When I direct the airflow down to the foot well, the fan speed seems to be controlled by the computer. No matter what I set it to, the computer seems to be calculating what it should be independently. I have the fan speed maxed out so when I have it directed up to passengers, it blows at high speed, but turn it down to the foot well, and it just stops or blows very slowly. Further, this speed changes when I adjust the temperature. In addition, the heating/cooling doesn't turn off when I turn off the 'AC' option in the display. The climate control in this car has really been botched, I mean seriously. If the entune BS wasn't so bad it would be manageable. Bring back the manual control knobs.
I love the heating and cooling in my Prime, but I always use Auto and set temperature accordingly. (and defrosters as needed.)
I like to use auto pretty much all the time as well, but I am disappointed that in cold weather, the auto setting normally chooses the floor vents only. I suppose that this is to spare us from having hot, dry air blowing directly on us, but even with the seat heater on, I still would like to have some warm air blowing directly on me. If it gets bad, I will just manually direct the air, but I still feel like it would be nice if it initially started with the vent/floor mix and switched over to floor only after the cabin warms up somewhat.
Yeah, I really think Toyota messed up the programming on the climate "Auto" setting. It drives me crazy when I try to change the heater zone from "floor" to "face and floor" and it immediately takes the system out of Auto. I mean did anyone actually beta-test these settings before putting it into production?
To be in full manual mode, you need to adjust both the MODE and FAN settings. So after you adjust to foot, adjust the fan speed too.
Research has found that people tend to feel warmer than they are if their feet are warm. By product, warm air rises so heating the floor first, slowly warms up the cabin. If you blow directly above, then you’ll have striation of air temperature with you being warm at the face and upper body but cold or cool at the legs. I find it doesn’t switch to foot/head until the temperature difference between the inside and outside is smaller. That makes sense to me. You adjusted something manually so the computer is no longer fully automatic (however the other things that you didn’t touch will be automatic).
No, it doesn't make sense actually. It makes sense to automatically control the outlet temperature while retaining manual control of the air flow direction and speed. This is how it has been and is done in most cars. Why is it all or nothing? Yes, I take off 'auto' first. Then I put it to foot and I adjust the fan speed to maximum. And still I get very little airflow down there. If I adjust the temperature setting I can hear the fan speed changing also. This is all the while the thing is set to completely manual.
Humm, I have to try that. I use manual settings, but I have never put fan speed high while air direction to foot.
Well, I checked it while driving my PRIME during morning commute. The ambient temp was around 20F. The climate settings were AUTO OFF, A/C OFF, Temp set 70F, ECO Mode, Driver priority S-flow, manually selecting the air flow direction and fan speed. If I put the air direction to the floor and push the fan speed to max, I can definitely hear the blower fan is louder and feel max amount of air is coming out of the lower vent. If I lower the fan speed, correspondingly the sound and air flow are lower. I confirmed the same thing in all four air directions. Conclusion, during manual control of the climate control I can change air flow direction and fan speed from minimal to max. Nothing is controlled automatically except set temperature. I am not observing other things that I did not touch to be in automatic as @Tideland Prius commented. As soon as I am out of AUTO mode, everything is manually controlled, initially set at the last setting they were on. And, when I am in manual mode, I do have a full control of fan speed even in air flow direction to floor, unlike @Rieuk is experiencing on his car.
This does make sense, so it is nice to know the reasoning behind the choice. However, in very cold weather, it is simply not enough, particularly when it comes to gripping the steering wheel (I don't have the heated wheel option). I still find myself turning on the panel air, at least for a little while. This also makes sense, but I wonder if this could be avoided by only doing this as I described above: only in very cold temperatures, and only for a little while. They seem to be very adept at detecting and using environmental information. I have found this to be true as well, and by that time this issue is basically moot. Thank you for your explanation of the reasoning.
