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On quite a few cars, parts of the HVAC system (namely the AC compressor and potentially some of the fans) are mechanically linked to the engine with belts, rather than using electricity.

Indeed. Only electric vehicles and hybrids, some with electric vs belt driven compressors, others with electric driven heat pumps, can run HVAC without the need for an engine running.

Also, even if they're separate, AC and heating can use a lot of electricity and normal ICE cars usually don't have big batteries. Especially in the winter you'd also need a solid reserve, because the car might be already be discharged due to cold and need more power to get going. Throw in some short range trips and an engine stop automatic and you'll quickly end up with an empty battery, which will reflect very bad on the manufacturer.

You could of course add a second battery, but that would add a lot of weight and complexity for a not very noticeable benefit.

I'm sure that wearing warmer clothing, keeping windows doors closed will keep in the heat, or open the windows and let a breeze cool you in the hot weather...for 10-20mins but ofc depends... Here in Romania unfortunately no such a law, so I ask politely, if refused ask why, if again leave their door open or take their car picture... I feel like a jerk sometimes so have been doing it less... also so many car drivers seem to think they have a right rather than are a blight....¯\_(ツ)_/¯ One thing the bus drivers here said is their electronic system resets if they stop their motor, don't know if it's BS , they seem nice guys just not very educated in ecological stuff , like most Romanians.. Nice to see such an article

Neither of the simple solutions given will work in all situations. Cars still get super cold if the temperature is say 0 to -5 Celsius (32 or ~22.5 Fahrenheit).

Be in a car with that temperature for an hour+. It’ll be awful for most people.

Maybe a car isn't a house? I mean I understand that it's not practical all the time but your polluting the air by sitting inside your car instead of being in a building with an electric and optimized HVAC.

While many people could reasonably make the effort to enter a building instead. At least as many, cannot due to their economic circumstances.

I wasn’t thinking of a car as a house substitute. However, not everyone has a safe, warm physical residential home, of any kind, to go to.

Heated clothing is a thing

I kinda get where this discussion is coming from but to me it sounds extremely weird to not use the amenities you've bought. Kinda like walking around with a jacket and a hat at home when you can easily pay your heating bill.

I'd say thats the approach I've been taking (ie using a jacket and hat) one winter I used an electric blanket, went to work a bit early during the winter, my room managed to stay above 3C, boy was I glad and enjoyed the warm up of spring so much more...this winter I went to Egypt... my point not having makes you appreciate things differently and if you do it by choice there's less stress...in Egypt I chose to live as cheaply as possible, hitching, learning the language, eating street food, sleeping in doorms...I find you appreciate people , time more... as for the above question it's about CO2 poisoning your surroundings, it's why we finally got rid of lead from petrol, asbestos, smoking on airplanes and hopefully one day CocaCola plastic bottles...

That's nice. For me essentially not spending money on quality of life/fun makes my motivation to work disappear since I stop seeing a relation between quality of life and work put in.

I have a 2nd gen Prius. You can generally use the EV button to prevent the motor from turning on.

Perhaps unrelated, but when turning on the engine for the first time in a while the Prius will burn gas to heat up the engine. You can prevent that too by pressing the EV button right after pressing the power button. (Or maybe you can hold it down while pressing the power button?) Not sure if it works all the time.

Buy an electric car and you’ll fix all of your problems. Your 12v won’t last long with a compressor running.

Hi, Pete! I loved the work you did in South Bend. Do you have a lead on a used electric car that will seat four people and our dog? Budget is 12k. Thanks!

https://www.carfax.com/Used-Nissan-Leaf_w536

there’s a series of options that all fit. there needs to be a better argument against change other than repeating the fears we’ve heard others express. take some time to see if what people tell you is true

There are a bunch of Nissan Leafs in my area and that’s it. Doesn’t really qualify as “options,” especially during the winter months.

i don’t think that changing from « there aren’t any cars » to « the cars are ugly » deserves any more of a response than this

A new Nissan leaf gets less than 70 miles of range in the winter, and they have notoriously bad battery life. A used leaf in cold climates is actually useless.

