Hi , I finally got my Prius Plugin premium with all the premium features and solar roof. I downloaded the Toyota app and digital key app. I thought there would be a way to turn on the climate control remotely with the phone app, before entering the car. However, I don't see that function in the app, nor in the manual? Is it possible to do? If so, how? Thank you.
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.
