"The heating system doesn't use that much power, its a little more sophisticated than a 2 bar electric heater under the bonnet"

Any electric heater turns electricity into heat. In a closed area like a car you will need the same power to get the same heat. Sophistication can't make heat from nothing. There is the heat pump system but my understanding is that heat pumps ghardly work below freezing.

My guess at 2Kw was based on the fact my 2Kw fan heater takes a while to warm up my Octavia.

Google tells me that a 2011 Nissan Leaf heater uses up to 3Kw

" I do know that the heater in my 2011 LEAF draws a max of 3 kW, on a cold day"

www.quora.com/How-powerful-is-Nissan-Leaf-heating-...p

.Not an issue for a Leaf that is plugged in but an issue for the majority of homes without off street parking.

Edited by IRC on 09/08/2017 at 10:58

Is that standard equipment gb, and does that apply to the earlier Colorado/Prado Landcruisers?

I'm not sure about Collie and Prado grey imports could be any spec imaginable depending on market, it wasn't on my year 2000 petrol Collie (90 series), i suppose its possible they put it on when they common railed the Diesel around 2001, my gut feeling is no but i haven't looked at one.

I'm unsure if the lower spec LC120 (03 on) got the heater, high spec did, again i'm unsure whether they were so fitted from launch, mine being an '05 LC5 has it as did my '07 Hilux Invincible spec.

There is a diagram of the auxilliary belt routing stuck to the air filter, about 4 different versions are shown, only one shows the heater unit.

Easy enough to spot in an underbonnet photo though, the unit sits to the top left about 3" to the left of the oil filler cap, it has a hefty finger guard covering the belt and clutch, with the very similar airon compressor directly underneath, so if its got what looks like two aircon units one above the other then it's got the heater.

Its plumbed in and pumps warm water straight into the cab heater matrix, but almost no one on the Toyota forums knows how they work (seems a reliable system), it clutch starts itself like an aircon unit by pressing the button with a heater emblem (nowhere near the standard heater controls), but you can't judge by that cos lots of Toyota 4x4's have a fast idle feature, that button turns it on and automatically raises the tickover to about 1100 rpm, it cuts itself off when the standard water temp reaches suitable warmth, so you have to remember to turn it off or the revs rise stright to 1100 rpm on the next cold start, don't want that and i tend to let the engine run for 30 seconds or so before giving it fast idle anyway.

Edited by gordonbennet on 09/08/2017 at 18:43