Cabin Pre Heating

[Timothy Nathan]

I have been reading the Manual (in anticipation of getting the car) and I read about a feature that does not appear to be mentioned in the brochure as either standard or optional, which is the ability to heat air going to the windscreen before the engine is warm.

Is this a standard feature, or is it part of the posh air conditioning pack? If the latter is it available as a retrofit?

This is another example of why I am fed up with the salesman who sold me this car. Had he told me about pre-conditioning the cabin, he could have had 500 more of my pounds without a murmur, but he didn't so, not only has he left money on the table, but he has supplied a car which lacks a significant feature I would have wanted.

[nealeb]

I thought that this was a standard feature, although it might be disabled if you are in "efficiency" mode as a fuel-saving measure. Certainly my A6 seems to start pushing out warm air before you would expect the engine to be warm, but that might just be the effect of the quick-warm mode in the engine where it stops water circulation until the engine needs it. Or something - it's difficult to get definitive statements from the Audi documentation.

But see also A8 Tech's comments in another current thread on heating where he mentions the auxiliary heater.

[ianfarnham]

I think its standard -I've got it and it wasnt a special order. you can select when you want the aux heater to function (auto or off) in one of the car set-up dialogues but the air conditioning system needs to be selected on to get any heat out.

[diecastsink]

Reading old topic ... there are two ( at least in 4F, not tested in 4G) heaters: one is an "auxiliary" heater as standard (at least I had) which is an electric heater in windscreen air duct, and it really gives a bit warmer air before engine is warm. There is selection in MMI, which easily allow testing of the feature. Second one is an fuel operated "supplementary" heater (Eberspächer in new models) which is an 1500 pound option. It can work as pre-heater or additinal heater during engine run. It warms up cabin air system, and with VCDS cosing can be used also to warm up engine, which is not set as factory configuration. There may be country specific differencies, though.

With two settings with fuel operated heater called warm and defrost are probably coming with Eber, where is ( in retrofit heaters) two different settings +20 and +23C which is a target cabin temperature in adaptive heater starting time. Eber calculates start of heating based on temperatures, when you set the departure time. This is different than Webasto heaters used before. When you set 23 heater starts earlier than with "20". I suppose ... just have had one petrol and one diesel Ebers before as retrofit installations.