How long should the windscreen take to demist?

Voodooman777 said:

This is my first winter with my 2018 GT. It is the worst vehicle as far as demisting goes. With the blower on a medium setting it only clears a very small section in the middle dash area, and on high it takes the engine forever to warm up. I live in Canada and with -18C this morning I finally scrapped the inside of the windshield after about 10 minutes of idling. I even tried the Meguiar's Anti-fog. spray and that did absolutely nothing.

Click to expand...

One other trick I do other than trying to keep my winter mats dry is the use of a large (4" x 6" x 1") desiccant/silica bag which I place on the dash just behind the infotainment screen during the winter. It helps to absorb moisture/humidity that may linger around the windscreen. T looks like this:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00PZ3VC36/

That, and parking facing the sun all seems to help from my windscreen frosting up on the inside. You'd have pretty chilly outside temps like we have in New Brunswick so I know how frustrating it has been. I used to hate scraping the inside of my windscreen, but no more!!

Something I saw on Midlands Today (Evening Local News in my area) was to put cat litter in a sock and leave on the dash!! This also helps to absorb moisture keeping the inside of the windscreen clear.

Rubbing alcohol premixed and sprayed on the windscreen the night before also helps to keep the windscreen frost free.

Unusual I guess but effective so they say.

Is the HVAC system different on gen 2? My 2016 had no problem clearing the frost from mine... even at temps of -29*F

I am still new to my 2018 and trying to figure out the idiosyncrasies of the HVAC, de-icing and frost issues that I DID'T have with my old 2014 CX-5. So far I have noticed that my windscreen defroster takes longer to heat up and defrost, the external front wiper de-icers have to be on early and stay on to keep snow from freezing up on the bottom of the windscreen, but only if the front windscreen HVAC is also on for an EXTENDED period of time. ONLY when the front of the cabin starts to really warm up does the outside of my front windscreen seem to stay defrosted. I really hate the front wipers...they ice up way to quickly when it is snowing out and only start to work well after the interior of the car has really warmed up well. BUT, as suggested by others in earlier posts, who wants to idle their car for 5-10 minutes on snowy days to make everything work as expected. At least I have resolved the frost issue on the inside of my windscreen!!