Not for £900. Our current Soul EV does have a heat pump, but our annual EV leccy bill is under £100 on Go Faster / solar charging. I can’t be sure how much more leccy we’d have to buy to cover the lower winter efficiency, but let’s say it’s another £20 a year. If we kept the car for 5 years the heat pump is only going to have saved about £100 in leccy.

I can only see this being worthwhile if someone has a winter commute that is marginal on range and the extra heat pump efficiency would come into play. Even then, there is pre heating, heated seats and heated wheel to mitigate using the heater on the move a little less, and of course the 4 trim has rear heated seats so everyone should have a warm bum

 

I don't have one on mine, and after one winter I can't say I miss it much. It might be a different story if I was in the habit of making long trips in the winter, if the extra power consumption meant an extra stop to charge or if the cost of the extra electricity was significant. I don't have a lot of heat on in the car anyway and set it to 19C, preferring to dress appropriately for cold weather.

PS I don't have heated seats or steering wheel either (Niro 2)!

 

I suggest the heat pump is less important in view of the size of the battery. My first electric car was a Nissan Leaf and I think the heat pump really made a difference to its limited range. Unless range is critical to you I do not think the heat pump is so important.

 

Thanks for the feedback, I'll be going with 'no' on the heat pump I think.

Placing the order on Monday.

 

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Many (most even?) pay many hundreds extra just for a different paint colour. I would class the heat pump option way above the colour. For me I would get it, no debate (in fact I did with my '4' as opposed to the '3' which didn’t have the heat pump. The heat pump was the deciding factor for me paying £1100 more! for the '4' and I’m so glad I did that now).

Also, as it is effectively an air source heat pump, it actually works best in our less severe typical climate. ASHP, efficiencies and usefulness drop wildly in colder climes such as Norway, Finland etc. There has to be enough heat still in the air to suck out and amplify for the heating purpose. I suspect in those countries in deep sub zero winter, the heat pump is virtually useless and the PTC resistive heater will be doing all the work.

It’s hard to quantify the energy savings it gives, but I’m certainly impressed with how little energy the heater in mine seems to use. I’m very glad I chose to get it and I would get it again in the future without any hesitation. Peter

 

Also, as it is effectively an air source heat pump, it actually works best in our less severe typical climate. ASHP, efficiencies and usefulness drop wildly in colder climes such as Norway, Finland etc. There has to be enough heat still in the air to suck out and amplify for the heating purpose. I suspect in those countries in deep sub zero winter, the heat pump is virtually useless and the PTC resistive heater will be doing all the work.

The reason it makes more sense in Norway and similar climates is that unlike most other heat-pumps, it is not just using air as the heat source, it is scavenging heat from the battery and other heat producing areas of the car.

Glad you are finding it useful though, but the claimed 19% reduction in cold weather range loss that they calculated for the EV6 isn't really enough to justify the additional £900 expense for me, an extra 10 miles range or so isn't make or break for the majority of my journeys.

 

Isnt it standard on the 4?

 

Not on the new model, it is a £900 option...

 

Get it. You might save more than £900 over the lifetime due to range improvements.

 

With my usage profile it would not be worth the £900

For some it may work

 

The claims come from Hyundai/Kia, I can't figure out exactly when different versions of their solution were released into production vehicles, so no idea if the one you currently have does actually scavenge from all the sources they list, but here is a 2020 news piece from them...

Hyundai and Kia Turn Up EV Efficiency with New Heat Pump Technology

www.hyundai.news

I had a 4+ which had a heat pump, and it's one of the things I really miss having changed car recently to a model that doesn't have a heat pump.

My experience is that if you do lots of short trips during the winter in stop start traffic, the Ioniq 5 efficiency is terrible without a heat pump. In the same conditions my 4+ was noticeably better. In the summer the difference is hardly noticeable between the two cars.

 

19% gain of range is absolute BS.

It's more like 5% on longer trips. @stageshoot did a post about it a while ago where he also mentioned this.

