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- If all of us were using engine heater, the exposed Oslo-air would be considerably cleaner, something that would mean great benefits on the most critical and coldest winter days. Then we might avoid days with an air pollution as bad as in Mexico City and Cairo, as we recently have experienced this winter, - says Information Director Egil Otter in NAF.
Using an engine heater, the consumption of harmful CO will be reduced by 60-80% the first driven kilometres.
- It is a common fact that an increasing part of harmful waste-gases from car traffic occures when you start a cold engine. When the engine is warm the catalyst cleans the waste gases. More and more cars have this cleaning equipment.
That is why most of the harmful waste-gases from cars occurs during the first driven kilometres, before the catalyst gains effect. Also in cars without catalyst the harmful waste-gases is many times higher when the engine is cold.
This top in spilling is both easy and cheap to avoid. By using an electric engine heater and start a pre-heated engine you avoid the extremely high cold start pollution. If you assume that at least 150.000 to 200.000 cars starts cold in the Oslo area each morning, you see that it would be a great help if all of these cars were pre-heated, states Otter.
- This is knowledge we have had for some time now and when you see how huge the pollution problem is at its worst over the big cities it is strange that the authorities long time ago have not made an effort to stimulate to more increased use of such simple, but effective remedy as an electric engine heater, says Otter.
- A natural – and effective – first step would be to make 230V electricity available where people park their cars.
Marketing Director Helge Berget at DEFA, which is market leader on car heating in Northern Europe, reminds us that the engine heater also has other important effects than the environment advantages.
- You also save fuel. When the engine is cold you use a lot more fuel than when the engine is warm. The extra consumption each cold-start is around 0,10-0,20 litres. When you multiply this with several daily cold-starts during winter, you see that it costs you a lot of money. To an average car driver this might easily become 1000 NOK a year using today’s fuel prices
More consumption also means more pollution from waste-gases, states Helge Berget at DEFA.
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