Star Simpson

Hi, I grew up in the tropics and have a question about cold weather life: why isn’t there a product like some kind of heat tape to let you warm glassy surfaces to prevent the buildup of snow and ice?

Like car windows? I’d guess it’s just such a battery killer; if your car was inside (i.e. where power likely available) it wouldn’t be much of an issue in the first place.

Something you could turn on minutes before you wanted to go drive, say.

starting up your car remotely is the typical solution

So that’s how people do it!

Grew up in Michigan just going out & starting the car 10min before leaving. Next: remote start. Generally it's also an issue of power. Heat tape (or similar) needs a power source to generate the heat, and don't have that w/o the car battery on. If car is on, the heater is, too :)

Did you also have to scrape off the snow and ice, or was starting the car sufficient to just deal with it?

Starting the car was sufficient to melt the snow/ice to the point where scraping was a non-issue. Only exception was when we had ice storms, but it's not very common even in Michigan.