Going by that math, I’ll gladly pay roughly 84 cents per day to get into a nice warm car (basing that off $4/gallon and a 15minute remote starter run time).
Any modern engine that is properly maintained is going to outlast the body on whatever car it’s installed in if it’s daily driven in Upstate NY, even if the owner idles it for many many minutes a day.
At highway speeds at around 60 miles an hour you will go let’s say 30 miles in 30 minutes.
At 30mpg, that would be a gallon in 30 mins at cruising rpm of let’s say 2000, and 30% throttle.
So in 15 minutes you would burn half a gallon of gas at 30%, or ~$2.
Divide that by ten to get 3% idle and you get 20 cents for every 15 mins if not more.
All I know is on average I let my car run for about 5 mins on remote start and my mpg for the week drops from 24 to 20, or around 100 miles less per tank, or $15 a week in other terms.
$60 a month for remote start operation of 5 minutes.
My 2 cents.
Edit: my math isn’t any better. I got only about 1.25 cents a minute so even cheaper by my math then your 5c a minute.
The pulse width and duty cycle of an injector/s on a specific engine at a specific rpm can change dramatically depending on the engines volume-metric efficiency. So knowing what kind of fuel economy you’re seeing at a highway speed really doesn’t have much to do with how much fuel you are using at idle nor at WOT.
On top of that, a cold engine will use MUCH more fuel at idle then an engine at operating temperature and progressively ramp towards stoich (using less fuel) as the coolant temp rises.
Vlad, also take in consideration drag on the car’s body cutting through the air, rolling resistance on the tires, grade changes, parasitic losses in the driveline… all of which are not happening when the car is sitting outside in park idling of course.
Even through you might be cruising at XX mph at or close to idle rpm’s, the duty cycle is higher, using more fuel, making more power, to be able to maintain the speed AND rpm of the vehicle with all the above resistances.
Flat, no added wind resistance, low load cruising DC is still around 15-30% I bet on most cars.
Then you can never, ever, ever complain about being cold in the morning driving to work.
If you buy a soda ONE day this week, the money spent on that would have paid for the warm up gas and for your daily commute for 6.6 mornings.
Since the work week is usually 5 day, at that rate, Paul, by not buying a soda once a week, you are actually MAKING money warming up your car, and your not cold when you first get into it! Since you gain an extra 1.6 mornings worth of warm up fuel if you only work 5 days a week.