AC Performance in Gen 4 Prius

AC and MPH isn't the question, if yer in a fit.
The prius is great in a lot of ways one being you can travel with an animal and leave it running with the air on and not worry about the animal, if the fit had bad air, another reason to try a prius, comparing apples and oranges, touota vs honda

If you need better tint on the windows, because of location, so be it.

 

Well, there was a thread about the G4's A/C in here somewhere. The overwhelming consensus seemed to be that it was "very good". I'm only commenting because I happened to test drive a 2016 Fit in 100 degree weather before buying my Prius and to me the A/C in the Fit was very underwhelming. Of course, as they say, "YMMV".

 

I had a Honda civic and felt the same way. The Prius is excellent in this regard. Cool within a minute and then able to turn it up and save mpg's.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

The a/c works really well. It almost blows too much when I leave it at 72°.

 

when I do use my A/C - which is rare, I set it at 78

 

The AC of the gen4 is very refined. It has an electric compression which is electronically controlled, this means that it will use compared to a traditional belt driven one, far less fuel. I find it to be just as powerful as the Gen3 and I leave it at 23C // 73-74F because 22C // 72F is already too cold for me and gives me (like on Gen3 and it is not car specific!) sinusitis.

 

I would have to disagree. When it was in the 90s here and I had the A/C *not* in ECO mode set to 72, the fan never got below 4 bars. On the 2nd generation it would have gone down further. It felt OK though.

 

Are we sure though that the bars have the same meaning as in Gen3. Does the same bar mean less or same energy need, fan speed, compared to Gen3?

BTW: when you set the AC to Auto, it doesn't even display the speed anymore. And it has access to more levels (22 I believe to have read in some other post and technical documentation) than the 6 (8?) levels accessible with the manual fan control.

 

Drove down to the San Francisco area from WA state about a month ago. It was HOT down there compared to up in WA. The AC did just fine. If you were on the shade side you wanted to close the side vent but on the sunny side you wanted both open and one hitting the skin that was getting sun.

All in all we found it more than adequate.

 

I live in Saint Louis with high temps and high humidity, and had a 2009 Honda Fit until recently. It's AC worked fine; had to repair it once for about $300 in 2015.

A/C in the 2016 Prius works fine! It was 94F with high humidity today... worked great. I recommend the Prius to all my friends in hot and humid Saint Louis, New Orleans, Houston, Tampa, and beyond!

 

Very good AC:

Coming from Hot SW Florida, I used to run my AC on high on my old car (2003 toyota matrix) for roughly 20+ minutes and then lower to med-high to low-med and med-hi on the way to and from work. On the prius, I keep it on auto 73 just about always and it usually is sufficient and runs maybe 4 bars when first coming on and lowers to two or 1 depending on the heat that day. If I am very hot, I may bump it down to 71 or 68 or just increase the fan speed and it usually isn't too long till I bring it back up to 73 or hit the auto button again.

 

In the US when I set my AC to auto it still shows the fan speed. I wish there was an indicator LED on the Eco button though. The others have lights to indicate they are on.
Do you have separate passenger temperature controls? We do not have that.
This may be another case where the US models differ from the rest of the world.

 

In UK our a/c switch cycles between Fast, Normal and Eco and briefly illuminates whichever state has been selected on the upper screen. My Business Edition is placed somewhere between your 3 and 3 touring and has dual zone climate control.

 

Recently, my city had a minor heat wave (~104F high for the day). I was driving Uber and Lyft, had the auto temp set at 66 degrees, and it worked remarkably well. During a 9 hour shift with probably an average of 6 door openings per hour, my MPG was at 59.8. I would guess the interior temp was around 69-71