Leave On or Turn Off?

That makes sense. I know my girlfriends Sentra turns off if the FOB leaves after a certain amount of time. It will be interesting to see what happens when it does go dead. Haha.

 

I did not know that.

In this region it is a very common during winter to see half [or more] vehicles parked in a grocery store lot were left running to keep them warm.

 

I've read several people claim that warm up stages can be avoided by leaving the vehicle on "ready" when exiting for a short period of time. However from my observations it's summer time right now, and the ambient air temps combined with even the shortest of drives leaves my engine warm enough that I've taken the car 7 miles to the store, shut it off.. come back out 15 minutes later and it did not run through the stages. The coolant / cat were warm enough not to require the ICE to turn on. It really could be graphed out as to how long you have before the ICE will run itself again, but 5 minutes on a hot day shouldn't require the startup sequence unless you only drove a couple of miles before shutting the car off. The further you drive before shutting it off, the longer you should have (in theory) before it will start up.

 

On hot days, I regularly leave my Gen2 turned on while I go shopping. Just use the mechanical key to lock/unlock the door. The engine cycles ON/OFF as required to operate the electric air conditioning.

 

Luckily there is the anti-pinch system for the window.

 

In the 2012 there is an item in the setup menu that aloes you to turn off/on the SKS system. Is this similar to the old push button under the dash on the GenII?

 

I'll take your word for it.

 

With the Gen III and SKS- if you don't want to use the auto up window method.... you can start car normally, leave it running- get out with the fob, using the metal key built into the fob- manually lock the drivers door- this will lock the other doors/hatch. Run your errand- use the manual key to unlock the drivers door- get in, all is back to normal.

FWIW- for those looking to keep the cabin cool on hot days while ducking into the 7-Eleven/Pizza shop, etc... - I've been able to run the AC for 20-23min at 76deg with the fan on two bars without the ICE kicking in. My hybrid battery is usually 2 bars from the top and I turn off the DRL's.

 

It rarely gets over 80F in this area anyway. We routinely see vehicles left running to keep them warm.