We have approx minus 8 degrees Celsius in Norway now. I notice that the outdoor temperature display in my MY2013 show approx 3 degrees too much. It says -5 Celsius.

Anyone else noticed a significant difference?

How can you tell the difference?

Anything below zero is too cold to care

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DriverHS

Yes I have noticed a difference at times. In the hot weather, if the car is standing outside, I think it can read higher than the ambient. Also tends to read a couple of degrees higher when temp is 0 or below. Other times it can be reasonably accurate against what I would expect. So I don't think it is consistently reliable.

I don't know about your area, but where I live we can get variations of 3 or more degrees in pockets of our city, which complicates things too. My suburb is less foggy and often a little warmer in winter in the mornings particularly, yet no major difference in geography.

I just thought you might like to know, though, that here it is currently 20 degrees at 7am, heading for 27. That is lower than recent days, when it has been 33 or more. I hope you like winter sports!

Cheers

powerd

Canberra, Australia

I don't have ELSA booted up, but the outside temperature sensor on VAG cars is normally in the front grille or under the front wheel arch. Therefore it can be affected by other external factors, particularly if the car's stationary, parked in sunlight, etc.

Edited 1 December, 201213 yr by artichoke273

I just thought you might like to know, though, that here it is currently 20 degrees at 7am, heading for 27. That is lower than recent days, when it has been 33 or more. I hope you like winter sports!

Today it's been -13 Celcius and the next days will be some colder. Just gotta love it!

No winter sports yet, waiting for the snow.

I find that mine is not accurate standing still but seems to revert to being approx correct when on the move. An example was yesterday, when I started the car it was covered in Frost but it showed 3 degrees above freezing. As soon as I got on the road it changed to -1 degrees. I had checked it against my digital outside house thermometer before I left the house and that was showing -1

Edited 5 December, 201213 yr by Pesmog

Yes, once on the move they tend to be accurate. I think when stationary they must either pick up on some heat source (say from the engine if recently run), or are affeted by wind chill if the wind is in the right direction (i.e. not like driving forwards).

You can tell this once you start moving as the temperatre indicated changes very quickly to whatever is about 'right'.

Teccy question though, is the temperature from this sensor used for engine management purposes? If so, how does it compensate for an incorrect value when (say) starting with a cold engine if the sensor thinks it's 'warm', or vice versa?

Based on a couple of systems I have looked at in other cars they use a different sensor for air temperature correction of the fuelling. I think they tend to be somewhere in the inlet tract but it would depend if the car has an intercooler or not as to where it is positioned

Yeah, that would make sense