Do you hate feeling like you’re Christmas dinner roast chicken while driving inside your car? The harsh reality of global warming can easily be felt by car owners. Whether it’s during the hot summer months or during bouts of sudden heatwaves, it’s definitely annoying and uncomfortable to find the temperature inside your car rising steadily until you’re sweating buckets. Soon it may feel like you’re inside an oven.
Well, you’re not alone with this problem. Most Australians have dealt with this issue at one point or another because we’re neighbours with the Pacific Ocean. To keep your car from heating up, here are some of our favourite tricks to keep things cool.
- Use sun shades. Nope, not for your eyes, but for the eyes of your car, the windscreen. Heat directly goes into your vehicle through the windows, so it’s the easiest trick in the book to keep it from becoming too hot. Find an assortment of windscreen sun shades that’s cleverly designed to suit the make and model of your car. These windscreen shades effectively block out the sunlight and reflect harsh UV light away from your vehicle. Remember to do this every single time your car is parked so that you won’t have to spend the extra 10-15 minutes cooling down your car when you’re ready to drive away.
- Use A/C the right way. This is the most obvious trick, but you still might not be using your car’s air conditioning system the right way. Set the A/C to draw in external air rather than recirculate the internal air. Open the windows halfway down too and release the A/C to the coolest vents, like the vents below the dashboard instead of on the dashboard. Doing this makes sure the hot air gets pushed up and out of the car because cool air is heavier than hot air. Once you’ve done this, just let the A/C do its thing.
- Use a damp cloth to cool down hot surfaces. If you’ve been publicly parked for hours and your car has been under the sun for too long, chances are the surfaces of your car have become too hot. Always make sure you put up a windscreen shade right after parking, but if you did forget, just remember to use a damp wipe or cloth to cool down hot surfaces like the dashboard, the door handles, and the seats of your car. It’s also wise to have ice packs on hand to help cool down some of these interior surfaces in your car.
We’ve seen the interior of cars rise up to 80-100° degrees when parked or even up to 41° even when in motion. It’s an absolute must to know and follow these steps to make sure your car won’t heat up and stays cool despite the climate. How about you? Do you know any other tips that help keep your car nice and cool?