Remote start systems help cars keep their cool

This year’s flaming-hot spring has given motorists in Southern California an early reminder of how a car can become a kitchen oven.

Leave a car parked in the sun on a 90-degree day with the windows up and the doors safely locked and the interior temperature can shoot up to 140 degrees.

Is it asking the auto industry too much to give consumers a car that doesn’t bake them? Apparently, a navigation system, alloy wheels and leather seats are supposed to be good enough.

One fix to the heat problem is a remote start system, sold by after-market suppliers and, more recently, by vehicle manufacturers including General Motors. These products range in price from less than $100 to about $400, depending on level of sophistication.

Among the most sophisticated of these is an after-market system produced by Directed Electronics, a San Diego-area car-alarm manufacturer.

The company’s new Viper system is a car security system on steroids. It connects directly into a vehicle’s so-called “controller area network,” the data bus that forms the electronic architecture of most new cars. As a result, the Viper can give consumers remote control of almost every electronic system in a car.

For example, if you are at your desk and ready to leave work for the day, you can remotely start your car and begin to run the air conditioner up to 15 minutes before arriving at the vehicle. If you want to crack the windows a quarter of an inch, Viper can do that too. It can tell you the temperature inside the car.

It can unlock doors, sound the horn and start up music. I’m not sure why anybody would want to remotely turn on the windshield wipers or operate a winch, but theoretically you can do that with the Viper as well.

The main purpose of the system is to prevent theft. Many new cars have an anti-theft system in which the key has a code that must be read by the car’s ignition system before it allows the engine to start. But many of these “smart keys” are fairly easy for thieves to defeat.

The new anti-theft systems with remote start, both the factory-installed and the after-market systems, tie into the controller area network and are the most sophisticated on the market. It is theoretically possible to defeat these systems, but it takes an engineer or computer scientist to hack into the system with a laptop computer. It has happened, but it requires top-end thieves and they usually go after exotic cars.

The Viper remote can unlock the doors of the vehicle with a remote control that sends an encrypted signal into the system’s brain. If a person attempts to intrude into the car without the proper signal, the Viper will sound an alarm. I’m not a big fan of car alarms, but at least the Viper, like many other new car alarm systems, will send a pager beep to the remote control that lets the owner know if the alarm is sounding.

. When a mere human engages the starter motor, he or she listens for the engine to fire up to disengage the starter motor.

The Viper system is more precise. It measures the voltage on the car’s electrical system. A car battery provides just more than 12 volts to the car’s electrical grid. When the engine starts and the alternator reaches operating speed, the voltage surges to 14.1 volts. The Viper measures the voltage many times each second and instructs the starter motor to disengage when it senses the engine has started.

To cool down the car, the owner has to leave the air conditioning and blower controls in the on position. Of course, in the winter, pre-starting the car can also warm it up. The remote control has about a 2,000-foot range and can transmit through buildings, according to company spokesman Ken Gammage. That range is significantly longer than other systems’, he said.

Although it may seem wasteful, an idling car consumes relatively little gasoline. The remote start does not create a theft risk, because a person still needs the remote or a key to enter the car. If the window is broken, the Viper automatically shuts down the engine.

The system won an innovation award at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. Directed Electronics sells the Viper and identical products under the Python and Clifford names at major electronic stores and independent retailers. The suggested retail price is $479, but it is sometimes discounted to $399.

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com