You can leave the hotwire in the car if you want but you would have to power the fan elsewhere, and while its really small, one of mine got a bunch of dust inside by leaving it in while I was comparing settings by running a couple laps then stopping the car to make some changes and immediatly be running again to compare the changes . You can be running, stop, program, upload and be running again in 30 seconds or so, which is what I do with any new rig I get, then take it out for the week to maybe 6 months till I want to make changes. I was tuning my ET48.3 with the Hotwire at the track one day and forgot that it was still plugged in after getting sidetracked, then when I went back out for more testing I made it about 5 laps before I saw a small white box fly out from the car, immediately realizing what I had done. Surprisingly after the wire got caught up in the drivetrain and ripped the box off and across the track, there was just enough wire left on the circuit board that i was able to solder a new plug on and it still works 2 years later. Like the other person said, if you dont turn on your bluetooth, the car, the app etc in the right sequence it wont bind. It can be a bit frustrating if Ive forgot a step and cant get them to link for 5 minutes but eventually ive always got it working.