I noticed yesterday that the thermometre in my car (a Ford Mondeo) showed 25.5C, whereas a thermometre in the street was showing 29C at that moment. We discussed this with my girlfriend, who reckons car thermometres show the temperature inside the car, whereas I always assumed they showed the atmospheric one.

She says that her car in the US would show 100F when she opened it in the summer, whereas the temperature outside was not that hot. And then it would drop. But I remember also the opposite: my last car (an Opel Astra) would show -1C when I was in the Czech Republic, and it was obviously not that cold inside. And the one before (a Skoda Octavia) actually had a little warning light when road temperature dropped under 4C, to tell you that the road might be frozen.

Is it possible that it depends on the brand? That different cars show different temperatures, either ground, atmospheric or inside the car?

Topics: technology, cars, temperature, climate, thermometres