We truly live in magical times. I mean, we’re actually living in the amazing future that our parents’ generation, on the whole, predicted. We have computers that we can carry in our pockets that will connect us to anywhere on the globe (with the exception of North Korea) and yet don’t require those pockets to be comically huge or have their own power outlets. We have both slow cookers and fast cookers! And the porn! We have porn that you don’t need to invest in a trench coat, or even leave the house, to obtain. Or so I have heard.
Our cars are not immune to this advancement of future-i-ness either. We have GPS and ASB and SRS among a slew of other fancy and futuristic acronyms, half of which are probably just made up and don’t mean anything. We also have the convenience of remote-starting for our cars, which in my mind is one of the more questionable advances in automotive technology.
Now, I don’t have remote starting on any of my cars, nor do I know anyone who does, but I understand it’s popular in places where getting into a warm car in the morning might make the difference between making it to work safely and being defrosted by apes 10,000 years in the still-future future. Considering that all apes smell funky and that some of them like to fling their own poo, I can see how starting the car – and the heater – from the comfort of your ape-free living room could be a desirable ambition. What do you think, are remote starters a cool feature – especially when it gets really cold – or is it just something else to go wrong?
Image: Benchmark Auto
Hooniverse Asks: Remote Start- Cool Feature or Needless Complication?
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46 responses to “Hooniverse Asks: Remote Start- Cool Feature or Needless Complication?”
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Has there ever been such a digitally controlled masterpiece that hasn’t been hacked and abused? I don’t see myself as a nasty conservative, but when it comes to cloud-data-storage, remote-car-anything and the internet of things, I think we are opening our little lives to a huge potential for desaster.
What is common around here are plugin electrical motorwarmers (connected to a timer, if you will). Remote controlled engine warmers and timed engine warmers are old hat, too – the same goes for the cabin. There’s really no need to actually start the engine before you enter the car.
http://www.cdn.tv2.no/multimedia/TV2/archive/01026/Motorvarmer_1026949a.jpg-
When it is properly cold more than the engine needs to warm up.
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When I lived in a climate like you described, I had a ’77 Volvo 242. The choke was a delicate thing, I was always afraid to drown out the valves. Annoying start of the day!
But most people left their cars running outside the shop as well as in the morning to achieve a warm cabin. Worked fine. A lot of people had electrical or gas based heaters that warmed up both engine and cabin (even though it mostly worked out as a cabin defrost in -30).
So, yes, it’s possibleto achieve the same ends without remote start of the engine.-
Possible, yes. But does require more ass freezing than one might prefer.
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Just a comment – many of the current remote start systems are simple radio frequency transmissions to the car (exactly the same as remote key fob door unlock). They don’t use cloud or internet of things. That’s what I have, and in Houston’s heat, I love it. Some of the new systems are internet enabled so you can start from your phone, and those do indeed open up some interesting concerns about hacking. But personally I’d still take the risk for the convenience it provides.
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Radio frequencies are also in danger of being copied – but I get your point. 🙂
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If you live in the land of ice and snow it is definitely a desirable invention, because its the difference between dragging your sorry butt outside at -40 and leaving the keys in the car while it warms up and not having to do those things.
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If you live in the land of ice and snow, there’s no reason not to have some sort of pre-heating system in your car.
The cheapest way to go is to install an electric block heater kit with a space heater inside the car. Almost all cars have them here in Finland. The other popular solution is to install a petrol (or diesel) powered “parking heater”, a small furnace that burns fuel and heats the coolant. This heats up the engine nicely, and the cabin too via the normal HVAC. These are usually remote controlled via RF or cellular. Best accessory I’ve ever bought. Coming out to a warm and toasty car on the supermarket parking lot is a beautiful thing.-
Block heaters don’t really deal with the reason I let it run for a bit, which is minor controls need to thaw out too. I’ve never owned a vehicle that doesn’t need everything running for a bit in order to thaw out the clutch.
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It doesn’t get colder than -30°C here very often but I haven’t really had any problems in 15 years of driving. My cars have always started on command and nothing has ever been frozen except for the occasional door lock. I love pre-heaters mainly because getting in to a warm and defrosted car beats having to scrape your windows every fucking morning.
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That’s one thing I don’t miss from both street parking and my old Hyundai Accent, when on the coldest days it basically had no power assist on the steering for about 5 minutes.
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Especially if the remote start also turns on the seat heaters.
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I have one in my 4Runner, it was installed by the previous owner. Everything would be fine and dandy if the car didn’t occasionally start by itself at random times. I was able to duplicate it and it starts by a sequence of pressing the lock/unlock button on the key, not the remote start key chain.
When it starts, the factory remote lock/unlock buttons are disabled and doors need to be unlocked via a key. Once that’s done, turning the ignition on and off does nothing… a brake pedal has to be pressed to shut the engine off.
