I’ve never had a car wash that used hot water, but then again I wasn’t really feeling for it. The windows felt cool after wash.
I have a vague memory of Adam Savage going through a car wash on Mythbusters, but I can’t find any videos of it online. I remember him exclaiming how cold the water was. If it happened it was almost certainly in the “Clean vs. Dirty Car” episode.
Would there even be a point to using hot water in a car wash? You’re trying to clean the car, not sanitize it. It’s not like you need to kill all the germs on the car’s exterior.
Aren’t there occasionally things that might come off better with hot water? I’m thinking tree sap, leftover insect juice… I dunno.
I have the monthly subscription. There are a couple of different locations. 90% of the time I use one location but on occasion I use the other one and it’s a tad narrower. So I have to fold in one of my mirrors or it gets hit by the spray arm.
Okay. I expect that your pickup is wider than my compact car.
But a daily car wash?
In my experience, at least when washing dishes, hot water evaporates much quicker. The drying process would be much easier.
I am pretty sure car washes around here (Cleveland) use hot water, at least in the winter months. I’d suspect that it helps us to be able to get our cars washed when it’s below freezing not just by giving the car a better chance to dry off more quickly, but also to keep the car wash mechanisms warm.
I’m not @pkbites but I sure did that every winter when I lived in snow country.
There was a fully automatic carwash attached to a convenience market near my house. Assuming nobody was dawdling at the pay kiosk when I drove up it took a grand total of 4 minutes from entering their driveway from the road to leaving their driveway into the road with a freshly washed and dried car.
Getting close to 100% of the road salt, grunge, compacted slush, etc. off the car every single day sure kept it looking newer than my neighbors’ cars. And because it was a fully automated system, the monthly cost for the “all you can eat” plan was negligible. $25 IIRC in the 2000-2015 timeframe.
What if you spring for the carnauba wax? Is that a hot applied treatment?
Birds sit in the overhanging trees and crap on my car all the time so I wash it five or six times a week. The subscription is the cost of two retail washes and allows me up to two washes a day* at any of the 17 locations here in Phoenix Metro plus a handful in California, Nevada, and Texas.
$22 a month, currently. I spill that much.
* Which I’ve taken advantage of exactly once.
I pay $24 a month for one (otherwise $9) car wash per day. They do not carry over. Use it or lose it. After 3 washes it’s paid for. One of the wash sites is on my way to/from work. Another is on my way to somewhere else I go from time to time. In other words, it’s not out of my way to run through a 5 minute car wash I already paid for. I’ll go through it even if it’s raining. I paid for it gol nab it! 
I saw a cop show back in the 70s where the bad guy got stuck going through a car wash sans car. As he stumbled out, an onlooker cried out, “He’s been Simonized!”
Funny how things stick with you.
I would think it being too dangerous would cause liability issues. Like what if someone went in not realizing the moon window was still open or something?
Google search puts it at about 120F, which is isn’t extremely hot, but is in the 2nd-degree-burn range. And if it’s pressurized? Yikes.
Well, according to the internet, it would take 8 minutes of exposure at 120 for second degree burns. I might be more concerned about the pressure, but I don’t think the water will kill you or even put you in the hospital. Aren’t there videos linked somewhere in this thread that show someone going through a car wash? Of course, not all car washes are the same.
Hot tubs are ~105 and people can enjoy immersion for an hour. But the ranges of discomfort, injury, and survival are not at all linear on temperature. 110 might be tolerable for a few monutes, and 120 might be instinctive instant pull your hand back out. If you’re not trapped in it. I don’t know for sure. But I don’t think 120 is in the near-instant serious burn category.
We’re also not talking about immersion, just a LOT of spray and mist. The smaller the droplet the faster it cools. The temp of the mist around a 120F car wash spray may actually be cooler than skin temp, and especially so on a day where the ambient temperature is already cold.
120°F is considered a safe temperature for residential and commercial hot water outlets. I think that temperature is selected to avoid liability claims. OTOH If the big roller thing knocked you over and you couldn’t move or lost consciousness then you might be additionally harmed from continued exposure to water at that temperature.
Or smooshed (technical term) by the next car through the tunnel.
When Steve-O did it on Jackass, he came out shivering and also said it was much colder than he expected.
Usually given as the primary reason not to go through a car wash without car.