I know some people build underground electrical heating in their driveway. But what about if your driveway is already built. Is there some kind of electric heating mat that you can just roll out on top of the snow/ice and just turn on for a few hours?
Is that even practical? I am especially thinking about the cases where it has snowed weeks ago, but it has stayed cold, so you have a thin layer of ice in your driveway.
There are plug-in heated mats you can use in winter but most are designed to keep snow and ice from a rather small area, like an entryway. Something large enough for a whole driveway is going to be rather large and bulky to store, and probably very expensive.
What’s wrong with salt? Or if it’s too cold for that, putting sand down for traction? I’ve also found that after a while packed snow and ice won’t adhere to the surface very well and a scraper tool will easily break it apart, or start a crack where you can push a shovel along to break it and lift it up.
I kinda doubt you are going to find a solution for what you want to do. But for construction, there are ground heaters for helping heat the ground before excavation.
Here is a “heated walkway” for hundreds of dollars:
I’ve also seen a video of a flame-thrower type contraption, but I’m guessing that was home-made and not something you can just pick up at Home Depot.
A friend bought her husband a backpack flamethrower for his birthday recently from Tractor Supply or someplace similar. He confided in me that it’s not really that great a tool.
Heat lamps will do a good job of applying their heat to the driveway after it’s built. But you’d need quite a few of them depending on how quickly you want them to work.
A backpack flamethrower? I have a hand wand propane burner that throws a flame a foot or two long, with a somewhat scary roar. It attaches to the kind of propane tank most people buy for backyard grills. It probably would take quite a long time to clear snow with it (I’ve never tried). But for some things it’s amazingly great. In my gravelly back lane I get thin scrubby grass which I can mow but can’t get clean down to the gravel. This tool burns it away very fast, especially if I hit it with Roundup a few days before and it gets dry. This tool clears it so fast I can basically walk as I wave the wand around.
First, get a giant magnifying glass, then wait for the sun…
I know it’s too late at this point, but I’ve found the key to keeping a driveway clear of ice is to shovel/remove the snow quickly, never let it build up, and never drive on it. Driving on it packs the snow down and just one night of sub-freezing temps will turn it into ice that can be very hard to remove. Clearing the driveway the same day as it snows, or the morning after it has snowed makes maintaining it relatively easy. Of course, I’m retired and don’t have to be anywhere first thing in the morning. YMMV.
The xkcd what if? blog has actually covered this. The takeaway: it takes a lot of energy to melt snow.
Melting a gram of snow takes about 335 joules of energy. To put that another way, a 60-watt lightbulb is capable of melting about a pound of snow an hour.
The flame thrower would not only take a lot of time; it would require a lot of fuel. And his example is using gasoline. Propane is a little less energy dense than gasoline.
Gas mileage in the US is often measured in “miles per gallon” of gasoline. With your flamethrower guzzling fuel, your mileage would be about 17 feet per gallon.
QFT.
And this is pretty much the only thing that will get me out of the house Ass Early anymore 
I was pretty picky when buying our last house in that I wanted a driveway on the south side of the house and it had to be asphalt. Now on any sunny day if the temp is above 20 degrees that compacted snow and ice layer will just melt itself off.
Earlier threads:
Tldr: not practical
Smart. Very smart.
The house where I grew up has the driveway on the wrong side, so it doesn’t get as much sun as the houses across the street and while the driveways on those houses clear, ours remained snowy. In particular, the part directly in front of the garage received more shade, so the snow would melt during the early part of the day and then later, the water would refreeze, so there were dangerous icy patches.
Super Soaker. Gasoline. Bernzomatic. Duct tape. Fireproof blanket. Bandages.
I’m not keen on ground heaters and the like because they waste energy like crazy. Neither am I keen on salt as it eventually becomes part of runoff and can kill grasses and enter our water sources. What’s the good solution? Sand is okay, but it has some of the same problem salt does. Coal dust was used many years ago, but again, pollution. Ideas?
I read a whole bunch of articles a few years ago about why flame throwers are shit at melting ice. One person said it took them about half an hour to clear a stair of ice. One single stair.
Does it really waste that much energy if you only turn it on for a few hours to clear the ice and then turn it off again? It would of course depend on how often it snows in the area.
Hold my beer!
If you’re in a place like Montreal, there’s always the Tempo . They’re not legal in all jurisdictions, so check before you do anything.