It may be a bit more on short trips (since a resistive heater takes more power to warm up the cabin) but who cares? You charge the car overnight anyway.

 

My e-Niro has the heat pump and I have not yet driven the car in the winter. I live in the south with green winters. Extreme freezing temperatures are rare.
Just this morning the temperature was 4 degrees and I got into in a warm car. The heat pump also gives an even temperature inside the car.All e-Niros here have the heat pump.
There are only 2 trims available here. The standard and the exclusive
My car cost me 42,000 euros including rustproofing,(Mercasol) sunroof, winter and summer alloys and tyres, rubber mats, leather seats and both charging cables.
Another advantage of the heat pump will be a more effective pre-heating of the battery.

 

Maybe a bit off-topic, but all EVs in the UK technically do have heat pumps. The fact that EV makers charge a fortune for adding a $50 reversing valve and very little else to the refrigeration system to make it heat the interior too is pure craziness!
While demand is vastly greater than supply, EV companies will continue to pake the tiss.

 

Maybe a bit off-topic, but all EVs in the UK technically do have heat pumps. The fact that EV makers charge a fortune for adding a $50 reversing valve and very little else to the refrigeration system to make it heat the interior too is pure craziness!

It has occurred to me that there's already a heat pump for cooling, but do cars with heat pump for heating really use the same one with the hot and cold connections reversed?

 

Ha! @Indian just beat me to it. I won't upload another, but mine (MY22 Niro 2 LR) is like that too.

 

Thanks for the picture - very interesting. I'd welcome anybody to do their own research to see exactly what the differences are, and should cost in an EV though, in relation to the makers' extra option charges.

 

Better put the £900 towards a heat pump in your house where with cheap overnight electricity you will save a lot of money to pay for the slightly poorer mileage!

 

Trouble is with a heat-pump for the house you need cheap electricity all day, not just over night.

We are not yet ready to move away from gas heating, but it will happen eventually I'm sure.

 

A home heatpump only has to hear or cool, in a car there is a requirement for both heating and also simultaneously A/C for dehumidification, so possibly two separate systems may be required, or complex systems to enable the air to be cooled and dehumidified then heated secondly.

 

or complex systems to enable the air to be cooled and dehumidified then heated secondly.

The logic behind using both A/C and heat for demisting is to cool the air to condense the water vapour out of it, then heat it up to bring it back to a temperature where its relative humidity is now really low.
That can be done by passing the air through the cold and then the hot heat exchanger of a single heat pump, so it doesn't necessarily need two pumps.

 

On a side note from further up North, all Niro EV's sold in Finland have a heat pump as standard. Pretty wise decision, considering the winters here.

 

I don’t have a heat pump on my existing e-Niro and wish I had as the heating in winter is not very efficient.

 

How much range do you reckon you lose due to the resistive heater?

 

Having this heat-pump-or-not dilemma currently. The "Niro EV 4 MY23" will be a 4 year lease but we'd have to pay the full price for the heat pump, so £900 over the 4 years (£18.75/mo). Considering we won't recoup anything in lower depreciation and we'd only benefit the minimal energy cost savings for a maximum of 4 years anyway, it seems stupid to get the heat pump from a purely cost perspective.

However, that's only one factor. Another factor is range. We currently have a MY20 4 trim with a heat pump so we'd be losing range in the winter. Lots of different calculations out there but it sounds as if ~10 miles lost over a ~200 mile trip is a decent estimate in 0-5 C weather. The new Niro has ~3 miles extra range supposedly, so call it ~7 miles lost overall. Our longest trip that we expect to complete in a single charge is ~215 miles, so this could make the difference...maybe? We'd likely only do this trip once a year in winter though so, again, it seems silly to get a heat pump just for that.

Yet another factor is time-to-heat. We'll be doing daily short trips so the lack of a heat pump will presumably mean the cabin will warm up more slowly? It'll surely mean more energy will be used for these trips also (but definitely not £18.75/mo worth of energy!). Maybe this can be mitigated with pre-conditioning but that assumes the car is plugged in each night (or that we remember to manually do it each morning).

