What Is the Hottest Surface In Your Car On A Summer Day?

Perhaps the worst part of the Grand Junction summer is when you have to climb into a vehicle that has been sitting in the hot sun for several hours.

Hot Car In the Hot Summer Sun

Recently, I shared a video from Colorado State Patrol trooper Lewis who was demonstrating how hot it gets in an enclosed vehicle on a hot summer day. In the video we see the internal temperature climb over 50 degrees in just 15 minutes. Even though the outside temperature was about 93°, inside the car the temperature rose from to over 120° in just 15 minutes.

Colorado State Patrol via Facebook

What Is the Hottest Surface In Your Car?

The video - along with the idea from a co-worker - inspired me to investigate the surface temperatures of a vehicle in the hot sun. What is the hottest surface in your car?

My co-worker, who for the sake of this post will be called "Carl", has an infrared temperature gun with a laser. You point the laser at an object - and it magically and instantly records the surface temperature.

Parking Lot Temperature Investigation

So "Carl" and I head out to the parking lot of the radio station like Sherlock Holmes, to investigate how hot the various surfaces of a car get after it's been sitting in the sun for a while. I want to point out that at no time were any animals - including Carl and myself - injured during the shooting of the photographs that follow.

What Is the Hottest Surface When Your Car Is In the Sun?

Air conditioning is great, but that doesn't do a whole lot of good when you climb into a vehicle that has been cooking in the western Colorado sun. We wanted to find out what the hottest surface in a hot automobile is. With the aid of a laser-generated gun, we captured various car surface temperatures, and here's what we discovered.

Grand Junction Driving Rules: Part II

Grand Junction has a lot of bad drivers, perhaps because they have not been given the proper instruction. By a twist of fate, we have been given some insight into the behavior of Grand Junction motorists. If your driving skills need to be improved, perhaps you can learn something from Grand Junction's (Bad) Rules For Driving - Part II.

CDOT 2022 Colorado Driver Survey Highlights

The annual driver survey by the Colorado Department of Transportation seeks information about driver behavior as it relates to factors such as seatbelts, alcohol, marijuana, cell phones, motorcycles, and pedestrians. Scroll on for a look at some of the survey highlights from the 2022 CDOT Driving Behavior Survey.

Source: What Is the Hottest Surface In Your Car On A Summer Day?

Filed Under: Colorado

Categories: Articles