Did you know that there are several states where letting your car warm up on a cold winter's day is against the law? In fact, the majority of states across the U.S. have such laws in place.  The reason, it helps the environment.

Luckily for us, Montana isn't part of that group.

Here in Montana, you're more than welcome to start your car and give it a few minutes to warm up on a cold day.  However, how long should you allow the car to warm up?  Is there a time that's better than another? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? If you allow it to idle too long will it hurt your engine?

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According to Carfax, 30 seconds of idling should be sufficient for you to hit the roads and get going on a cold day. Letting our cars warm up for a few minutes is something we've been doing for decades, however, now it is just something we continue to do out of habit.

Back in the day before all the vehicles were fuel injected, it made sense to let vehicles warm up, because if you didn't you wouldn't get the right mixture of air and fuel.  However, that's not the case these days and so technically, other than comfort for you and your passengers, 30 seconds is all that you need.

Winter frozen back car window, texture freezing ice glass background
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Oh and for those of you that are driving electric cars, while you don't need to warm them up, it is recommended that you do so that you get more life out of the batteries.

I don't know about you, but personally, I'm a fan of getting into a warm car on a cold day so much so that I made sure to install a remote car starter on mine. I know, I know, some of you might think that I hate the planet and that's not true. I love the planet, but I hate is sitting in a cold car more.

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To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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