Colder than you might think in the winter. Main reason is instant heat to cut down on defrost times. Besides, the after market units are $60 from NAPA.
FWIW, we use ours year ‘round. Try to plug in about 2 hours before any cold start. With two hours use the engine coolant at start up will be raised around 20C above ambient. Within the first minute or two of engine running it’ll climb more, and fast, likely as the heat homogenizes. Still, you may be disappointed if expecting “instant” heat. It helps though. Garage parking out of the question?
Up pretty high, ‘round back, near driver’s corner. With engine in the car it’s pretty much going by feel. It’s confoundingly hard to get your hands and the heat element at the entrance, with a lot of the conduits in vicinity partially disconnected and cajoled out of the way. I did it mostly reaching up from below, arms on either side of drive shaft. Think I had wipers and cowl off, in order to shift conduits, from above. dealership put first one in when we purchased new, and around 80k kms (with reg use) it gave off a little smoke signal, to indicate fritzed wiring, right at the unit. Maybe they didn’t leave slack in the wiring, and the (sprung) engine kept stressing the connection? Service manager told me they’d refund what I paid for replacement part (his idea, I didn’t ask), just bring in the old one, they wanted Toyota to have a look. I brought it in a couple of times, he was never around, I gave up on them. Still have it.
