Germany Forces Lexus to Remotely Kill Car Heating in Dead of Winter

https://www.gadgetreview.com/germany-forces-lexus-to-remotely-kill-car-heating-in-dead-of-winter

by josephcsible • 6 months ago

21 36 6 months ago

ericd3• 6 months ago

Another incentive to go buy an EV.

EVs still are less than half the utility of normal cars. Until charging becomes as standard as filling your car (i.e don't have to go find a charger, every gas station has one, and so on), no matter what the advantage they give you it won't overcome that fact.

andrewflnr4• 6 months ago

half the utility

Utility measured how? Be specific.

Youden• 6 months ago

I haven't had to find a charger or think about them in over a year. I just plug it in when I get home and I'm done.

I did a ~10000km road trip around western Europe and while I started with ABRP, I switched to just driving normally and stopping at an EV charger when I was below around 20% and happened to see a sign.

I'm not saying this is the case everywhere, I opted for an ICE engine when I visited Australia for example. "Half the utility of normal cars" is utter nonsense in my experience though.

doublepg23• 6 months ago

With the cold snap in the eastern US I'm quickly learning EVs range and charging short comings in below freezing weather.

Svip• 6 months ago

Isn't it more an incentive to buy an older car that cannot be controlled remotely? You know, a car that can be fixed with a spanner.

dzhiurgis• 6 months ago

I agree. But if you are stupid or want humongous car aka PHEV - there are now some that support remote heating using batteries.

avs733• 6 months ago

That is a wildly misleading headline…

mook• 6 months ago

Specifically, it's disabling remote start, rather than the actual heating.

cyberpunk• 6 months ago

Fortunately there are only approximately 5 lexus cars in all Germany.

My audi can do this without the engine running I dunno why lexus cant…

Nursie2• 6 months ago

That's quite a clickbaity headline!

It's forcing lexus to disable the remote starting of ICE vehicles so that they can be idled and warm-up pre-use.

Idling is regulated in a bunch of places, for reasons of emissions and air pollution. For instance it's illegal to park up and idle your engine on a public road in the UK.

Is this move by the German government reasonable? I'm not sure, but it's not completely out of the blue, or as severe as the headline would lead you to believe.

josephcsible4• 6 months ago

it's not completely out of the blue, or as severe as the headline would lead you to believe.

The part of this that makes it major news is that they're retroactively taking away a feature from a car that people already bought.

Nursie2• 6 months ago

It’s hardly major news either way.

Yes, it’s bad for owners if they removed a feature. But if the feature wasn’t legal and contravened CO2 and air-pollutions laws then I guess that’ll happen. Previously that might have required a recall.

soco• 6 months ago

Well. not retroactively - if you used the heater last year they won't take that from you. But otherwise legislation can change and affect existing objects as well, like you can't take knives anymore on the plane while 50 years ago you could. But all metaphors aside, idling an ICE is against the regulations in many places (Switzerland, UK...) so Germany is just catching up.

zorked• 6 months ago

At the very least, the incendiary tone makes this article suspect.

eesmith• 6 months ago

Agreed. Like "Just when it got cold and people needed it!" when I've never owned a car with remote start and somehow survived cold and snowy winters.

andrewflnr4• 6 months ago

While I understand the concern...

regulators who decided warming up your car counts as environmental terrorism.

... this is rather hyperbolic. They decided it counts as excess emissions. That's debatable but it's a pretty strong case.

Anyway, yeah, don't connect your car to the Internet. Including for remote starting.

josephcsible4• 6 months ago

Anyway, yeah, don't connect your car to the Internet. Including for remote starting.

Don't modern cars all have SIM cards built in somewhere that's really difficult to remove?

galacticdessert• 6 months ago

The tone in the article is so off. We are clearly headed for a climate disaster, being whiners about having to manually de ice your windshield is so very childish.

I understand there is a broader topic of regulators impacting what can and can’t be done but isn’t that just having a government?

stby• 6 months ago

It is an article that doesn't care about facts, just feelings. It should have no place in any serious discussion.

EdSchouten• 6 months ago

That’s great! People who do that are often inconsiderate of how it affect others. First of all, it generates unnecessary noise, which is annoying for neighbors who are still trying to sleep. Pedestrians/cyclists also need to breathe those exhaust gases.

mmooss• 6 months ago

Looking at Gadget Review's front page, stories are a bit creative and sensational. The article is not a news report, but an anti-green diatribe; for example:

Your luxury car just became the latest battlefield in Europe’s climate wars, where bureaucrats decide which buttons work in your own vehicle. The real question isn’t whether remote start causes pollution—it’s whether you still own the features you bought.

There are still real questions here. I wonder how the feature was sold in the first place. Does it predate the relevant laws?

Also, what would it take to add an aftermarket electric engine warmer? I know people in some northern climates have accessories that plug in and warm the engine, but maybe those come with the car.

computatrum• 6 months ago

Preheating is not in general forbidden in Germany, but you need a proper stationary heating system (can be even combustion based). Lexus probably has implemented it with the main combustion engine as remote start, which is a poor-man solution and considered inefficient and illegal.

sam_lowry_• 6 months ago

Modern trucks have webasto heaters even for main engines to reduce NOx emissions.

And VW T6 Multivan and California often have two, the other for interior pre-heating.

OTOH remote engine start is dangerous and not just inefficient.

Think of all CO that it may emit in a closed box.

rich_sasha• 6 months ago

Headline (HN and original) is misleading. It suggests Lexus needs to disable heating altogether via an OTA update.

Rather, it sounds like they want to disable remote engine start for preheating the car. Which is a very different proposal.

If this was 1970s, I'd maybe feel differently about it, but since we put so much CO2 into the air already, winters are really tame in Europe anyway.

politelemon• 6 months ago

I'm flagging this one because the whole article is sensationalised without evidence or even pretending to objectivity.

josephcsible4• 6 months ago

How is it "without evidence"? I can find plenty more articles about the same thing and no doubt whatsoever as to the veracity.

Germany Forces Lexus to Remotely Kill Car Heating in Dead of Winter

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