Start AC or heat remotely from phone app?

Did you intentionally post this to Prius Plug-In 2012-2015 or should you have posted it to Prius, Gen 5 (2023+), Technical Discussions ?

 

Yes/no. You can use remote start to also activate climate controls, but you can't activate climate controls on their own.

The following section is more confusing to type out instead of showing in person, so please bear with me.

The app allows you to set a custom climate setting that will always be used during remote start. There are some pros and a couple cons with using this setting.

If you choose not to enable custom climate settings, then during remote start, the car will just continue to use whatever setting it was left at when last turned off. If custom climate settings are enabled, then the car will use the settings from the app during remote start.

The one caveat is the heated/cooled seats. If custom climate is NOT selected in the app, the seats will heat/cool at whatever setting they were at when the car was shut off. But if custom climate is used, the seats will be turned off and the app doesn't let you turn them back on remotely.

Side note: Remote start and custom climate controls are only available if you have an active Drive Connect or Music Lover subscription.


My personal experience after two years of ownership in a hot and cold environment:

After experimenting with custom climate settings, I turned it off and never used it again. It didn't give me any bonuses in the summer, and actually hurt a bit because it shut off the cooled seats. The winter was more of a mixed bag, since the custom settings allow you to turn on the front and rear defrost. But I found losing the pre-heat on the seats was a worse trade-off. I also don't normally pay for any of the subscriptions; I just don't find them worth it generally. I may pay for a month or two in the winter if I really want remote start, and I'll usually pay for a month if I'm driving to a major city just so I have a backup nav option if something goes wrong with my phone. Other than that, I don't think they're worth it. But a PHV owner with Traffic Jam Assist living in California might find it useful.

I also learned a trick to use if the car is hot that is actually faster than using remote start to cool it down. Start the car and open the right rear window a bit - maybe an inch or two. Then get out and close the driver's door. Then open it quickly. Repeat a few times. The low pressure created by opening the door quickly causes air to be sucked in through the open window. Just three or four times exchanges most of the hot inside air with cooler outside air. Doing it five to seven times pretty much exchanges all the air. It still means the new interior air is the same temp as the outside air, but that new air might be 20 or 30 degrees cooler than the air that had been in the car. And now the A/C doesn't have to work so hard to get the temp down to the climate setting.




Extra caveat: When I first got my car in June 2023, the defrost settings were not available in the app. Those were added sometime later. So it's possible the seats might eventually be added as well. They might even be in there now, as I haven't looked at that section in many months and I don't have a currently active subscription to check. Just letting you know that what might have been true in the past might not continue to be true in the future.

 

On my 2024, when I open the App, there’s a “Start” button. If I hit the up arrow slightly above, it opens a menu with a “Climate” button. I can set a temperature there. After that, hitting “Start” from the App preconditions the car for 20 minutes, using my climate setting.

 

Thanks. It sounds like the PHEV version is different than the HEV(possible), the Canadian version of the app is a little different than the US version(also possible), or I was correct that I might be out of date and the app has changed since the last time I used it(also also possible). maiki should probably explore their app to see what the current US PHEV version is doing. I don't have any plans to resubscribe to Drive Connect anytime soon, so I can't give any updates.

 

That is my big gripe with it. Only gives 20 minutes and can only turn it on once so if you don't return to your car in that 20 minutes than you can loose the preconditioning of the climate. I am more likely now just to leave the car in room mode if I need to keep the car temperature controlled when charging or just leave the car on and lock the doors with the physical key.

 

I did not know you could leave the car in room mode when charging.

 

I've owned a gen 3 plug-in before this one, and I was unimpressed by the AC activated by remote. It seemed to run only very briefly, which wasn't much good in my opinion.

My Gen 5 has a remote start feature via the app, but I've never tried to cool the car with it, because it never worked in the winter when I started the car to warm up the interior. The car started fine, but for some reason, there was never any heat until I actually got in to drive it. Because of this, I never tried to cool the car by starting it remotely. I don't believe my key fob has an AC button as did my gen 3.

 

If you decide to start the car while it's plugged in, you will get a prompt asking you if you want to enter "Room Mode." If you say yes, it will provide power and climate control to the interior, while you charge.
You can listen to the entertainment system in comfort, but of course, you can not drive the car.

 

Where I live, it can be -30 or colder. Getting into a cold car so cold is no joy. At first, I thought it wasn't warming up for long enough, but it turns out that the heater doesn't come on when you remote start the car. It also takes longer to warm up than my old gen 3, so I can be 10 miles down the road before I feel the heat coming on.

Remote starting to get interior heat is the only reason to do so for me. I see no advantage to running the engine, if it fails to do that. Another gripe; it only allows one remote start, when the app says I can have two. I may as well put a space heater in the car for all the good I get from remote start.

 

It is plenty of time to cool or heat the car. If you don’t make it in the 20 minutes and you are parked into the sun the car can heat back up pretty quickly. I don’t understand why remotely you are only allowed to condition your car once for 20 minutes and you can’t do it a second time if you get delayed. It would be nice if you could customize the timer and add more time as needed.

 

My biggest fripe against the gen 5 is the lack of customization settings.

 

The remote start feature start feature starts the car OK, but I notice that once you get in, the heat isn't turned on.

 

Just because the AC indicator light isn’t on doesn’t mean the AC is not running. Strange I know - like many other things about this car.

Also, you can set a target temperature in the App - reread my previous post where I tried to explain how to do it.