Get a car with an app to start your car from your phone (hell, my Hyundai Sonata has this). If you know it’s going to be snowing, preset your controls to defrost on high heat, and start your car 20 minutes ahead of time. Scraping snow off is stupid easy when your windshield is hot, and you’ll jump into a nice warm car afterwards. BAM. Problem solved.
Yes because that makes fiscal sense…just buy a new car! Lol
What is this… ice…and snow… you all speak of?
(Hi from Central Florida!) 
I liked them better when they called them sheets.
This is what I need here in north Texas.
I use a camo colored tarp from Big Lots that I got cheap. I cut it to size and cover the entire back and side windows and windshield and stick it down with magnets.
Magnets wouldn’t hold in our high wind snowstorms. I got a couple covers from Costco that are heavy, rubbery-coated on one side and have support sticks on the ends and straps that wrap around your rearview mirrors. They also include covers for the mirrors with barrel catch cords. I definitely recommend letting the cover dry completely before reusing. They were $20/ea. and well worth it.
They fit our Toyota T-100 pickup and Subaru Outback Wagon well.
I have one my friend gave. I have an exterra and I’m too short to scrape the windshield. I love it. It has snowed 3 times, heavy and it just slides right off the window, snow and all. I’m buying 3 packs.
The windshield isn’t the only window on the car I need to see out of, so there would still be plenty of scraping to do.
I’m more likely to need this in the work parking lot. I need to take it with me.
How about a couple 13 gal trash bags. Keep a box of them in the back seat. How would you hold them in place? I have no idea. Perhaps some really big rocks. Or, rubber cement.
The only place my car gets left outside is in public parking lots, which means that once I took this thing off the windshield I’d have to put it in the car to take it home, where it would gleefully melt ice and snow all over the back seat carpet.
But I don’t imagine that would be a problem for long, because someone would surely steal it off my windshield within a week.
So these go on the outside of the windshield but what keeps people from stealing them when you live in the city?
If they are like the version I have, the edge of them wrap around the side of the car and you tuck them into your doors and close the doors. That along with the magnets imbedded into the fabric helps hold it in place.
Lets see…lets assume you get 2 hours idling per gallon of gas. At this rate, you are doing your part every week, needlessly adding to global warming (it takes 5 min to warm a car…15 more to melt the snow off), so soon we won’t have to worry about silly snow…or coastal communities, etc…
Still better than throwing a pan of hot water on your windshield.
Better yet - stay home.