2007 Chevrolet Tahoe: Love that Remote Start

I dunno, I prefer a car that starts every time that doesn't have a remote start feature, than one that does and occasionally fails to start...
;)

7driver, it all depends on where you come from, and how many cars you have--and if you acutally used your garage for storage of your car.
 
My father has a three car garage with two classic cars and two daily drivers, which means one car is going to be outside. Durring the summer, if it's not too hot and if he is only gone for a short trip (or if mom is home) he can leave one of the classic's outside and park both his and my mother's car in the gagage.
 
But most of the time, one of the daily drivers (mostly his) is parked out side. If he could simply open the front door, and start the car from indside the house, while he checks his email and has a cup of coffee, I'm sure his days would start a lot better.
 
I know that I would like this some times after I work. I am still going to college in Arizona, and because I can lock the car after it starts, I can sit in the A/C while my car gets cool.
 
For the most part I do think this is a kind of stupid thing to have. I know people who do have it, and forget and just get in the car and later on, say "I could have had the car warm up while we were getting ready. " I make them pay for coffee after that.
 
Oh well the point is, is that remote start CAN be a really cool thing to have and it adds just a little bit of cool upscale class to the lowly chevy.

When I lived in Alaska, remote start was a very popular aftermarket option to have. I didn't have it, so I had to go out 15-20 minutes before I wanted to leave for work, unplug the battery/oil pan heater, start my car, lock it up and go back in to finish getting ready for work. I never thought about remote start being beneficial in hotter climates, but it makes sense and would be nice to have in SoCal in the summer.

I think you can pretty much bet on a defective battery. It shouldn't go dead that quickly, and the fact that it happened twice already seem to point to a bad battery. Bring it to the dealer and have them do a load test on the battery - bet it will fail the test.

Remote start is a gas waster. The upside is maybe 5 minutes of extra comfort rather than just turning on the A/C when you get into the car. You could achieve a similar effect by using one of those windshield reflectors and opening the windows immediately after getting into the car to let all of the hot air vent out. By making the A/C cool all of that air instead, you're wasting a lot of energy. Also, an idling engine is at its least efficient, so you're burning even more gasoline to get the same cooling effect.
 
I hope gas prices go up, so that people might reconsider their wasteful habits.

Aftermarket remote start is pretty popular in GM's Michigan home... where the winters can be harsh. Sometimes your doors and locks physically freeze shut and you have to get very creative to get into your car! It can also take up to 20 mins for a really frozen windshield to defrost such that you can see safely. Not to mention if your car is already completely covered in snow that melted slightly and re-froze to the consistency of granite. Ah, Michigan winters. I can certainly see the appeal of the remote start feature in cold climes, but I agree that here in CA and other warm states it makes wasteful use of an idling V8 engine. Assuming that V8 will start, of course.
  
BTW that's smart thinking on GM's part to automatically turn on the rear defrost as well - I would have never thought of that!

I rented a new Malibu LTZ last week with remote start. Very cool, er, warm, feature to have in Milwaukee (although it was rather mild last week). I'd love it in Dallas in the summer time too. I didn't notice whether the rear defroster would come on, but I do know the heated seats wouldn't come on automatically. At least not that I'm aware of. Maybe if I'd read the manual, but it was just a rental, not a long term tester with interested consumers waiting to read my observations. heh heh.

I dont really see the point of it in hot climates, as Ive never been so uncomfortable in a hot car that I cant wait 4 minutes for the AC to cool it down... Also, in HOT climate temperatures, the effect of the byproducts produced while idling is slightly magnified.
 
HOWEVER, in COLD climates there is quite possibly no extra luxury feature better to have. There is nothing like freezing your tail off right when you walk outside your nice warm house, and then sitting down on an icebox of a seat, after you spent 10 minutes de-icing the door lock and the windows. In cold weather, remote start is a must have accessory.

There's got to be a better way in cold climates. How about turning on the electric seat heaters instead of the engine? The most obvious to me would be de-crapifying one's life and using the garage to (gasp!) park the car instead of holding over next decade's garage sale items.
 
In hot climates, what I do is to open all windows and sunroof, drive until internal temps=ambient temps, then close everything and then turn on the A/C. Seat coolers (e.g. new Lincolns) seem a smart idea as does a sunshade so that the black leather seats and steering wheel don't become branding irons.
 