Needless to say, that thing is coming out.-
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an aftermarket remote system than wasn’t Lucasian in its ability to screw with an electrical system.
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My wife’s car has remote start. It has a feature for colder climates whereby the car will start itself when temperatures get below freezing, run the engine for 10 minutes, then shut off until interior temperature gets below freezing again. For places where block heaters are necessary but electrical outlets are inconvenient, I guess this is a good thing, but we haven’t had the need, fortunately.
Where it does help is in the summertime. When interior temps in a parked car hit 180 degrees, its nice to let the air conditioner have a head start.-
Wait. The automatic warmup when below freezing temperatures is guided/limited by a timer, right? So it wouldn’t do this all day…
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You have to actively put it into this mode with a series of pressing buttons, and it exits the mode when you drive away or switch it off. So, yes, you could make it do this all day, assuming the temperature stayed cold enough and you didn’t drive the car.
I haven’t lived anywhere really cold since before I was old enough to drive, but if you are trying to prevent your engine from freezing, and the remote starter operated by a temperature sensor, how would a timer be of any benefit? Or did you mean the timer that gives it 10 minutes of runtime?-
I was more thinking about a timer that would permanently cut off this function after a while. Imagine the amounts of gas used to do…nothing really. Why would you want to heat a car you’re not planning on driving within, say, half an hour?
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I don’t know. Our remote starter is for cooling the car, so this is a feature we have never used.
Still, it costs only whatever it takes to add a few extra lines of programming. You comment below about aftermarket heaters costing three thousand dollars. That buys a lot of gas.
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I’ve never had one. I’ve never needed one. There are definitely times when it would have been nice to have, though.
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Sometimes I think one would be cool, but I really don’t think I need it. One thing I would like to have is heated mirrors, and other Tacoma owners have added them (swapping in Highlander heated mirror glass is part of the procedure).
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You asked if it’s a “cool feature” – literally YES! In Houston where daily temps hit 90 and above for months, it’s either remote start, or go open all the windows, start the car and AC, and wait outside the car in the heat for a few minutes until surfaces are cool enough to touch. Without it, I can’t touch my steering wheel and the hot seats burn my wife’s legs when she wears those cute sun dresses (which I will do most anything to encourage). Remote start is a very “cool feature” in my book.
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It was nice the summer I worked in Florida when one of my rental cars (a Lexus RX350) had a remote start. I could activate it from my office and have a cool car when I left work 10 minutes later.
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That’s another thing: How come there’s still no feature to mirror out the windows when the ignition’s off? A lot of heat could be reflected this way. An added bonus to the convenience would be the preservation of interior materials.
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I too have had this thought.
Are you thinking more of an “analog” system, where sunshades come down/up from the bottom/top of the window sill, or more a “digital” system where the class itself mirrors (like auto-tinting sunglasses)?
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Auto-tinting would definitely be cool! Some kind of nano-coat (obviously, ha!) that can be turned on by just turning the HVAC off, for example. An analog system could have all kinds of troubles, and it might screw up aerodynamics even in retracted form.
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People are strange.
I had a customer at the Toyota/Hummer store who bought numerous cars from us, all with remote start. He loved the idea of a warm/cold car when he got into it. Regardless of how I felt about it, I would sell them to him for every car.
He decided when the Hummer H3 came out to get one instead of the new 4Runner because he could get it with a stick.
I told him no problem, I can get your car for you. Then came the kicker, he wanted an auto-start.
Manual transmissions almost universally require the driver to step o the clutch to start the car, so in order to get an auto-start in a manual you need a clutch lockout. They exist.
We wouldn’t sell it to him because it’s just not a good idea. Our owner was not a fan of being sued and had a mandate that no auto-starts would ever be put in manual cars.
Bob didn’t like this. he understood our concerns, but still wanted his auto-start. Since we were a dealer with essentially the largest inventory in the Northeast, he still bought his car from us, and spoke to the installer we worked with to have the auto-start put in at his home later. Scotty, our installer who ra an outside company, complied and Bob had his auto-start with a big huge waiver he signed saying not to leave the car in gear.
4 months later I get a call from Scotty. He says, “Bob is in the market for a new car, you should call him.”
I knew what he meant.
I called Bob, he had just come home from his across-the street neighbor’s house. Apparently Bob’s child had been playing with the keys and activated auto-start. Bob had left it in reverse. the car would engage the starter, buck backwards and stall. The system would continue to try to restart knowing it had stalled, so the process would repeat. He had gotten a call from his neighbors that his SUV was trying to enter their house and was constantly restarting ad trying again with the doors locked so they couldn’t turn it off.
