If you live in the northern hemisphere, winter is supposed to be cold. That’s not as much the case anymore, but with colder weather comes the yearly series of articles that promise to address the serious nature of the debate over warming up your car. It’s also all made up. It’s nonsense. I refuse to believe that anyone cares this much about such a small thing.
Do you need to warm up your car before you drive it to protect the powertrain? Not anymore. In fact, getting the engine going will get things up to temp faster than letting it idle for ten minutes or however long people on Facebook say is necessary. Maybe you actually should warm up your pre-oil-embargo classic, but that only applies to, what, 0.01 percent of drivers in this country?
If you have time and the opportunity, is it nice to get into a warm car in the winter? Absolutely. Some people don’t mind a chilly butt, but others do. It’s fine. Getting worked up about it is dumb. Sure, it uses more fuel than hopping into a cold car and immediately driving away, but it’s not like you’re using very much. And yeah, it pollutes a little, but is that really a hill anyone who’s still relatively normal wants to die on? At most, it’ll be a rounding error for your monthly carbon footprint.
Should you leave your car running and unlocked in a populated area where someone passing by might not be able to resist the opportunity to pick up a free car? Of course not. On the other hand, you can get a previous-generation Honda Civic with remote start, which means you don’t even have to spend that much to get a car you can safely warm up without worrying about it getting stolen or even having to put on pants.
Is it rude to idle loud or smelly cars for long periods of time regardless of the season? Absolutely. Those people are assholes and deserve to be treated as such. I just don’t buy that there’s really much of a debate or discussion to be had here, especially every winter. The same people who leave their keys in their cars overnight the rest of the year are going to do dumb stuff with their cars in winter, and people who want a warm car aren’t necessarily wrong for doing so.
We can talk about what’s ideal until we’re blue in the face, but I’m sorry, I just don’t care. Nobody is perfect, and your carbon footprint only exists as a concept so that oil companies can pass the blame for global warming onto people who were born into a flawed system against their will. Out of all the things to care about how does people warming up their cars even register on other people’s radars? It just doesn’t.