I guess Nest is heading towards this direction, but pre-warming a house very "first-world".
Imagine a neighborhood of 100 homes where you know all 100 people will return approximately at 6pm in the winter, and they all want 72 degrees. Taking into account the insulation of each home, if you could pre-heat the homes on a rolling schedule (say, heat 25 of them to 75 degrees at 3pm, accounting for 1 degree of heat dissipation per hour, heat another 25 to 74 degrees at 4pm, etc.), you will actually in aggregate save a lot of energy and cost because of inefficiencies in the way we deliver and generate energy during peak times.
(@yitchelle - central data center)
Especially given that this works best for second homes like a weekend house in Tahoe where it might take a full day to warm up if you left the heat off all week.