Third Coast Auto Group Official Blog
Summer car temperatures and cooking adventures
By Product Expert | Posted in Texas, Tips and Tricks on Thursday, May 31st, 2018 at 4:33 pm
As it starts to get hot out there this spring and summer in the Austin TX area, you may be looking for ways to prepare your car for hot weather. Or maybe, when you are wincing every time you touch your steering wheel, you just want to know if it’s going to burn your hands. So, realistically, how hot can it get in your car in the summer in Texas? And can you actually cook an egg in there if you want to?
How hot can it get in your car in the summer in Texas?
Here in Austin TX, most summer days will hit the 90s at least, and there are approximately two weeks per year where we will be dancing over 100 degrees (all of these numbers are in Fahrenheit). However, the interior of your car will get much hotter than that. After just ten minutes, your interior car temperature will usually be 19 degrees hotter than the outside. After half an hour, the inside of your car will be 34 degrees hotter than the outside, and we think that that keeps creeping up with even longer durations. In 95-degree weather, the interior of your car will be 129 degrees in just half an hour. When temps are 100 outside, we are guessing that will be 134 inside your car.
Is it dangerous to be inside a car without air conditioning in the summer?
Yes. Yes it is. Never leave a dog or a child in a car (without the air conditioning running) when the temperature is 70 degrees or more. The interior of the vehicle can rapidly become dangerous for them. And when you touch a black steering wheel or seat and it feels like it’s burning, you may be exactly right! Even a temperature as low as 109 for a long time can cause a burn, though heat exhaustion and dehydration are probably the bigger issues in a car.
Cooking eggs…and yourself
You can literally cook an egg with temperatures as low as 130 degrees (though it will take about 20 minutes). That means that if summer temperatures are high enough to make your car’s interior 134 degrees, you could make the world’s most awkward lunch using your car alone. (We don’t recommend this, but it would be interesting, right?)
