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I think the coldest I've had to deal with was 15 degrees and my Raptor started fine…which was more than I could say for the Freight-liner Semi-tractor I was supposed to drive that day. My wife's Buick did fine this weekend as well when the temp dropped down to 18 degrees.
Below about -15° F. to -25° F., almost no vehicle will start reliably without a block heater. I know--I spent some years living where winter nighttime temperatures regularly dropped into the -25° F. to -45° F. range, with daytime highs often below 0° F.
Hooey.
I live in Northern MN near Tower and Embarrass, where recorded temperatures have hit the - 60s. Since I've lived here (8 years) I think -30 is pretty typical for a Jan/Feb nighttime T, and below 0 days are common.
I've owned both a 1999 Toyota Corolla and a 2005 Dodge Caravan since I've been here. I don't have a garage at all, so my vehicles sit out in the cold. I also have never had a block heater and don't plug my vehicles in at night.
I've NEVER had a problem with either one starting just fine the morning after a -30 night. I've never even had to turn the ignition key twice. In deep cold you can sure hear the engine firing up, though, sounds like a bang! And then the car makes a low, groaning noise.
I have a great mechanic and take my vehicles to him regularly, so whatever he's doing has worked. I also baby my cars - I never go over 45 until the engine has warmed up - which means I spend a lot of time driving around my small town until the engine warms before I hit the highway. And we never turn our cars off when we go local places like the post office or grocery store - just leave them unlocked and running.
Two things I HAVE had problems with in extreme cold: tires going flat (you really have to get the pressure right in this weather) and windows and doors freezing shut.
So I guess I'm saying that when it comes to starting in extreme cold, based on my experience it's more how you service and treat your vehicle than which make of vehicle you own.
^Re-read my post. "Below about -15° F. to -25° F., almost no vehicle will start RELIABLY without a block heater." Like you, I've started vehicles in extremely cold temperatures (past -40°), but everything has to be working absolutely perfectly to get it done. While today's fuel-injected vehicles are much less temperamental about starting in very cold weather compared to the old automatic choke equipped carburetors, today's engine electronics also require near full voltage to even fire the spark plugs or run the fuel injection. The result is that the battery has to be absolutely up to snuff or the vehicle won't start. The other issue is engine wear. Starting vehicles at those low temperatures without benefit of a block heater puts a lot of extra stress and wear on the engine.
Diesel engines (and I've been driving them in cold weather for going on four decades) are a whole 'nother matter. They can be extremely difficult to start at about -20° F. or colder without benefit of a block heater. When I lived in an area where those -40° F. temperatures occurred often, the simple rule was that if the diesel vehicle was going to be parked outside without a block heater, it was just left running. That creates its own set of challenges with "wet-stacking," engine wear, and--now--problems with emission systems--the latter a big consideration for people in very cold climates who are pondering a purchase of a new diesel vehicle.
LOL ... jazzlover and 601 have two entirely different scenarios here.
While the temperature ranges may be similar that both experience, what comes into play is the altitude difference. MN is pretty low elevation, while the Rocky Mtns where jazzlover operated (and where my experience of almost 50 years is, too) are much higher. Denver's at 5,280', and the mountains to the West, even in the Valley areas, where jazz lived/worked ... can be higher than that.
So what comes into play is the volumetric efficiency due to the density altitude for starting. Diesels are especially difficult to start at the cold temps because there's so much less air available to compress to reach the ignition temp for the fuel injected. Block heaters are pretty much essential for reliable starting at altitude on these.
But the scenario for spark ignition is much less difficult. I haven't seen any FI gasoline car of the last two decades that wouldn't reliably start at the -15 to -25 F temp range in the mountains, even with a marginal battery where the cranking voltage was at the low end of the range where the starter would still crank the engine over.
So here's where jazz and I will disagree on this thread ... as opposed to not seeing vehicles start reliably in the cold temps ... my experience in the Colorado high country is that gasoline powered FI vehicles today do start reliably in these areas at the -15 to -25 F temp ranges. I'm sure not getting the no-start service call-outs I used to get decades ago with carbureted engines being the norm .... due, in part, to the better starters and FI and ignition systems of modern vehicles.
