My Prius never ceses to amaze me with some new found feature. Now that it's cold in the am I have the heat on when i drive to work. Specifically i had the heat and defrost button on (farthest right button) and the temp control was set at 70 but the a/c auto was off. Driving to work I noticed the fan was at medium. When I came out from work in a few hours the car was cold again and I noticed no fan at all the the same button (heat and defrost) was selected. After driving about 1 mile the fan all of a sudden turns on by itself. I have to assume theres a sensor that doesn't activate the fan until the coolant gets hot enough to make some heat, thereby not blowing cold air on your legs. Am i correct in this assumption guys and gals?
You are correct. But it's actually even better than that. Before the coolant warms up, there are electric heating elements to heat the air. Since the electric heaters can't put out as much heat as the yet to be heated coolant, the fan runs at a reduced speed so the air won't be too cool. As the temperature of the coolant comes up, the fan also increases speed.
Not to rudely burst your bubble, but this has been a fairly common "feature" in many Toyota cars since at least 1988 when I owned a Celica All-Trac Turbo with automatic A/C. As it turns out, I've only owned Toyotas/Lexus since so I can't comment on other makes.
Thanks Gurmail, it is my driveway. mmc, this is the first toyota I'ver ever owned, I know alot about chrysler products but still learning about toyota's
