It is cold you know, especially you Yankees and Canadians know, so I bought one of the oil filled heaters.
Electric Vehicle Cheater Heater
I plug it in at night, in the back floorboard, turn it on low. When I get up in the morning the insides of the Saturn are nice and warm and stay that way until a couple of miles from work (15 miles). I used the oil type because it hopefully will not catch on fire, unattended and all. I could install a timer (probably have one in the closet).
Now the Saturn has already has an electric liquid heater. See
Electric Hot Water (Liquid) Heater for details. This heater uses lots of energy and it takes a few minutes to heat up, so I started to add some heat with the oil heater. Most days I do not even turn on the electric heater now.
Added info from a email
Question:
See you used the oil – type heater…
can your hot water system work or does it take too long to heat? I
mean can you plug the tank heater into power when charge is going to
prewarm car?
Dave
Answer:
About the heaters-
The Liquid heater system puts out good but uses lots of energy. It takes about the same time as an ICE vehicle heater, or even faster and hotter, but there is one difference.
On your ICE you go out and start it up, go inside and return in 5 or 15 minutes when the heater is starting to warm up. Then you drive off with the heater already somewhat warm. I cannot do that with my EV and get any mileage out of a charge. So I wake up, eat breakfast jump in the EV (after unpluggin), immediately drive off with a toasty warm vehicle. If it is below 20f I may turn on the heater also, or if I forget to use the Cheater Heater I run the Liquid heater. Liquid heater runs off of 144 volt DC; not setup to run off of the AC, but could be.