Just need to vent...

Yeah. Nobs in the UK means something completely different. LOL
A nob is covered by your pants under your trousers as you sit in a lorry.

 

Toyota calls it a defogger, and I have feeling the recirculate turned off with defogger on has been the case for some time.

 

I really liked my old (1986) Accord, where the operator had full control of this. But I also witnessed many other drivers botch it in cars of that era, causing interior window fogging by leaving the ventilation on recirc when they needed outside air. This was a frequent problem in my current climate zone, until the automatic 'idiot-proofing' came along. When riding in the front seat, I'd often adjust their climate controls myself to stop or reverse the fogging, usually while they were still oblivious to what was starting to form.

Some car controls allowed blending of fresh and recirculated are, some did not. I used pure recirc only temporarily, for those smoky trucks or field dust blowing of a tractor, or similar brief foul periods. Back in the 80s, the annual regional news reports of children 'sleeping' in the back seat turning out to be dead from carbon monoxide leaking into the cabin, gave me a very strong preference for a good flow rate of fresh air. I suspect that this was also a contributor to my frequent childhood car sickness, long before cat converters were introduced.

My ventilation fan is essentially never turned off. These fans need to be designed for 100% duty cycle.

 

Here is a picture of our American Niro HVAC button controls. You have the option to use buttons, the interactive screen or a control on the steering. The Radio is similar buttons, interactive screen, steering controls or voice commands.

You manly notice a Driver Only button and this will direct all heating and cooling to the driver and shut off all other ducts to save energy when only the driver is in the car.

If you are a smart phone fan you can start the vehicle and adjust the temperature remotely with the KIA app. I don't have a smart phone but a couple of our family members interact with the car that way too.

This way you interact with the car the way you want - I am a knobs and dials guy so I stay with the knobs, the wife likes the touchscreen, the kids go with the voice menus and smart phone features. You chose how you interact with the car it doesn't force you into a certain method of operation.

 

Another pet peeve of mine about my Toyota hybrids in particular is this situation.

• My town has a townwide 25mph speed limit, with a couple main streets that are a bit more than that (and others that are less). This is the speed at which my Toyota hybrids can drive around without the engine on.
• The town isn't completely flat, you can coast in neutral on some streets and pretty much stay right at the speed limit.
• But most everywhere I go is usually me going downhill for the first portion, then uphill for the next.

But what happens is this: I get into the car and start it up. But even if I had just driven it to this store or whatever and the engine is still warm, the car still wants to start up the engine. So I drive along, downhill with the engine idling. Once I get to the part I start going back up again the car now wants to go into engine-off mode, but since it needs more torque it will cycle the engine on and off with every small change in accelerator pedal.

This drives me nuts! I wish there were a way to stick it in EV mode and stay there the first portion. I can sometimes pull it off, but EV mode in the Avalon is very underpowered to get me onto the first street without kicking it out of EV mode. Sometimes I get so upset on the second portion that I just downshift into essentially B mode and just keep the engine running.

 

I recall comments that the gen3/PiP recirc was not 100%.

The warm up cycle isn't for the engine, it is for the cat.

It was possible to keep the Prius from starting up the engine on start up by pushing the EV button right away. This was for moving the car a very short distance, like to get it out of the way of the lawnmower in the garage. If it was too cold, too hot, battery low charge, etc. the car would still start up the engine. When the battery was fully charged, it was only good for a mile or two of EV range at low speeds.

 

I have a similar recollection, that its recirc setting is about 90% recirc, 10% fresh. But the ratio is fixed, not user adjustable as some of the old controls allowed.

 

In my case it's like what Trollbait said, it's still warming up for the catalytic converter.

It will do the same thing with the HVAC system completely off. The entire time I'm nearly coasting downhill, engine runs. Then when I go to go up the next section, the engine tries to not run, starts and stops constantly, drains the HV battery to two bars, and then has to run the rest of the way...

 

Hitting the EV mode before the engine fires up on start up might let you do the first downhill with the engine off. Toyota's goal was low emissions though, so the computer will override anything you try that is deemed 'too dirty'.

 

Yes, that does work. The only thing is it makes pulling out onto the first street a pain as I have to lightly feather the throttle to keep it from going out of EV mode and starting the engine.

With emissions, the way I see it is that the car wants to go half of the trip with the engine off and half with it on. The problem is that due to the terrain it would be more ideal to have the engine off for the first half and on for the second. But the way it works it tries to do the opposite.

 

Income tax filers in the US have the option of requesting their refunds in cash or in US series I bonds.

My recent habit has been to request mine in bond form.

But it seems a trickier decision in a season where Congress is publicly flirting with the idea of selective default.

On the one hand, by allowing them to send me bonds instead of cash, I might be doing my part to ease the burden on Treasury of a foreseeable upcoming train wreck. And the I bonds are earning nicely at the moment.

On the other hand, by doing so, I'd be investing in bonds of an issuer that's openly talking about selective default in the near term.

In all the talk, of course, they're at pains to assure bondholders that the people to be stiffed won't be them (and apparently hoping "selective default" is an obscure concept to many).

For all I know, the brink may be walked back from, as it has been before.

But the deadline to file for my refund is probably before we'll know if that'll happen or not.

 

I'm not aware of selective defaults under 250-large.
(at least not YET)

Funny that you would describe purchasing bonds as a way to STOP a trainwreck.
I rather think of it as another shovel full of coal thrown into the box......

