Is It Better To Warm Up Your Car Or Drive It Cold In Winter?

Not everyone has space in their garage to park a car. Many homes use their garage as storage and play areas, so the cars live outdoors. Winter brings a challenge to morning drivers.

Why Do Drivers Insist on Warming Up Their Cars When Some Experts Say Not To?

Not only is a nice warm car more comfortable to drive in, it’s safer as well. Not infrequently have I seen drivers literally shaking and blowing on their fingers at a stoplight. If this shivering is strong enough, legs and hands can get twitchy. How is that safe driving?

Clearing frost off the windshield is a daily adventure. Regardless of the proficiency of the person scraping, or the quality of the apparatus used, there is still fog on the glass. At some point, the car must be warmed in order to see through the windshield and operate the vehicle safely.

Why Do Experts Say You Shouldn’t Warm Up Your Car?

Why is it that everyone hates for a car to be warmed up? Granted, leaving your keys in a car as it idles begs for your car to be stolen, but remote start doesn’t help when Family Handyman says that wasting gas is more important than fingers so numb they can’t feel the steering wheel.

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Do these people all have extra storage space in their houses and use their garages to park their cars? Well, the wealthy elitists can judge all they like, but some of us don't have the garage luxury others have. If we have a garage at all, we use it to store food we buy in bulk to feed our families, or for our ping pong tables, exercise equipment and drum sets.

Newer engines are ready to go within a half minute of starting, but they aren’t anywhere near warm. Perhaps a happy medium between 30 seconds and 30 minutes can be found? Maybe give the car long enough to get the window defogged as you scrape the windshield.

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5 Minutes. Let’s give the world a general number of 5 minutes. That’s time to scrape the windshield, or pull off the windshield cover and put it away, shovel snow away from behind the car (you can shovel the rest after work if it doesn’t melt), and let the seat warmer keep you from chattering your teeth so hard you have to go to the dentist.