80 years ago, Volkswagen solved the problem of warming up drivers of air-cooled Beetles with an auxiliary gas heater. Today, Audi might be about to use the same idea to combat range anxiety. CarBuzz has just found a new patent for a liquid-fueled heater designed specifically for electric vehicles.
The clever solution would trade some extra emissions part of the year for improved range on the toughest days.
Your Next EV Could Have External Combustion Power
2012 Kia Soul – shiftlock release, seat heater controlKia
Electric vehicle technology gets better every year, but though the battery packs can handle the cold better than ever, they still have to obey certain laws. One of those says that when it’s cold out, you lose range. Some of it is caused by the chemical reactions in the cells slowing down, and some of it is caused by the heater the vehicle runs to warm up the cabin. You can pre-condition, and you can use heated seats, but you’re still going to see the result on the charge gauge.
Audi’s newest patent proposes a very old fix. It would add a burner and heat exchanger to the cooling system used to cool and heat the car.
Adding a burner to the system makes the EV’s heater work more like a conventional combustion car’s. A gas car uses waste engine heat and pumps hot coolant through the car’s heater core where it warms up the air. This system would replace the car’s engine with a small burner unit.
In the patent, Audi says that it could use liquid, gas, or solid fuels. So you might not need an extra small gas tank, you might use something like the methanol gel used for food warmers at a buffet or the small propane canisters that fuel camp stoves. Audi suggests wood pellets for sustainability, but the possibilities are near endless. It could be something available at every gas station today, or, since it’s Audi, it could be some sort of proprietary branded fuel you have to get at a dealer.
What’s The Pay-Off In Real-World Terms?
2025 Audi RS e-tron GT performance drifting in snow.Tobias Sagmeister/Audi
Every EV owner knows that running the heater can eat up 20% of your range or more, depending on the heater and the temperature. This solution would give you that range back, and it could even be used to warm the battery until the reactions inside the pack get going.
Audi suggests it would be run automatically, and could be used to heat the car before you drive off as well as based on heating needs while you’re on the move. Heating the battery ahead of a trip would also be advantageous if you’re not parked plugged in.
It could also be used as a parking heater. Audi suggests that it would work “for example during an overnight stay.” Small parking heaters are common in smaller camper vans, using the fuel from the main tank instead of running the engine all night. Not many people car camp in their Audis, but Volkswagen ID. Buzz owners might love it.
CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters
Cabin shot of a Audi S E-Tron GTAudi
Burning gas to warm your EV sounds silly, but efficiency is a spectrum. Some electricity comes from fossil fuels, for example, but it’s still more efficient to use that than to burn gas in an engine.
A solution like this could be perfect to help with EV adoption in places that get extreme cold. It could also help when owners need to go on a longer than normal trip. Use the heat pump or grid heater on shorter-drive days, fire up the burner for a little while on that road trip. The burner wouldn’t need to be on all the time, just short bursts.
EV owners report that range anxiety goes away once you live with an electric car. But a feature like this could help convince hesitant owners, and make life easier for those living in places where winter is life or death, not sweater weather.
Patent filings do not guarantee the use of such technology in future vehicles and are often used exclusively as a means of protecting intellectual property. Such a filing cannot be construed as confirmation of production intent.
Source: US Patent & Trademark Office
