My Car Has the Coolest Stupid Feature

I have a VW Touareg. Please know that I don't roll like that. I scored a killer lease deal aided by my driving less than 1000 miles a month and the fact that I was willing to take the one that the owner's son had at college for 3 months. During that time it had been rear ended and later keyed down both sides. They fixed both, took $30 more a month of the already crazy good lease deal and gave me 15k miles a year instead of the standard 12k. It's been two years and I only have driven 19k total, so I have a helluva road trip to plan in the next year.

My car has a bunch of features. Almost all them are dumb and unnecessary. The important thing is that one of the dumb features is a very good thing. On my airline like dashboard of indigo lights, exists a button labeled "REST". I didn't know what it was for. I wondered about it for a about a year before I conceded that this is the first car that would require my reading of the manual.

"REST" stands for "Residual Heat". (wtf?) Here's what it does:

1. Drive somewhere
2. Park somewhere. Preferably someplace that you are just "running in for a bit" like Starbucks (not impressed yet?)
3. Turn off your car.
4. Hit the "REST" button (ready for the magic?)
   

The climate control turns on even though the car is off. The car is using the heat from the engine to continue keeping the car warm. It will do this for 30 minutes or until the battery drops in voltage. While I always thought this was dumb, I have succumb to the woosie boy pleasure of returning to a still warm car.

What if all cars had this feature? I assume they eventually will. Maybe there would be a reduction of cars outside of coffee shops and post offices that are running that quiet engine hum solely to allow their owners to return to a warm car after getting a latte or their mail. I wonder how much fuel that would save. Now that I think about it, coffee doesn't take that long. Why are they running their car anyway?