[geoffpado]

(Not the person you’re replying to) I’ve never had a car with an automatic trunk motor, so I can’t answer that one, but back when I lived in the Midwest, if my ability to remote start the car to power climate control (particularly of the windshield defrost) stopped working, that definitely would have been in the “I’m willing to pay thousands to fix this” realm. In some cases, that would absolutely limit the ability for the car to get me places; you’re not going very far with a quarter inch of ice on the windshield.

In the summer, it gets closer to “gimmick” territory, but there are also totally times when interior surfaces of the car were too hot to touch, and that affects driving in its own right if you can’t grab the steering wheel.

[loloquwowndueo]

You can scrape the ice off manually and wear adequate clothing to “survive the drive”. Toughen up, dude!

[Gasp0de]

You know you can just scratch the ice off, right?

[robertlagrant]

And they could just walk.

[BigGreenJorts]

The luxury of not having to stand in the cold reaching over the windshield scraping is worth so so so much. Add to that not having to sit in a cold car, waiting for it to warm up, is also worth a lot.

[Mashimo]

If something is broken to the point that the car can't heat up, yet it's cold that there is thick ice on the windshield I would think twice about driving. Even if you could remove the ice.

[Gasp0de]

No one said anything about anything being broken, just about the ability to remotely heat up the car before starting to drive. Having a heating and having a remote controlled heating that works with the car switched off are two separate things.

[Mashimo]

> No one said anything about anything being broken,

Yes they did. Both the guy you asked and the one he responded to.

[Gasp0de]

Sry, what I meant to say was "No one spoke about the complete heating being broken. Heating is a basic requirement in a car imo. Remote-controllable, engine-off heating is not."

[Mountain_Skies]

Many cardiac events start that way.

[toss1]

Huh?

Across decades, I've heard of many cardiac events from shoveling the driveway, but absolutely zero from scraping ice off a car windshield. This correlates to the vast difference in effort required by each action — scooping, lifting and moving tons of snow, vs scraping at a few ounces of ice (which is even easier if you let the car run a few minutes with the windshield defrost on).

Now, if we had car (not trucks setup for plowing) that could automatically clear the driveway, that would be a must-have feature in areas with winter climates...

[loloquwowndueo]

Dude if scraping ice off a windshield gives you a heart attack you have way bigger problems than your car not heating up remotely. Go see a doctor.