Pre-conditioning, Parking Climate, Remote Start - Confused!
 

So I got my new XC60 last week - love it! I've explored the seemingly never ending settings on the centre console and the VOC app. Everything is great apart from the above settings - i just cant figure them out at all!

Remote start works, i've used that. Each time i press pre-conditioning i get a message that "Parking Climate is temporarily unavailable", it ignores set timers both from the app and the Sensus and doesn't seem to engage at any point.

What i'm trying to achieve is that the car is warmed up slightly each morning as we head towards Winter in the UK. I've set the auto engage for heated seats and steering wheel when the car starts and maybe that would work with Remote Start? One of the main selling points of this car was the remote settings of the climate and it's driving me mad that i can't get it working! I have been in a menu at one point that (i think) allowed me to choose settings for parking climate but now i can't find it! Every time i press pre-conditioning from the centre console i get an error message.

Does anybody have a clue what i'm doing wrong or if something is over-riding the setting? Any help would be great!

There are 2 ways to pre condition
My XC 60 T8

1/ Parking Climate I use this when in garage and plugged in. If I recall it also depends on the outside temperature of the car, compared to inside, if close it thinks it is not worth turning on (correct me if I am wrong someone) as sometimes I get failed message.

2/ Remote Start) I assume this is the engine, so not this one in a garage (If I recall this will not start if you have a T8 and it is plugged in.

But in general it works for me, I am sure they would be other reasons why if certain criteria's were not being met etc.

In cold weather, on the hybrids, pre-conditioning involves activating the external (fuel fired) auxiliary heater - a standard feature. This is not the same as remote start which starts the car's engine.

It does say in the manual that it needs to be plugged in to begin the preconditioning process, for reasons I'm not sure, but I have been able to precondition without doing so for a couple of years. You can hear the auxiliary motor running even without a cable.

The whole preconditioning/parking climate/remote start thing is not very well explained in the manual to be fair.

The manual does state if you keep seeing this error message you need to take it in to be looked at though.

MaDProFF - you might want to re-consider preconditioning in the garage based on above (unless the setup is different now?). Seems a shame it can't use the electrical supply to do this rather than fuel on my car. Kind of goes against the principle of hybrids.

Surely if you precondition in the garage you will fill the garage with fumes from the aux heater?

I have read around the internet that the pre-conditioning/parking heater isn't available on UK models (Due to some legality) is this right?

To be clear the model i have is an XC60 R-Design.


Edit - Just spoke to a dealer and they said "My car isn't fitted with a Parking Climate option". I didn't realise that it was an added extra

That's incorrect, it's available in the UK.

What engine do you have?

A D4 R-Design. is it only available on the Hybrid?

Pre-conditioning requires the aux-heater to be fitted and afaik parking climate is only available when this is fitted.

I don't think the aux heater is available as an option on the XC60 although it comes as standard on T8 XC60s (and '90s).

ok - great! at least i can stop trying to figure out why it's not doing what i want it to! thanks for your help!

Yes, they will work with remote start but only if the outside temperature at the car is <10C.