Remote-start technology means the end of the in-car sauna this summer

Yes, we all love a sunburnt country. But that’s not to say there aren’t a couple of pretty significant downsides to living through an Australian summer, as anyone who’s every jumped into their car after it’s spent hours parked in the searing sun - and lived to tell the tale - will surely tell you.

The Aussie summer sees the sun go nuclear, transforming parked cars into mobile saunas, and making the cabin materials so baking-hot to the touch it’s like the leather has been replaced with lava.

Who hasn’t made the mistake of driving home from the beach and accidentally resting their elbow on the door trim, which feels like it’s been super-heated in the world’s biggest blast furnace?

Well, no longer. Because while technology is often used to solve the most complex of issues, or answer the great unanswerable questions - like the legions of scientists now attempting to recreate the Big Bang in the Large Hadron Collider, for example - it can also be used to solve the peskiest of real-world problems, like cooling a car’s cabin before you climb into it.

The FordPass App coupled with a Ford Connected Vehicle is the Blue Oval’s cutting-edge connected car technology allowing you to remotely control your vehicle from your mobile device*.

There is a ton of high-tech stuff connected car functionality can unlock for you, but with summer fast approaching, the one we’re most obsessed by right now is the ability to start your car (automatics only, of course) from a Ford app on your mobile phone, and activate the air-conditioning.

That way, by the time you climb into your car, as if by magic, it’s cool and inviting, rather than hotter than the surface of the sun. It works in reverse in winter, too, which means no more mornings spent shivering as you wait for the heater to kick in.

So, no more searing hot cabins. Now if only someone could figure out how to make the sand at the beach a little cooler underfoot, we’d have summer totally sorted.