I don't really disagree with sunsprit. Today's fuel-injected vehicles are so much better at starting at very frigid temperatures compared to carbureted vehicles that there really is no comparison. Still, that battery had better be at 100% or people can have problems. Many of the newer vehicles that I've seen will not start if the battery voltage is anything less than 12 volts.
One other new twist that my mechanic mentioned to me the other day: Diesels have long had the issue that they burn so little fuel at idle that the engine will actually get cold while extended idling in very frigid temperatures. The result is "wet-stacking"--where the fuel is not completely burned and unburned fuel can coat the cylinder walls and even get into the motor oil. High-idle controls and other methods are used to raise the engine temperature sufficiently to remedy that problem. Well, that has not traditionally been an issue with gas engines because, even with fuel injection, the air/fuel mixture is sufficiently fuel rich to burn enough fuel to maintain engine temperature in very frigid extended idling conditions. What my mechanic told me was that the new gasoline-direct-injection (GDI) engines now showing up in the marketplace also are having the issue of actually cooling down when extended idle in frigid temperatures. I thought that was interesting.
I live in Canada where it gets ass-freezing cold in winter (as low as -40). We have block heaters installed in most vehicles but sometimes you can't plug the vehicle in (e.g. if you're at a meter on the street). I've consistently noticed that the cold threshold for starting is lower for U.S-made vehicles, usually ranging from -25 to -35 F. And I'm usually not a fan of American vehicles. My Nissan Altima won't start below -18 F, and my Toyota Tundra won't start below 0 F! My friend has a Ford F-150 and it always starts like a dream, no matter how cold it is.
You are basing your conclusions on a very small test sampling, I've had Japanese cars for the last 20 winters and never had a problem with one not starting, before that i had many American cars and some of them wouldnt start in cold weather, particularly Dodge products.
I also had a few British cars that wouldnt start no matter what the weather was,,
I had a Suzuki Sidekick that refused to start below -20F, it wasn't a battery problem, but a flooding problem.The engine would crank fine but after I gave up I pulled the spark plugs and they were dripping. Something about the calibration of the EFI system. US carmakers assume that their cars are going to be used in cold weather and Detroit isn't that far from really cold weather.
And plugging in the heater is fine if you are in a place where that's available. Believe it or not, sometimes you might have to park in a place without a plug in available, and that's when you need to have a car you can trust.
A quick note concerning those German cars-they have huge batteries, because they use Bosch ABS/EFI systems. Those systems require a certain voltage when starting or they don't work properly, the Mercedes ML320 we own has brakes that basically don't work properly if the system doesn't have the juice. That battery is huge.
My DD is a Volvo and it always starts to matter the weather. They are made for cold weather. Japanese cars aren't.
They are made for cold weather. Japanese cars aren't.
BS.
After years of driving Audi 4000CS Quattro's here in the Rocky Mountain region, when my last one finally rusted through at the rear sub-frame (at over 300,000 miles) ... I was on a sales trip to Denver and there was no way I was leaving Denver in that car. I called around to all of my favorite used car lots (dealers I'd been working on their cars for 25 years), and none had an AWD car in my price range ($2,500 +/-).
I wound up with a 1995 Subie wagon, the first year of the new series car, but still with the 2.2 ltr FI engine Subie had been using for years. The car was dead-on reliable in all of the temperature extremes that present in the Colorado mountains and up here in Wyoming for 8 years ... and the battery in it was a Subie dealer OE battery of 3 years old when I got the car with 120,000 miles on the odo. I drove the car as a sales car for 5 years, then gave it to my wife when I bought a 1998 OBW (cheap, with the blown head gaskets in the 4-cam engine). I drove the '98 without any starting/running issues in the same winter conditions ... even had it start right up after sitting for 5 months while I drove my '82 MB 300Dt in the nicer weather months. My wife put another 100K miles on the '95 without any starting problems on the battery that had been in the car when I bought it (albeit, the car was getting pretty tatty at that point, with the interior ripped up from carrying farmer's market produce to market, livestock to the vet, and bringing home livestock from sale barn auctions). We sold that car to a local kid needing it to commute from Cheyenne to Greeley for school, and it's still in service with over 350,000 miles on it ... and has not let the family down even once for starting in our recent -18 F cold temps, although they did put a new battery in it to assure the reliability.
