How do you set your climate screen so you can get outside air through your air vents without using a/c or heater? The manual doesn't talk about this any where. Thanks for any info Lynn Irwin
Set temperature to MAX COLD, with the AC button turned off on the climate screen, and the fan and vents set to your preferred manual speed and direction. You won't get much airflow with the fan off. But I've never bothered to do this. I just set the inside temperature I want, and leave everything on auto. Any particular reason you don't want it on auto? Seems a bit of a shame, after they've gone to the trouble of fitting an automatic climate control system.
Sometimes, when I have the A/C compressor running and I have to sit in traffic for extended periods, I can see the EV battery SoC drop. Then the engine runs that much harder to recharge it when I do get going again. For this reason, outside air temperature permitting, I will run only the vent. Lynn, it's sort of backwards. You have to pretty much turn the A/C on and then turn it off. You'll find that when you hit a button for the fan speed, for example, the [A/C] button activates. All you do at that point is to tap the [A/C] button on the screen to turn it off. It's a toggle. And as KMO said, from there you can adjust fan speed and where the air flows. Additionally, to add to KMO, setting it to "Max Cold" will indeed tell the car to attempt to get the interior to the coldest possible temperature (or 65ºF) but you can set the temperature to any degree and the Prius will hold that temp. I found this quite by accident when I had it set high on a chilly morning but couldn't figure out why it was blowing hot air in the evening. Also: Welcome to Priuschat!!
I like to have air moving around my feet I don’t need cold air just air. I hate using the ac compressor and losing the range on my battery if the outside air temp is nice. I do think it funny that I have to turn on the ac and then turn off the ac to get the vent seting why not just add a button that says vent or outside air.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IAO @ Oct 1 2006, 05:31 PM) [snapback]326625[/snapback]</div> I think its because there's no advantage to NOT running the A/C compressor. This summer, I would sit in the car during lunch, with the windows rolled up and the A/C on (the car is in Park, but otherwise "on"). The ICE would cycle on once or twice for a few seconds during the hour. The battery LOC would be down, but by the time I got back to my office, it would be charged up enough. I saw a slight dip in mileage ... less than 1 gpm ... so it was worth the cost of utilizing the stored electricity to cool me off every day.
QUOTE: "... less than 1 gpm ..." Surely you meant 1 MPG. Just kidding you... Like you, I let the Prius computers make these choices. As had been mentioned, even in cooler weather, the compressor works ocdcasionally to reduce humidity in the cabin. One thing I do is to turn off rather than go into "Park" when awaiting my passenger to run a short errand, pick up the newspaper, etc. Interesting how the Prius in 2 years has changed my driving habits.
