Star Simpson

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.

Worst I’ve experienced was when I left the scraper inside the car, and the doors were frozen shut. “uhhh… now what?” :P (also from a hot climate, oops)

Throw hot water at your car duh (this is from Missouri where it never got cold enough to make this a bad idea)