Assuming that the OP is talking exclusively about asthetics when they specifically mention winter performance is bad faith.

Older leafs (don't know about the new ones) don't have thermal management and are literally useless in cold weather.

IMO Leafs do a disservice to the adoption of electric cars because many of peoples' gut reactions to buying an EV (what if I run out of battery! Does it work in cold weather? Will the battery last? What about resale value) are actually showstoppers for these glorified golf carts. There are more and more options for 200+ mile range EVs that will work for more than a niche subset of Americans, but "you can buy a leaf for cheap" isn't helpful and helps spread FUD about EVs.

I live in an apartment that uses parking lot style parking and has no electricity running to the spots. Management has been asked before if chargers can be installed and they said “sure, if you pay for it and it stays here when you move”. Not sure why they wanted to keep the chargers, but that’s their rules. So what do I do? Buy an EV and charge it where?

I bought a used 2012 Nissan Leaf in 2015 for $12.5k. It was a post-lease vehicle. Around 25k miles at the time. I used it as a daily driver until COVID hit and it’s still my go-to vehicle in the house.

Average ev car price is $54k. Can you wire over some funds please to help me pay for it?

Ah yes, the statistically average electric car. The Used-New ForNissEslaNdai BolKonaLeaf XY. You never see them on the road for some reason.

Lol I know it's against etiquette to complain about downvotes, but I didn't think I needed to actually explain that the average cost of an industry of cars is utterly meaningless. There are cheap EVs, there are expensive EVs. Unless you're buying a fleet of EVs of different makes, looking at average price is a fallacy.

Non-diesel vehicles don't pollute much if at all while idling.

If we could get rid of diesel from commercial vehicles air quality would dramatically improve.

Only when warm. Many modern gasoline burning vehicles are extremely stinky when cold. As I understand it, they deliberately run rich when first started to help heat up the catalytic converter, and I wonder if this is a case of optimizing for the wrong thing.

EVs are, of course, emission-free when idle. (Although, oddly, at least some Teslas still can’t open or close their windows when in the off-ish state.)

My understanding of the cold-rich start was not anything to do with the catalytic converter.

Cold air is more dense and contains more oxygen. At the same time, when the engine is cold gasoline is harder to vaporize and doesn't vaporize properly, and also can condense on cold engine parts. Running rich while the engine is cold allows additional gas to offset both of those issues.

When the extra un-combusted gasoline passes through, a secondary air injection system allows the fuel to be burned up before reaching the catalytic converter and does heat it up faster, but this is a secondary benefit rather than the primary benefit.

My 23-year-old V12 7 series has electrically heated catalytic converters for this very reason. Thanks to those, according to German regs it qualifies as a ULEV! I think it still stinks at first start. Also, the cats cost two grand each to replace and the car requires a second battery to power them without draining the main starting battery so much that the car won't turn over. That's probably why we don't see more of this...

> Only when warm.

In that case you should prefer idling, rather than stopping the motor and letting it cool down.

The reason for diesels on commercial vehicles is the massive amount of torque they produce low down the rev range. Useful for pulling heavy loads.

I think the newer ones with the AdBlue tech prevents the soot from getting out.

A really good way to generate lots of torque from a stop is an electric motor. You could use a combination of gasoline motors at speed with electric to start to get this same combination.

As demonstrated by the Koenigsegg Gemera and its use of electric motors and an ICE. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W39yEt4R-SU

Sure I agree electric engines produce even more torque.

Just give it a few years for the whole thing to be economically viable and for them to convert their diesel trucks to EV trucks.

Hence diesel-electric locomotives. Those things produce serious torque. I wonder if that technology could be usefully adapted to commercial trucks.

