A couple years ago, last time I got a new vehicle, it came with a remote starter. I didn’t ask for it. It wasn’t a big selling point. But I will admit it was handy at times. I could start my car and warm it up before I got in. Great idea on really cold mornings, right?
Wrong.
I already knew it wasn’t good for the environment, having a car sitting around idling. But I didn’t do it often. Probably only a handful of times. Largely because I felt guilty letting my car warm up. But it was good for the car to warm the engine up before driving somewhere, right?
Wrong again.
Seems that was true, once upon a time, back when they had such a thing as a carburetor. In those days, it was good to let your engine warm up a bit before driving.
Not so, these days. The internal combustion engine of today doesn’t need to warm up, since it no longer has a carburetor. These things are equipped with fuel injectors which don’t need to warm up. In fact, it’s bad for the engine to run more than a few seconds before being driven.
So apparently, just before some bright person came up with the idea of a remote car starter to warm up your car, some other bright person was inventing the fuel injection system which meant you didn’t have to warm your car up. In fact, it was a bad idea to warm your car up. I may not have the time line exactly right, but that’s the rough idea.
What I really needed was not a remote car starter, it was heated seats. And maybe a heated steering wheel. And if someone could come up with a heated windshield to melt the ice, I want one of those, too. As long as I can do all that without starting the car.