I bring this up because an idling car with nobody in it just screams "wasteful, fat, dumb, environmentally unfriendly American hillbilly". Is this what they do in other cold climate countries where gas costs $10/gal? There's gotta be a better way.

your battery might be weak due to the lights being on during a photo shoot on a trip to Oregon. i remember they killed the battery then and i know once you let a battery go bad, the battery is never the same.

7driver- as mentioned before, it can take up to 20 minutes to properly clear the windshield of frost in a cold climate. And while I agree about having a garage (love it!), it's rare that you have one at your workplace for most of us. So if it's a colder / wintery type climate for you, you *will* end up with frozen hands (clearing the windshield manually while you *also* let the car idle with the defroster running) if you don't have the convenience of remote start. Besides the pollution issue, it can't be much more wasteful of energy than allowing the garage to be heated to a comfortable level by the house- especially if it's a larger (2+) car garage. (uh, and then even with the pollution- how much is being generated by the electric company to produce that heat, or how much is given off by the gas / propane furnace, etc.??) ;-)
 
ahightower- unless GM has changed this feature on the Malibu since its introduction in 2004 (entirely possible, I know), the remote start doesn't kick in the seat heater or rear window defroster. But the seat heaters warmed up so quickly in our 2004 that this was seldom an issue, and the rear window grid works nearly as quickly to give adequate visibility to get moving.

Forgot my initial reason for wanting to reply -
 
Brian, there seems to be a rash of recent model GM vehicles (900s especially) having battery troubles based on reading in the Edmunds' forums (as well as others I frequent). I don't know if it's the batteries or something about the electrical system in the vehicles themselves that is to blame though. In my own case, the only dead battery issue I've experienced yet was caused when I left the radio on in the truck overnight no more than three days after getting it (in the garage, of all things- see?!?, convenience isn't always a GOOD thing!). I was playing with the Nav system, programming destination information for an upcoming trip, got called by my personal higher power, and neglected to turn it off (planned to come back, but forgot).
 
That caused all kinds of not-so-cool things to happen when I jumpstarted it too. The only issue beyond my control was a Check Engine Light caused by a code that I had to visit the dealership to get cleared though. And I've had no more problems with my own since then. Though there are plenty of others with experiences like yours, I still lean toward bad batteries from the factory- my father's recent model Silverado has been eating the Delco batteries lately too.

your battery might be weak due to the lights being on during a photo shoot on a trip to Oregon. i remember they killed the battery then and i know once you let a battery go bad, the battery is never the same.
 
I'm not so sure about that. The battery didn't go fully dead, as all of the accesorries and lights worked fine. And even in that incident the battery shouldn't have drained to that extent that quickly. The problem must have been in play even before then. Whatever. It is time for a load test of the battery.
 
And while I hate to admit it, I've had a lot of dead batteries in my day. The only ones that ever suffered permananet damage were the micro-sized ones that came in early Miatas. If those went dead just once, they were expensive scrap.

7driver - When I lived in Alaska, I didn't have a garage or even a carport. Actually, none of my friends did. I had to park my poor little car on the street every day. Not everyone is lucky enough to live in a house with a garage.

Yes - there is a TSB that's just named "No Start." I'm taking the Tahoe to a local dealer on Thursday - hopefully they'll be able to address the problem....

@genius163, I lived in Anchorage for 20 winters without a garage. In the winter I'd just plug in the block heater and the $10 interior car heater gizmo when I'd park the cars in the driveway.
  
A half hour or so before I needed to leave, I'd flip the switch to the outside outlet and my car would be warm, the windows clear and it would crank. Then I'd creep out of the neighborhood while the tranny and other systems warmed up a bit. My daily driver lasted 17 years doing that. :-)
  
I can't imagine wasting gas sitting and idling.

steve: I was in Fairbanks. I left my car plugged in all night but when I started it, it wasn't driveable for at least 10 minutes, and even then it wasn't quite safe. After 15-20 minutes, everything would function properly.

I just noticed... What did you pick up at Beast Buy?

play - i was looking for DSL phone line filters - mine went bad. They had 'em alright but $5 more expensive than good ole Radio Shack. Since I needed two and I'm just cheap enough to drive an extra 2 min to save $10 I did not buy anything from Best Buy that day.
 
DSL is now up to full strength Captain.