You’ve heard the idea: Your car
will need a little time to warm up in winter before you can drive it. And that’s
why across Pakistan, people living in colder areas and during the cold times and
especially the ones with remote car engines fire up their engines long before
igniting it. It might even mean starting the car from the kitchen and only then
have a cup of tea.
That isn’t the right practice. Just how Motor Trader has revealed it: idling the
car during cold weather is wrong. And so are all the people wrong who believe in
following this practice. Majority of Pakistani’s believe they should idle the
car for at least 5 minutes before getting on the driving seat. Doesn’t that seem
like slow poisoning the car?
If it rings the bell, then believe in it that it’s a false practice. Cars do get
worse fuel economy when it’s cold outside; say they are about 12 percent fuel
efficient. It then takes longer for the engine to warm up and reach the level
where you can gear your car. Moreover, an worse is the case for older cars,
especially when you bought it second hand.
The used cars already come from the same idling practice and those that relied
on carburetors required more time to warm up. Without the carburetors they would
not be able to mix the right fuel and air in the engine and car would stall out.
This however was the need of cars in older days, the carburetor thing got away
in 1980s and 1990s.
Experts claim that idling the car more than 30 seconds has no benefit for the
car. They say engine warms up faster on being driven. So, what idling does to
car is, simply nothing-though it has several big costs: gives off greenhouse gas
emission and wastes fuel! A test was conducted by the car crazy Motor Trader,
results showed that with a 5 minutes warm up the fuel consumed increased by 7 to
14 percent and with a 10 minute warm up, total fuel consumption increased by 12
to 19 percent.
Let’s say it more clearly: New cars are improving constantly the miles they get
per gallon driven, while idling uses up gas and get no miles. But it’s not just
about fuel waste; it’s about the gas emission as well. How do you see this when
you think of people being the reason of pollution for people? And it’s not just
that, cars are idling while waiting for something or someone.
The new cars certainly are helping in this regard. This does not mean that old
cars should be given away since majority of the people in Pakistan cannot afford
the latest models, nor does it mean that all idling can be stopped. Traffic
idling is simply unavoidable. But the idling of car during winters when starting
it can be reduced.
If you conduct a survey on this on almost 1,300 people, half would tell you that
they are idling the cars for longer than 30 seconds for warming it up. This kind
of value simply indicates the belief about how much idling is important is
highly distorted.
Meanwhile, thanks to technological advances, cars are being created where they
can have a start-stop technology that will literally shut down the engine during
traffic wait. So far this technology is being added to the hybrid cars only, but
soon it will spread to other cars as well. For now, what you can do is: keep
your car in good functioning condition and make use of tips provided on how to
take care of your car in winter.