Actually, no: once the energy is in a clean energy network, all you're doing is moving the heat around. The total amount of terrestrial heat will not change (net after use), except for some quantum amounts due to some turning into energy or matter that would not have otherwise due to I don't even know what (such as battery use, but in this case, you're saving battery wear).
By the way, turning on the heater or air conditioner remotely would likely work. I monitored the Model S which I sold when it shipped cross-continent, and during that 10 days of shipping, it went from 62% to 5% state of charge. Most of that was from A/C due to Overheat Protection (set to 105ºF or so). Some of that was me turning on the A/C manually before I thought it would take ten days to get there and use so much battery. Some of it was TeslaFi polling it for information, and that caused me to set TeslaFi into ultra-deep-sleep mode, and that helped a lot.
I'm sure if someone intentionally set the A/C and Heater alternately on the Model S, that they could eat up a large amount of energy very quickly. It would just require getting into the Tesla app on your smartphone a dozen or so times every half hour; that's a chore in itself, but it could be done remotely.
Since you mentioned going to bed then getting up in the middle of the night to deplete energy, perhaps just leave a door open outside with the heater on. Then, you'd risk running the battery down to 0%. But, you could set your alarm for an hour and run out and shut it off. Of course, leaving the door open allows bugs to fly inside the car, so that's not the best solution.
Alternately turning on heat then cold every 20 minutes seems like a great way to do it with the car closed.