I thought my a/c was broken

Driving around in my new Gen III today, and the a/c seemed to be blowing outside temperature air. I thought "Geez, going to have to go back to the dealer".

Good thing I read the manual. I didn't realize that when you are in ECO mode the a/c doesn't cool very well. (I also didn't realize I was in ECO mode at the time).

As soon as I turned that mode off, it was nice and cool again. Whew!

I have not experienced what you described. While in ECO mode the a/c operates at a slower fan speed, I am not sure that the cooling is reduced. If you use auto A/C mode, the re-circulate feature activates to compensate for the lower fan speed.
Then again it all matter how hot it is where you live.

It's been in the 90's here and the humidity has been very high lately. I run in ECO mode 100% of the time and use the A/C in Auto mode with recirc only and it's surprisingly cool with the temp set at 78 - 80. My vehicle is in the sun all day when I'm at work.

Wow, then maybe there is something wrong with mine. It definitely was not blowing cool when I had ECO on. Otherwise it worked perfectly.

This is silly but did happen to me, if you manually disengaged the A/C button it will remain off until you manually press it again regardless if you hit auto ac or not. Try it out.

I did that a couple of times myself until I got used to the vehicle.

I run in ECO and haven't had a problem or noticed this at all. We haven't had a truly very hot day yet (nothing over 85 or 90) but then again I am a person who definitely likes his A/C so I've definitely had the A/C going and think I would have noticed less-than-cool air.

I see you are in Minn. It's September now. What was the outside temp and the temp in the Prius when you noticed this? I've already noticed on the one cool morning we have had here that the air flow went to the floor vents and the cabin felt a bit stuffy. I just lowered the temp setting 2 degrees and everything felt fine. Later in the day when things heated up outside I returned the temp to its original setting.

Same here. When it was 59 outside today 74 felt stuffy, but lowering the temp to 72 caused cool air to be emitted.

That's the way I roll, also, Jay_man.

zonie

:roll:

It actually got up to 86 today, and is supposed to be the same tomorrow. It's unusual here but it does happen. I'm in the Twin Cities.

Finally figured out that was my exact problem. Am I a doofus, or what

No, you are not a doofus. Learning new stuff is fun. Just grin and enjoy your great vehicle and mileage.

PS, if you're a doofus then that makes a doofus out of several of us that have done this at least once. And I'm NOT a doofus.

You say, altho you've now figured it out, that you were not able to drive in eco and have the AC work. So what mode did you drive in to use the AC during that period of time? Power? Or is there something I don't know about. Edmcm (always in eco)

If I am reading right, I don't believe the posters issue was ECO or anything to do with that, but he did not have the A/C button pressed when in Auto or other control thus he did not engage the A/C unit. If you use auto to set the temp A/C is something you still have to press from all I have read in the posts....

Hello. My name's Dave, and I'm a doofus.

("Hello, Dave.")

Same thing has happened to me 3-4 times in the three and a half weeks I've had my Gen III. The A/C interface is just different on the new cars than it was on the Gen II. I'm sure I'll get used to it very soon.

I actually like being able to blow just plain air without A/C sometimes, like on a crispy cool day. On my 2005 I had to punch a bunch of buttons on the MFD to get there. Now I just have to touch the A/C button--simple!

The a/c does run a little slower in ECO (that's in the manual), but it works quite well if the a/c button is pressed.:redface:

I've never had a problem with the a/c while driving in ECO mode, which is the mode I usually drive in. We had a few days with the temp at 90 and high humidity and the a/c worked fine as long as the system was set to recirculate cabin air and not fresh air in.

I am a doofus about this and several other things. I have always driven what a month or two ago were suddenly clunkers worth $4,500. So things like the concept of setting a temp you want like a home thermostat instead of adjusting the A/C and fans to what you are currently feeling were foreign to me. Doing some of the stuff with the different trip odometers and other dash display stuff has also taken me awhile. So don't feel like too much of a doofus. Or at least know that you are in good company.

interesting