AC always active when fan is on?

If the outside temp is lower than the setting, my 2014 will turn the heat on unless I lower the temp to LO. If the temp is higher, obviously the heat won’t come on and neither will the AC if it’s set to Off. The only way I can get ambient outside air is the LO setting and there still might be some heat involved that I just don’t feel.

 

You're not alone. I've been wondering about this as well. Our climate is very moderate and most of the time I'd be happy with just outside air coming through the vents. It's really pretty irritating. I don't want to drive around with the windows down because it's noisy and my hair turns into a mess.

 

It's normal operations in my 2021. Anytime the fan is ON, the set temp is displayed. As stated earlier; If the air temperature coming into the cabin is lower than set point; it will heat up the air. You'll really feel it, if the engine is running, slightly warm air - if it's only the heat-pump. You may get an initial blast of cool air - residual from heat-pump operations. If the AC button isn't lit, it won't cool the air.

Hope this helps.....

 

With this system, AC can still be on while the AC button light is off.

AC Button Light | Page 2 | PriusChat

 

Forget about using AIUTO. Set the temperature to something below ambient and hit the fan speed button to trun on the fan and set the speed. Make sure that the air is being directed toward your body and not the feet and that the flow-through icon is selected rather than the recirculate button. Also make sure the A/C light is not on.

One difference between Gen 4 and Gen 5 is that if you pressed Auto, you could see the state of all these things on the screen. You could also choose also easily toggle between Eco and normal settings for Auto control. Now to switch between them, you need to change settings via the multi-media screen or play with the settings in Custom Drive mode.

 

what a nightmare

 

There is a setting on the multimedia system to turn AC on automatically when AUTO is on.

Incidentally, I did confirm today that having AUTO on and AC off did not blow cold air no matter what temp I set it to.

 

It really isn't. People are making this way more complicated than it actually is in real life. For 99% of us, you just leave it alone and let the car do its thing. If you don't like to have the car controlling when the A/C is on or not, you make that one change in the settings and then control the A/C yourself. If you just want to override the climate control for a rare event, you just use the buttons on the dash to override whatever element you want at that moment, then press AUTO when you want the car to take back full control.


Regarding what the OP was asking about, my instructions would depend on whether they want this just occasionally, or whether this is a regular desire. If it's a fairly rare case, I'd just press the vent button and then the A/C button twice and also make sure the temp setting on the control is below the outside temp(so the car doesn't start heating the air). If this is something they want all the time, I'd suggest disabling the A/C with AUTO option in the settings to save button presses in the future. That way they'd just make sure the A/C light was off and then hit the vent button to be certain it's not in recirculate.

 

Most of the time I'm fine with just air blowing without AC, and have always found auto AC systems a hinderance to that. Turn the AC button off in the Subaru, and the auto system can still decide to turn the vent to recirculate on a warm day. Went 7 miles wondering why the air blowing out of the vent seemed to be getting warmer than the outside when I got into the car before I caught that.

If I have to have auto AC, I want one that I can set to X degrees above or below outside.

 

I've not noticed any problems with just setting it to AUTO and letting it sort the rest out. In my G4, I had to crank the fan to adequately cool myself. But I was on ECO all the time, and that's supposed to be less-than-best AC. The G5 seems much more effective (could be due to the smaller cabin).

Speaking of ECO, your climate control will switch between ECO and non-ECO depending on what drive mode you are in. If you are in ECO drive mode, your AC will be set to ECO. Just read this in the manual last night.

 

My grief with being unable to fully disable the AC is that I'm in a Prime and would prefer not to drain the battery unnecessarily running the heat pump.

 

FWIW; you can't fully disable the AC because it's a heat pump. If you don't want to prematurely drain the traction battery, Set your temperature on LO. It will only blow air, in manual mode, and won't activate AC or heat; unless you turn it on. If you do this; you should crank up to temperature set, when you do engage AC - otherwise you'll be running max. cooling and really drawing down the battery.
I prefer to run mine in manual mode @ 68 degrees. I'll get some heat on early morning commutes, but I'm usually on the highway and prefer the cabin doesn't get uncomfortably cold. We've already gone through our first heat wave of the season. System performed great and cabin pre-cooling is working great.

Hope this helps.

 

Ok, to get pure vent rather than AC, it seems like you can turn off auto, turn on the fan, switch to exterior air, then toggle the AC button on so it lights up, then off again. I may be wrong about that, but it seems to be doing it.

 

From days of old:

 

it's going to be hard moving on from my gen 3 driver controlled everything. i know it's mental, but i'm mental

 

You're overthinking it - you shouldn't have to toggle the AC at all. The temp display will light up as soon as the fan comes on. Heat pump is still off, unless air coming in is lower than that set temp. (heat function will kick on - that's why you need to set temp to LO; that will disable the heat function).
I've found that the car is more efficient in HV mode, on the highway. I do a manual switch-over and kick back to EV on city streets. I average over 150 mpg on my 40 mile round trip commute - No charger at work. Allowing the car to manage everything averaged 115 mpg; but I'd drain the battery on the highway and was mostly on gas, home bound in stop & go traffic. Works a lot better in EV mode, in that situation. Just experiment with it and enjoy the ride.