Auto air conditioning would have to be the best thing invented since sliced bread
. Remember the bad old days before there were any car air-cons? Your clothes would be wet with perspiration and sticking to the back of the seat by the time you reached your destination. Travelling by car in summer was something to be dreaded.
It is hard to believe that there are still some cars on the road without any air conditioning. They are either old models or else the a/c has died and the owners have not had it fixed. Often the owners are not the drivers in such a case; if they were, that car air conditioning unit would soon be seen to. Cars must be one of the hottest places to sit in the summer.
One reason they are so hot is that the aerodynamic design is not conducive to coolness. The first cars on the road were not waterproof or windproof, so they did not need any air-conditioning. Later ones had higher roofs and smaller windows and so they did not get as hot. But after that most cars were designed with a sloping windscreen for better aerodynamics. But this allows the sun to pour down through it and make the interior so much hotter. Even with tinted windscreens it is still hot.
In addition, there is a larger glass area as the windows are bigger. And that little triangle window in the front of older cars that could be angled to let in the breeze is now missing in most cars. Thus any car without air conditioning is going to be unbearably and even dangerously hot, so auto air conditioning is absolutely essential.
At one stage air conditioners and heaters for cars were considered luxuries; now they are considered to be basic essentials. Hopefully, sat nav. units will follow suit. It is certainly time that manufacturers started to listen to what the public want when they design a new model car. The days have long gone when people will be satisfied with whatever is dished up. They need to have a say in car design just as much as in house design.
When a car is well-designed with consideration given to what the public wants, it will always be a good seller and that is after all, what car manufacturers want. We sometimes wonder why it has taken them so long to work that simple fact out. Aerodynamics may have its place in the general scheme of things, but it does make a car very hot. Hopefully, such cars will all have really good air conditioners.