I think on balance the heat pump is not worth it, but interested if anyone else decided differently?

 

Yet another factor is time-to-heat. We'll be doing daily short trips so the lack of a heat pump will presumably mean the cabin will warm up more slowly?

There is no heat to scavenge when you begin the first journey of the day so if anything the non-heat pump version may be quicker to heat in those circumstances as it isn't going to try and get heat elsewhere.

 

I think one of the big things to consider is the added residual value of a Used MY23 with or without a Heat Pump
In the case of a Lease deal where you are paying the whole £900… its too high a cost IMO

 

I placed an order for a Niro EV '4' with a heat pump. My thinking at the time was

• cash purchase
• intent to keep the car for many years
• residual value when I do eventually sell the car
• reduced energy consumption (along with using heated seats first in winter, and ventilated seats first in summer)
• potential for marginally more overall mileage on longer journeys (as one of my regular trips is close to the real-world 250 miles)

Whether any of that pans out in reality or was a £900 chocolate teapot decision, I won't know for some time yet as still waiting for my car to be built.

 

Nobody has mentioned the complexity of the heat pump and it’s potential reliability. Having a heat pump in a car which is subject to movement and potential water/ salt water ingress seems to me to be completely different to a domestic heat pump setup where it does not move and 50% of it is inside the house. Cars are complicated enough so I decided to not add the heat pump on my NIro 4 order.
I would think it is very difficult to prove it’s benefit without a scientifically controlled experiment to compare like with like. Everybody who spends £900 on something is going to say it works well….probably.

 

Nobody has mentioned the complexity of the heat pump and it’s potential reliability. Having a heat pump in a car which is subject to movement and potential water/ salt water ingress seems to me to be completely different to a domestic heat pump setup where it does not move and 50% of it is inside the house.…..

I agree and must admit I’m totally dreading the day when anything goes wrong with the heat pump HVAC system. I honestly don’t believe stealerships (or anyone else) would have the faintest clue where to start fixing it. It would probably be another of these reported nightmares where they take the car and keep it months on end whist fiddling about and randomly ordering special parts from S Korea, that may or may not even fix it! I hope it never happens. Peter

 

My friends Fiat 500 had a failure of the windscreen washer pump. Ten pounds for a new pump and £150 to get at it as it is inaccessible without removing the the front bumper.
” They never go wrong sir“…. sorry off topic.

 

Just realised the £18.75/mo figure I gave earlier was pre-tax so it'd really be £11.48/mo for the heat pump. Given there isn't a single trip we do where it'd make the difference in range, even in winter, we've decided to forego it. On the one edge-case trip we can always do destination granny charging. Maybe we'll regret it but we'll see!

 

Hi, I’m new to the forum, having placed an order for a Niro EV 4 on 13th Sept. Just checked the spec sheets on the Kia uk website and it now states the heat pump is standard on all the EV models! Hope I’m reading this right (possibly added to compensate for binning the HK audio system?), but have e-mailed my dealer for confirmation that if it is correct I’ll get it included on my build at no extra cost.

 

Hi not sure which site you are looking at but I just had a look and it still seems to be showing the option of with or without the heat pump for £900. I bought my level 4 with because certainly on the last model it improved the residual value. I also have experienced some wintery conditions and along with a good set of all weather tyres worked well for me for 3 years. But it is down to personal need/ preferences / finance. With or without it is still a great car. I may be alone but I wasn’t too fussed about the HK which I have got on mine. But again might help residuals

 

I did check again and the HP is “ticked” as standard (so is the V2L adapter for all EV’s), but these spec sheets seem a bit of a mess - according to them, the EV 4 doesn’t have a rear armrest or a 6 speaker audio system! I decided that £900 wasn’t worth it for my use, but if they are giving it away free, I’ll have it! Not heard back from dealer yet, so I’ll have to wait and see.