Has anyone installed a remote starter

No kidding. This one always gets me going.

No matter how we look at it, idling the engine for warming up (or cooling off) is always a bad thing. Why?

• It causes "unnecessary" and premature damage to the engine and emissions control systems.
• It is an environmental scourge of our times.
• It kills a vehicle's fuel economy.
• It wastes fuel, and therefore it wastes money.

Here's some "official" backing for my statements: Why is idling bad !!

And here's another

You know what is worse though... is that when some of us learn about these "negatives" we still continue to see nothing wrong with idling and we persist on doing it all for the sake of personal convenience and comfort.

Cheers;

MSantos

 

The Prius idles only when it needs to. So if you use a remote starter to heat/cool the car, it will idle only enough to achieve the requested temperature.

This is quite different from non-hybrid cars, where a remote starter idles the car continuously until you turn it off.

So putting the Prius in Ready mode in order to run the heater/air conditioner is considerably less expensive that running a non-hybrid to do the same thing.