The cold is coming but will idling your car cause more harm than good?

PRINCE GEORGE–The cold is coming and it’s coming soon, and that may have us running our cars a bit earlier than normal, but can idling cause more harm than good?

For some, there may be a misconception that warming up a car engine is necessary in order to drive, which would, therefore, require idling, “the engine actually warms up faster when you’re driving the car” said Pat Blondin, shop Manager at Rivers Edge Services “idling is not doing any benefit to the car.”

But for some, it has nothing to do with warming up an engine, “I think the temptation during really cold weather is to leave your engine running,” said Kim Menounos, Manager of the Prince George Air Improvement Round Table, “we are actually just producing a whole lot of pollution and we are also reducing our cars efficiency by wasting gas.”

Menounos says that in order to curb the use of idling for warmth to dress to the conditions. According to a report published on the Environmental Defense Fund an idling car uses between 1/5 to 7/10 of a gallon of fuel an hour. An idling diesel truck burns one gallon of fuel and hour.