# Gen 2 Cruze Diesel have electric heating?



## LiveTrash (May 24, 2015)

powermax said:


> It's starting to get cold here in Canada and almost immediately after I start the car in the morning I get warm air. Does it have electric heating?


Considering the air is warm almost immediately, I would tend to think yes. My Gen 1 Diesel has it so I would assume Gen 2 has it as well. The Diesel engine takes longer to heat up and in general doesn't produce as much heat as a gasoline engine and therefore is a good candidate for electrical heating assist. My friend who has a gas Cruze commented on how the air gets warm so quick in my car.


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## DrKlahn (Feb 10, 2014)

I don't know if it has electric assist, but the new motor heats up a LOT faster. Probably does if you are feeling it immediately. But I used to have to wait 7-10 miles for the Gen1 motor to get up to temp and the Gen2 is probably less than 5. Very welcome change for us cold climate owners.


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## 91794 (Mar 25, 2015)

Yes the electric heater is listed as a feature in multiple places, for the diesel 2017 cruze. 

The diesel cruze has a bunch more electric heaters than the gas cruze. 
One for passenger compartment air, and at least one for the diesel fuel. 

Check the manual full fuse listing to see all the interesting electrical things going on - and you can hear them after you turn the car off - it sounds like R2D2 . 

My 2011 1.8L gas cruze did not make R2D2 noises after I shut it off. none of my VW TDIs did either. But i like it because R2D2 is good. 

Having a car that makes random Darth Vader noises would be bad, but R2D2 noises = good.


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## johnmo (Mar 2, 2017)

eli said:


> Check the manual full fuse listing to see all the interesting electrical things going on - and you can hear them after you turn the car off - it sounds like R2D2 .
> 
> My 2011 1.8L gas cruze did not make R2D2 noises after I shut it off. none of my VW TDIs did either. But i like it because R2D2 is good.


My 2009 TDI did make some of the same noises after shutdown. Not sure what it's exercising, but there are definitely some things cycling under the hood and around the fuel tank.

The Cruze does warm up a lot faster than the TDI did.


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## 91794 (Mar 25, 2015)

Cool re the 2009 TDI. I don't recall such noises from my fleet of pre-2007 VW TDIs. 
maybe the noises are related to recirculating fuel... or some kind of post-shutdown cheating in the VW case.

btw, was thinking - the DEF should be considered fuel - it seems to meet the definition close enough. 
To be accurate, we need to include DEF included in all the mpg reports. looking at diesel fuel economy alone gives an inaccurate mpg because it doesn't include the DEF mpg . 

This should be easy - we can calculate and use a sort of scale-factor to convert the diesel-mpg to the total mpg for the vehicle. The real mpg will be less than 100% of the diesel mpg. 3.8 gallons of DEF last maybe 10000 miles, at most? So that's 2500 miles per gallon of DEF. 50 miles per gallon of diesel. So the DEF is reducing the mpg by merely 1/50th, according to that calculation. So its on the order of 1 over 10^1 . 

Bottom line by my rough calculations: 
reduce anyone's calculated reported diesel mpg by between 1/50th and 1/10th to take into account the DEF mpg. 1/25th is probably a nice ballpark. So that means always subtract about 2 mpg to see the real mpg, any time someone reports diesel-only mpg for the chevy cruze diesel.


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## blackbird (Nov 6, 2017)

The newer GM engines also have a very "right sized" coolant system, using the minimum amount of coolant needed for peak cooling requirements. Less coolant volume combined with things like active grill shutters help newer cars warm up much faster. Some designs can even control coolant flow to the block and cylinder head separately for the faster warm-up needed to improve emissions.

With the first gen Cruze diesel I've never had any complaints about engine warm up and interior heater performance, even in some pretty harsh winter mornings. One thing to note is the stock coolant temp gauge in the instrument cluster is a "dummy" style gauge that's not much better than an "idiot light" (i.e. flashing warning light). Because of this you can't use it to accurately see how long the engine takes to get up to operating temp and would need to use a scan tool. I'd have to look at the service manual for the thresholds, but it looks to slowly climb up to the normal gauge point well before full warm-up and stick there unless you severely start to overheat.


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## 91794 (Mar 25, 2015)

its been cold recently and I've been impressed at the fast warmup compared to my previous fleet of pre-2007 no-DPF no-DEF VW TDIs. 

With Chevrolet Cruze Diesel+DEF with DPF, if one selects the heat to max the electric heater may turn on. Sometimes i select it, other times not, to see the difference... IIRC, my 2006 jetta TDI may have had a weakass electric heater. Not sure. 

so far , the coolant temp gauge seems accurate and maybe properly linear based on the output air temp from heater when electric-heater-assist is not on. Or maybe its been massaged to look nice and smooth and linear by software (Ew.) .


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## DrKlahn (Feb 10, 2014)

eli said:


> Cool re the 2009 TDI. I don't recall such noises from my fleet of pre-2007 VW TDIs.
> maybe the noises are related to recirculating fuel... or some kind of post-shutdown cheating in the VW case.
> 
> btw, was thinking - the DEF should be considered fuel - it seems to meet the definition close enough.
> ...


I think you meant to put this in the other thread. But DEF consumption varies with driving habits. In my case I added two of these boxes (on sale for about $9) over 2.5 years (45,000 miles) on my Gen1:

https://www.fleetfarm.com/detail/peak-bluedef-diesel-exhaust-fluid/0000000242938?Ntt=diesel exhaust

So that's 5 gallons in 45,000 miles. Granted 99% of my driving is at 60 MPH on 2 lane roads to get to work. So it's probably a best case. But DEF isn't a big factor in operation cost for a commuter. I spent more on anti-gel prevention in the 4 years I owned the Gen1 than DEF. And that wasn't much. I think 2-3 bottles of Powersave white @$8 a bottle.


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## MP81 (Jul 20, 2015)

We go through about a bottle (2.5 gal) of DEF roughly every 4500 miles. So less than a dollar every 350 miles (at $12.21, with tax, per 2.5 gallon jug). Negligible, honestly. Less than $40 a year.


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## johnmo (Mar 2, 2017)

DEF is entirely negligible, I think. In the first 20,000 miles, I've spent exactly $15.85 on DEF, though the dealer did fill it once for free and I'm less than 1,000 miles from needing to fill it again. So, even if I doubled my DEF cost to account for the freebie and the next fill, I'm still around $30-ish for over 20k miles of driving. That's approximately $0.002 per mile (rounding UP) for DEF.

I get 650-700 miles per tank of diesel with an average fill-up cost of about $32. Assuming 4 DEF fills (factory fill, dealer freebie, and the 2 I've done) the DEF cost per tank looks to be about an additional $1.30 or an additional 4% per tank. Meh.

YMMV. I get my DEF for cheap at a truck stop.


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