My wife always uses the recirculate function because she has an extraordinary sense of smell and is always complaining about exhaust from other cars. However, as the manual instructs, this fogs up the interior of the car if the heater is on. We therefore have to use the defrost functions, which reduces mpg. Is there any setting that will eliminate this cycle?
Nope. An idea would be...keep the a/c on auto, not recirculating, get one of those christmas tree air fresheners and put it in where your cabin filter is (along with your filter of course). It'll eliminate the exhaust smell and give your the correct a/c settings without fogging. Not to mention a nice aroma .
I have the same issue with smelling exhaust too. It's not just an issue of the smell, but exhaust contains harmful chemicals (mercury for one) that I don't particularly wish to breathe, nor do I want my son breathing. That said, I turn the cabin air to recirculate when I smell exhaust or when I'm in heavy traffic or I can see a huge truck nearby. When I'm in lighter traffic, I turn the air back to fresh intake. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an elegant solution.
I do the same thing. Also sometimes you can anticipate bad exhaust, like when you're stopped at a light behind an old diesel-engine car like a volvo or mercedes, you know there will be a cloud of black fumes when the light changes and the driver hits the gas pedal. I'm pretty fast at turning the recirculate on and off, and it's even easier with the control button the steering wheel.
If you leave the climate control on Auto, it will run the A/C compressor as necessary to keep humidity down and should prevent any fogging of the windows. Yeah, the climate control on the Prius is that good! Just stick it on auto and forget about it unless you're really trying to eke out that last mpg.
How does auto climate control work with recirculate and outside exhaust fumes? Is the "vent" open or closed?
When the car is on recirculate, it just reuses the air in the cabin- the vent is closed. When recirculate is turned off, fresh air is pulled in from the outside- the vent is open. (I hope that answers your question.)
It's usually always the worst in the winter time, as cars are running richer due to the cold weather so the exhaust smell can get really bad at times. Just use the recirculate function when you are in traffic and turn it off when not. This is what I do and it seems to work out pretty well.
First press the auto button on the steering wheel until "Auto" appears close to the speedo. Secondly set your required temperature using the + and - on the steering wheel. Thirdly press the recirculate button on the steering wheel until "Recirculate" appears on the dash beside the speedo. Press climate button beside the screen to double-check that the a/c square has a yellow lit bar. You now have recirculated air, but it will not fog up because the a/c will remove the moisture from your breath.
Yes, exactly like that, when the traffic first moves. I wish there is a way to add some programming so that a context of "mph < 10, accelerate" will close the vent momentarily until mph > say 30 mph. Once you suck the cloud in, it will take much longer to get rid of the smell from external air.
With the AC in Auto mode, you can turn Recirc on and off at will. The AC will still operate in Auto mode just fine. As for the air-freshener idea, that just adds more stink to the car.
