My audi can do this without the engine running I dunno why lexus cant…
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Don't modern cars all have SIM cards built in somewhere that's really difficult to remove?
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
ericd•2w ago
ActorNightly•2w ago
andrewflnr•2w ago
Utility measured how? Be specific.
ActorNightly•2w ago
Cheapest EV is 30k right now - nissan leaf.
For that much, you can get a Prius Prime , which can be driven like an EV to work and back, charge at home, and when you go on a long trip, you don't have to worry about finding charging stations
You can also get a hybrid Ford Maverick. While you can't charge it at home, It gets 500 miles tank of gas, a full bed for carrying stuff, outlets in the bed for tools or camping, and offroad capability, and again, can fill it up at any gas station.
If Nissan leaf was like 100 mile range, basic vehicle for $10k, then it would be a different story. But right now, paying the same for way less capability doesn't make sense.
andrewflnr•2w ago
ActorNightly•2w ago
andrewflnr•2w ago
Or we could just not pretend that "utility" is a concept that can be applied uniformly across all car-shaper objects.
Youden•2w ago
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•2w ago
Svip•2w ago
dzhiurgis•2w ago