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Comment by tracker1 | Hacker News Reader

Living in Phoenix, anything that helps is welcome... I've thought that having even a small solar panel enabling the AC fans to circulate air while parked would help a lot.

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One of my favorite hybrid vehicle hacks is that you can (using very little gas) pre-cool your vehicle thanks to electrically-driven HVAC, kWHs, and an onboard generator (engine). When my power goes out, I can also run the refrigerator and computers.

Specifically from my Toyota Camry (all 2025+ can be made AWD, too — I traded in my turbocharged Subaru). I am not an ad/bot, but will disclose that I do own TM (in addition to believing in their tech/drivetrain/hybrids above all others).

Toyota’s drivetrains are quite literally 10 years behind Tesla’s. Regarding preconditioning, Tesla’s heat pump with its octovalve can move energy between battery/motors/cabin/the outside, depending on what needs cooling/heating and what has an excess.

From the user’s standpoint, your car be scheduled or can monitor your calendar to always be preconditioned before you enter :)

This claim sounds bogus. A hybrid drivetrain is significantly more complex than a BEV drivetrain. Tesla certainly has the edge on batteries, but a battery is not a drivetrain.

Complexity itself doesn't make it better, if anything it makes it worse. They’re also worse because they’re slower, heavier, less efficient, more prone to failure, and take up more space. Don’t get me started on the toyota mirai fiasco.

My not-very-new 2018 Toyota Prius Prime also has a heat pump (for the same reason EVs do - though it's a PHEV - if it's running on battery it doesn't have any waste heat to dump inside the car for heating the humans).

Sure, but it just moves heat between the outside air and the cabin. Does not move heat between vehicle components as needed the way Tesla’s octovalve does.

An electric car can pre-cool without affecting range because you generally pre-cool off of wall power rather than battery power.

And it'd be interesting to compare how long a full gas tank on your hybrid can run a refrigerator in an emergency compared to a full battery on an EV. Your gas tank has more energy, but the battery is more efficient...

I ran two fridges and a Mac Pro (notoriously power-hungry) for 40 hours on two gallons of regular gasoline (and never had to move the vehicle the entire duration). The only caveat was I could only power on the computer when both fridges were off (or else the inverter, not original to the Toyota, will enter an `overload` state).

I use about 1kWh per 8h of fridge. So two fridges for 40 hours would be about 15% of battery, and 2 gallons is about 15% of your tank.

But average power usage of your Mac Pro would have been a lot higher since it would use power a lot more steadily than the fridge. And unplugging the fridge for a bit doesn't substantially change its power consumption.

So you did better than me by however amount your Mac Pro used.

Biggest advantage I had was I didn't have to open my garage door while it was powering the fridge.

If you have remote start you can leave the AC on when you park, and then when you're walking through the parking lot you can have the car running and the AC on for a few minutes. It does honestly help in the Arrakis-like weather of Phoenix.

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