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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Yikes. This is a serious safety issue. Imagine if this wasn’t an EV, and someone started a car while in the new owner’s garage.

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Can you start a ICE vehicle remotely? I thought it was mostly a EV thing, some people have aftermarket kits.

I can start my Nissan (not EV) from an app.

Can you start a ICE vehicle remotely?

With a keyfob for decades, and with an app for years. It's virtually standard equipment in certain states, along with plug-in engine block heaters.

I thought it was mostly a EV thing

A guy at work likes to start his massive Ford Raptor with his phone at the end of the day and set off the alarms of the cars he's parked between.

Do we work together? (I'm assuming not.) Some guy where I work does the same thing, same truck. Usually he's still thousands of feet away when he starts it too, maybe even still in the office.

Or maybe it's just a Houston thing.

I'm not in Texas. I think it's an "I bought a giant truck to carry around six dead leaves in the back when I go shopping at Target" kind of thing.

> Or maybe it's just a Houston thing.

I'd call it a Ford Raptor thing.

Yes, and this is super common.

A huge percentage of people that live in the cold parts of Canada have "remote start" on their key fob. Press a button and that ICE fires right up to warm up your cabin, defrost the windows and get the engine warm enough.

They usually have some kind of hardware interlock to make sure the transmission is in park and the hand brake is on.

FWIW remote start is not allowed in Europe, so in the northern areas cars come with separate units that generate hot air from a heat exchanger connected to a small chamber with a flame burning the fuel.

People in the warm parts of Canada do this too, now-a-days. Its kind of weird to be be riding along the road at 5 C and see all these empty cars idling on the side of the road.

Fortunately it’s almost impossible to kill yourself by running the car in the garage any more.

Why is that?

Catalytic converters

You're more likely to survive now, but it's definitely nowhere near an impossibility. There are tons of stories in the news on a regular basis of people who left their cars running accidentally and died of CO poisoning, mostly elderly who likely didn't realize they left it running.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/deadly-convenien...

Also, catalytic converters don't actually work until they're at operating temperatures.

https://www.abe.iastate.edu/extension-and-outreach/carbon-mo...

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