Diesel electric locomotives have a much worse idling problem than diesel ICE vehicles, you can’t just shut the turbine down without consequences, especially in winter, so they just idle for hours. See for example https://www.saferail.ca/blog/2019/7/3/idling-of-diesel-engin...

Yes. I know for a fact that diesel locomotives of trains are kept running even if its next trip is hours later.

I don't know the underlying reason for that though. I always assumed it was some combination of using too much fuel for starting (more than what it would consume if it was just idling) and the starting itself being a complicated process. But I could be wrong.

But then, for trains there exists fully electric locomotives, so this looks like a solved problem in that industry. All that's left to be done is phase out the diesels (apart from electrifying the tracks itself).

Ya, if we would just electrify our rails like they do in Europe, the problem would be solved. Battery is also an option, though it seems only viable for auxiliary locomotives (the ones that push carriages together in yards) for now.

Diesel electric is only used in locomotives (and some big mining equipment) because the realities of the "get the power from the engine to the wheels" problem makes it work well in those use cases. Directly transmitting the energy without converting into electricity and back is more efficient until you start talking about absurd levels of gearbox and input/output speed discrepancies and whatnot. If the double conversion was more efficient we'd see electric drivetrains in far more places.

Adblue is about NOx, you want a separate particulate filter.

I thought newer diesels already came with particulate filters

Yes, that's why newer diesels have relatively clean exhaust once they've warmed up enough for all the exhaust treatment systems to work.

Having observed, what, maybe two or three hundred drivers of commercial diesel vehicles, and verbally surveying, what, maybe 15% of those, I've come to the firm conclusion the overwhelming majority of them leave their engines idle due to a historic quirk, whereby it was widely considered to improve longevity of the engine to reduce the number stop-start cycles. This has been pretty much obsoleted by improvements in metallurgy, machining tolerances, and lubricant improvements - thermal cycling is still important, but that's a negligible concern over a 20 to 40 minute period in temperate climates. Modern turbo diesel engine cold-starts should be considered ready to drive in a gentle manner immediately, avoid full boost till operating temperature - but full boost should rarely be needed in most driving conditions anyways.

>This has been pretty much obsoleted by improvements in metallurgy, machining tolerances, and lubricant improvements

Is there a source for this claim? Also, what year is the modern engine cutoff? 2000 or 2010?

"I feel like there's far too much focus spent on chastising the sinners and not nearly enough effect spent creating vehicles where the common sense action is not to need to idle."

Actually it seems like many sinners are perfectly happy to blame only the delivery drivers, instead of applying this to other vehicles (their own) as well.

Most people don't:

a) spend a large amount of time idling.

b) drive diesel a truck.

c) run a business that requires idling a truck (i.e. commercial trucking literally gets paid to idle).

But many people do have cars, arguably a larger number than trucks. Many of them letting it idle for fairly long periods of time in the winter to remove ice, in the summer for air-conditioning if waiting for someone, etc. So on the aggregate, they are still producing a high number of fumes.

Also, if the business requires the truck to idle to run loading, unloading, and processing equipment, then the law exempts them from the requirements while using that equipment.

Not sure that's the city's responsibility but more between industry and manufacturers. Industry could use the press (as you said) to apply pressure, but the city would have enough on its plate.

Volvo takes it to a new level. They don’t crank up the heat to whatever you set it to unless you’re actually driving. Idling doesn’t help.

What type of engine? Idling an ICE should produce more excess heat than anyone desires. Unless the engine goes into start/stop which I’m not sure counts as idling and I doubt it does so if started in the cold, at least mine doesn’t. This can also be overridden with power drive mode or disabling start stop.

When my thermostat was stuck open it would take me 30 mins of driving to get actual heat. After I fixed it still takes ages for most (small) cars to warm up at idle. It's only when you start driving excess heat is produced.

Same with a boat oil changes - you either sit there for half an hour and maybe oil loosens up or you go for 15 minute spin around and it's ready for sucky sucky time.