Most households search the house carefully and forget the vehicle sitting outside it. A car is a place chametz is brought — often more reliably than some rooms of the house — and it requires the same treatment.
Ordinary cleaning is not enough
The point is made directly: the routine cleaning and washing a car gets through the year does not suffice. What is required is to clean and check carefully that no crumbs of chametz or residue remain.
The places named are the ones that actually hold crumbs:
- The floor of the car
- Under the seats
- Under the mats
- Compartments and glove boxes
- All the hidden places — and every hole and crack in every part
Anyone who has ever lifted a car mat knows why these are listed specifically.
The search applies to it too
Beyond cleaning, bedikas chametz is performed on the car on the night of the fourteenth, as it is in the house. It is not merely an item to be cleaned in advance; it is a place to be searched.
This extends to vehicles generally — vans and lorries, and buses and other public vehicles are to be checked for chametz before Pesach as well.
The workplace
The same logic reaches an office, a workshop, a van or anywhere else you routinely eat. Chametz you own in a place you control is chametz you own, and the prohibition is on ownership as much as on eating.
Two situations are worth separating:
- Your own chametz at work — a desk drawer, a locker, a staff fridge shelf. This is yours and needs dealing with.
- A business holding chametz stock — a different scale of question, generally handled through the sale of chametz, and worth arranging well before Pesach.
Why this gets missed
Because it falls outside the mental boundary of "the house", and because a car is the one place where eating happens habitually and cleaning happens rarely.
The practical fix is simply to put the car and the desk on the list alongside the rooms, and to do them at the same time rather than as an afterthought.
What your situation requires is a question for your rav. See also bedikas chametz.
Where this comes from
- Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 431 and 436
- ספר כשרות בפסח, פרק ו — cleaning chametz at the workplace and in the car