[Someone1234]

Indeed, and depending on options also the mirrors too.

With remote start you can walk up with an ice scraper/snow shovel and push the slurry right off then be on your way. Otherwise, you'll have to sit in the cold car for 5~10 minutes while the ice softens, then get back out and push it off (and that assumes your doors haven't frozen shut).

A lot of people in warmer climates think idling is something only jerks do, those in colder areas realize you cannot safely operate your vehicle without idling with the heater running full-bore.

PS - And while garages are an even better solution, it isn't realistic to expect nobody to live in town homes/apartments.

[scotty79]

In Poland there is a law that you can't run engine in your parked car for over a minute (if there are houses nearby). If you do, you can get a fine. It is considered excessive pollution and noise generation.

And we get winters where temperature drops to below -25C

It's not super strictly observed but people are concious of that and try to keep the defrost time to minimum rather scraping the ice physically than running engine for 10 minutes so the can just push off the slurry.

[iggldiggl]

Generally I'd agree with that and I never leave the engine running just to save myself the bother of scraping (and ideally I've remembered to cover the windscreen with a plane the night before so I only have to scrape the side windows), but I'd make one exception: Sometimes the weather conditions are such that the windscreen immediately starts icing/fogging over again, in which case you really need to leave the motor running at least two or three minutes for the heater to at least minimally start working, so you can actually see where you're going.