I've since moved on to a pair of OBW Limited Wagons (2000 & 2001), and neither hesitates to start reliably in the cold weather here. With road service being problematic here, having a reliable car for my wife is an essential consideration, if not paramount to her being in remote areas for her work and needing transportation. Her 2000 OBW now has 240,000 miles on it and runs as well (if not better) than my 2001 with 154,000 miles on it. Both start well enough to be taken for granted as reliable transportation vehicles, usually starting in cold weather on the 2nd or 3rd cylinder to crank past compression. The EFI mapping is pretty good, they settle into a 1600 RPM high idle for about 15 seconds, then start dropping down to 1000 RPM and within two minutes down to 750 RPM idle. Usually reach closed loop operation within a minute, according to my scanner.
A neighbor, who is a first responder, has used Toyota vehicles ranging from AWD SUV's through an ancient Corolla for his winter drivers for over 25 years. He's got to have a reliable vehicle to report to his on-call and scheduled shifts. He's an absolute klutz when it comes to mechanical stuff, he'll call me before opening the hood to do anything except check the oil. He's never called me to get a non-starting vehicle running, and they are both the type of people who will not attempt to start a car more than a couple of times before determining that there is something wrong that should be looked at by a knowledgeable person. They've alwasy started.
Yet other neighbors use Suzuki's, Honda's, and other asian marques reliably around here where a service call is a 75 mile round trip for a provider. It's a big deal if a vehicle doesn't start ... and the vehicles are starting.
Consider, too, that Subaru has a huge presence in the Colorado mountain country. Just about every neighbor of mine in Vail has at least one of their cars or an OBW in their garage. They apparently aren't having issues with the starting or running of these cars.
I recently replaced an engine in a Suzuki XL-7 AWD SUV for a friend. It's used as a commercial sales vehicle by an ag business, and they need a nice looking, comfortable SUV to haul sales materials/samples and customers around in off-road. The original engine was damaged by cross-fueling (one of their workers put a 1/2 tank of diesel in it and drove for a day at freeway speeds to an appointment), so the vehicle was down. Found a serviceable used engine with 75,000 miles on it in a boneyard in the PNW for a lot less money than going through the original engine, so that was installed. The vehicle is driven in all weather conditions by various sales staffers and the owner's family members ... and it has always started reliably. They're so happy with this vehicle that they sold their two Jeep Cherokee's that weren't as comfortable nor more capable off-road that got much lower fuel economy ... and are using the XL-7 as their only sales vehicle for this winter. They'll be looking for a deal on another one come spring when sales activity picks up and they need two sales people out in the field. PS: the sales people are the owner's wives who must have reliable transportation. The Suzuki has done a better job of this than the Jeeps ever did.
I find carbureted engines do start quicker and more reliably then fuel injected ones do in extreme cold.
No way. If a fuel-injected vehicle is not starting properly down to some very low temperatures, then there is something wrong with it--most likely a dying battery that can't supply enough voltage to the EFI. Just this morning, I started my EFI "beater" 4WD in bitter cold temperatures with wind chill well down below -25° F.--and no block heater. Like sunsprit said, it fired up on about the third compression stroke and that was that. I very well remember the days of pumping the accelerator pedal to set the automatic choke and get a little fuel into a carbureted engine--don't dare do it too much or you'll flood it. Then cranking it over, having it start, then die after a few seconds. Repeat that a few times and hope the battery doesn't die. When it does start and stay running for bit, having to sit there and fiddle with the throttle to make sure it stays running. Then hope the automatic choke doesn't stick as it reaches operating temperature. (For the record, in the days of carburetors, I far preferred a manual choke because the driver could have better control over both the idle speed and the choke. The worst of the worst for vehicle fuel systems were the carbureted vehicles built after the more stringent emission controls were put into place in the early 1970's and before EFI took over.)
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