So to your question. No I don’t like auto-start. But I drive a manual transmission, so i have my reasons.-
There’s a proper and safe way to install a remote start on nearly any vehicle, manual trans or not. What had been done for bob was clearly not the proper or safe way
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I can only go with what I know. The system for the Hummer H3 said explicitly to not leave your car in gear. It’s been 8 or 9 years so I don’t remember which system it was, I just remember the results.
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That sounds a lot like GM technology. I can imagine their engineers, drunk on a friday afternoon: “Yep, we’re done here. Saved 2ct!”…
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I grew up in SoCal. To me, as to the author, the idea of a remote start seemed silly and wasteful.
Then I moved to Michigan.
I still didn’t have remote start until I got my Explorer. It had leather seats, but not heated. My first thought was getting into the cold confines of my new ride in the middle of February and having the cold soaked seats soak the cold through my pants and undies to my skin. No way. I negotiated to have remote start installed.
I love it. Not only will it warm the seats, but help to defrost windows and creates a more inviting atmosphere in general on those cold winter days when I’m already cranky enough because it’s cold. Every car I’ve owned since then has had remote start except the Mustang (manual tranny) and no my BMW. Apparently remote start on the BMW is a $500 system plus reprogramming one of the 12 computers. It may not get remote start.
Sure, I could run outside and start the car manually, but then my key is in the car making it an invitation to get my sh*t jacked (it happens a lot here in the winter). Or I could get into a cold car and be miserable until it warms up half way to work. To me, remote start is the best invention of the ’90s (or whatever decade it was invented in).
Now if that global warming ever gets here I won’t need it.-
Do you have heated seats, too? I wouldn’t buy a daily driver without them anymore.
Interesting price. An aftermarket motor and cabin warmer by Webasto can easily cost 3000$ in Norway; everything done.-
The BMW does have heated seats, so I’m not sure I’m going to go through the cost and process of putting a remote start on it. My wife will never own a car without remote start and heated seats.
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Up here, folks absolutely LOVE them. Mrs GTXcellent had one on her Jeep and dearly missed it when she got the Saab (see PotbellyJoe’s post about manual transmissions). In my dealer days, this was far and away one of the most popular aftermarket additions we had – in fact, we had a dedicated installer who did nothing else. For me – no way (at least for an aftermarket). Installation requires “hacking” into the main wiring harness and I’ve seen some strange, strange results – even when done completely correctly, strange gremlins can get unleashed. I don’t know how, must be witchcraft, sorcery or maybe aliens. Anyways, the factory auto starts are equally worthless as the range is so short that you could just as well start the vehicle manually.
So I guess I have a long, rambling post about how great they are, but I don’t/won’t have one.-
The factory ones are getting better. Even when I park my Challenger in my usual spot at the far end of the lot, ~300 feet from my part of the office, the remote start signal will reach the car if I send it from near a window; a coworker has similar success with his Ram that gets parked in the same general area.
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No, thanks.
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I’m okay with remote start, but I really only care to use it to hear certain V8-powered vehicles fire up from outside the car. Currently, I drive a cheap car with a stick, parked in an underground garage, so it’s not a pressing concern to get one installed.
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Best answer of the day!
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This far north (Edmonton, Canada) NOT getting a remote start installed in the wife’s car is considered grounds for divorce.
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Maybe it’s me getting older… but I’m tired of blueteeth, USB, auto-this-and-that.
Gas, brake, steering wheel. Maybe remote door locks. Lumbar support too. But that’s it!-
Your choice of car reflects that – much respect!
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I rode my motorcycle through the entirety of one Kansas City winter, minus days when there was actual snow on the pavement, because I wasn’t riding a 2WD Ural. Thankfully I live a block away from a bus route that stops a block from my workplace.
The next winter, I had the Mercedes, which would start down to single digits (freedom units) without the block heater (with 15s of cranking, though), which was good because it would leak coolant when I tried using the heater. Unfortunately, the old OM617s are cold-blooded and require a long time to warm, and I only live 10 minutes from my workplace, so I wouldn’t get heat even if the HVAC control unit were functioning correctly.
All that to say, I’d love a way to remote start my Mercedes, but between the glow plug delay, need to open the throttle (pump) all the way, and crank for 10-15s before it starts to catch, that ain’t happening. -
I had one put in my girlfriend’s car as a gift. Afterwards, she gave me much sex. So, yes. I’m a fan.
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Add one more to the Texas heat enduring masses in favor of them. Extreme cold would likewise make them worthwhile.
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They aren’t compatible with manuals. I always leave my car in gear as a backup to the parking brake. A remote start would cause the starter to try and move the car (or worse: actually get it running while in gear). Planetary gear sets and torque converters are definitely a needless complications.
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If I lived in a 1980s cold war spy/drug dealer film, then I would be all over remote starting in a flash. But since I don’t, and we have a pretty mild climate in Sydney, then I guess that I can survive without. Having said that, I can definitely see the advantages for you folk up colder climes.
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