AUTONEWS

There is a logical explanation - why a car shows a higher temperature in the summer

Due to their location in vehicles, thermistors primarily measure the temperature of the heat radiating from the ground.

Although every vehicle has a gauge on the dashboard to display the outside temperature, modern cars do not have thermometers at all. Instead, they are equipped with so-called thermistors, or a special type of resistor (its resistance decreases as the temperature increases).

The difference is that one uses mercury to measure the outside temperature, while the other measures the temperature based on changes in electrical currents.

Temperature is usually measured with a mercury thermometer. The liquid mercury in the thermometer expands and rises to a certain value when it heats up, and contracts and falls to a lower value when it cools down.

A thermistor, on the other hand, measures the change in electrical current that occurs due to added or subtracted heat, writes Autonews.

The problem is not with the car's thermistor itself. Thermistors are generally accurate, not to mention the fact that they are small and cheap to manufacture. The problem with thermistors in cars is that they are usually mounted on the front of the car behind the front grille. The Weather Channel reports that because of this location, thermistors primarily measure the temperature of the heat radiating from the ground.

Road surfaces simply absorb a lot of heat and solar radiation. It is always warmer near the ground. As a result, the temperature your car displays on sunny days is also higher than the actual outside temperature. This means that the temperature difference between what your car displays and the actual outside temperature can be up to five degrees.

When the sun is not shining, the temperature your car displays is often a little more accurate. The difference also occurs on colder days. The road is often colder than the air, and the outside temperature is still a degree or two higher than what is displayed on the dashboard. On the other hand, it is not a bad thing because you will get an earlier warning of icy roads from the trip computer. Usually, the signal comes on at 3 °C.