Funny sort of way to SLOW DOWN a train.

 

Well, any time you watch an organization that has already-incurred valid obligations that it will need to sell bonds to meet, and that same organization is about to self-inflictedly hamstring its own ability to sell those bonds, it's clear that will produce inability to meet obligations.

Although my purchases represent an insignificant drop in the bucket on their own, by choosing to take in bond form the cash I know I don't immediately need, at least I won't be piling on to that wave of unmeetable obligations. That'd be the "ask what I can do for my country" way of looking at it.

Or, by choosing to request the cash instead, I would be adding further to the strain of unmeetable obligations, but it might be the self-protective thing to do, compared to taking bonds from a shaky issuer.

The annoying part is, of course, this is an organization that is pretty much never regarded as a shaky bond issuer, except during these occasional moments of deliberate mismanagement.

 

While we bought I-bonds last year (missed out on 2021 because of technical problems my Treasury account that weren't fixed in time), I bought just half my spouse's annual allotment in January this year, then ceased over inflation uncertainties.

The regular CPI figures we hear in the news every month are usually expressed as the trailing 12 month rate, most recently 6.0%. But most of that happened last spring up through June, before inflation "paused" in July, staying low ever since. At this moment, of that 6.0% annual figure, just 1.6% happened in the most recent six months (not counting seasonal adjustments), the other 4.4% in the six months before that.

I-bond rates change every six months, reflecting trailing inflation figures. At the current trend, the new interest rate to be announced May 1st will be considerably lower than the current rate of 6.89%. If the Fed's attempts to rein in inflation succeed, then they will stay low in the near-term future. And if they succeed, then I'm guessing that savings interest rates elsewhere will be higher than I-bond rates for a while.

How long does it take for the IRS to process tax returns, then pass refunds over to the Treasury to issue savings bonds? If it happens by April 27 or 28, then great, you get the current rate of 6.89% for six months before the new lower rate kicks in. But come May 1, I'm guessing you'll miss out on the good rates. If you really want that 6.89%, it is better to buy it now (by April 27) direct from the Treasury (Home — TreasuryDirect) than risk long processing delays through the IRS.

As for the "shaky issuer" problem, I'm not factoring that in. If this issuer does default on them, then I figure that I-bond problems will be among the least of my worries, the other economic fallouts will be far greater problems. It isn't like anywhere else I can put such funds (at least domestically) will be meaningfully safer.

I must also admit that my crystal forecasting ball has always been very cloudy. Reader beware.

 

lol...."am I venting about vents?" Why yes you are!! hehehe

Okay, I have a vent about Toyota parts. A couple weeks ago, my 2014 Tundra was due for her 6-month oil change. Last year, the innerds inside the cartridge filter came out when I changed it (and I was able to re-install it) but that makes me suspicious of the anti-flow back valve malfunctioning. So I stopped in at my dealer to buy a replacement cartridge. After I got the oil changed, I put the metal skid plate back (it's a TRD truck). A couple of days later, I noticed fresh oil underneath my truck...it was leaking! What? Toyota trucks don't leak! So, this weekend, I got her up on the ramps, removed the skid plate which had a bunch of fresh oil in it and was shocked to see the little round endcap was gone and some oil was dripping out of there! WHAT? When I installed it, fresh out of the box, I probably should've checked it...it must've not had one on it because I would've found it in the skid guard. (I never remove the stupid end caps from the cartridge when changing oil.) Thankfully, I had an old cartridge in the garage with one on it so I removed it, and the washer, and put it on the new cartridge.

Thanks, Toyota, for selling an incomplete part to me! (And shame on me for not thinking about checking!) Trust but verify always!!

 

Was in the Walmart oil filter aisle, and they no longer provide no method of looking up the filter for your car.

 

I bond rates have two components, and they both get declared every six months, but one is a fixed component for the life of the bond, and the other is an inflation-sensitive component that will only be paid for six months. Thereafter, it changes every six months to the next announced inflation component.

The bonds currently being issued pay 0.4% annually for the life of the bond, plus 3.24% inflation-sensitive for the first six months (which would be 6.48% if you got it for a full year, which you don't). So the total annualized rate looks like 6.89ish during the first six months, but the 0.4% is the only part that won't keep swinging around for the life of the bond.

The thing is, even though the inflation-derived part is smaller now than it was last October, the fixed part is higher, and whatever is announced in May might have a fixed part higher still. Until this 0.4% was announced last November, it had been zero for years. It hadn't broken 1% since early 2008.

People who bought their bonds in mid-2000 were really smiling last summer, with their bonds' 3.6% fixed rate added to last summer's 9.62% (annualized) inflation rate.

So it might be that the inflation part of the I bond rate gets a bit overhyped. If they are currently selling with an inflation rate of x% and it seems like the next announced inflation rate might be a lower y%, the value of rushing to buy before the change can never exceed six months of the difference x−y, applied to the maximum amount you could purchase, which is limited ($5000 for an individual tax return). So if x is last summer's 4.81% inflation rate and y is the current 3.24% inflation rate, and I had an entire $5000 tax refund to dump into it, there'd have been a $78.50 incentive for me to buy it back then if I could have, rather than now. Nothing wrong with $78.50, but there'd be a limit on how hard I'd work to get it.