bag in the front seat right now and that thing keeps me plenty warm in any in any climate um i run this thing at night when i am uh in here before i go to bed i'll be doing you know work on my laptop or i'll be watching a movie on my tablet you know and this keeps it nice and warm while i'm hanging out in here and then when i go to bed i usually just turn the car off um i've mainly been running this thing at night just to uh just for my dog because she gets cold and shivers at night i need to get her like a winter coat to help her stay warm at night but uh yeah i rarely i mean i'm starting to not use the heat anymore but the air conditioning i always use during the summer this past summer i used it every night just because it was hot every night and there's nothing there was nothing i could do to stay cool but turn that air conditioning on and when i was using the heat i would set it at uh 65 degrees that was you know i would always go to the lowest setting and then in the summertime i usually keep it at 73 72 degrees i never go any lower than that that was the temperature that i found was like the the minimum comfort level like anything lower than that and you're gonna use a lot more gas and anything higher than that and you're still going to be hot and sweating so yeah 73 72 degrees is what i suggest for the summer so yeah that's pretty much it i think i covered everything that's how the climate control works like i said this might other hybrid cars might do this feature also like the toyota highlander hybrid there's a rav4 hybrid um there's like a honda civic hybrid and you know there's several other hybrids on the market i've heard uh that they do work this way i've heard they don't work this way i don't know for sure because i haven't tested them um but you know obviously the prius definitely does do this and uh yeah i hope you like this video i hope you got something out of it and go ahead and subscribe to this channel if you like this video i plan on making more videos about car camping and prius camping and different adventures i go on so thanks have a good one

Channel: Mountain Springs Adventures

Views: 110,044

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Id: g-aBSsM4V_s

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021