It went from rain to snow overnight, got even colder, and froze hard. This morning there were about 2 inches of very rough ice on the car. For some reason, it always collects the most at the bottom of the windshield, right where it's most important to see. The ice was about as hard as the glass.
I broke one scraper trying to clean it, started the engine and left the defroster on for a few minutes. After driving around for a while, and one mighty crash as the glacier on the roof let go, you would hardly know it was there at all.
I have a garage bay I could use, but it's full of other stuff, and I only park the car in there during disaster level storms.
I am very happy to have a PHEV during winter in Sweden, I can run the defroster for ten min without running the petrol engine so I don't break the law about idling longer than one min.
Oh, nice. I've just got a regular hybrid, so the heat works the same as with a regular combustion-only car (no fancy heat pump or resistance heater).
Last year, I decided to try something "clever" and ran an extension cord, put a hair dryer on the dash, and let that defrost it lol. Took about 10 minutes, but it worked! When it's that icy out, it usually takes the engine at least 10 minutes to warm up enough to even start defrosting, so that was a win.
Have you tried a windshield cover? Not overly difficult to install and some include side mirror covers too. We don't get much snow/ice where I'm at but they're not much more than scraper so worth the investment.