A/C constantly switches from "Fresh" to "Recirculate" Grrrr :(

Firstly let me say that the weather is mild to warm here this time of the year and under these condition I often prefer to have the A/C off and just the fan blowing in fresh air.

Ok after a bit of fiddling on the MFD I can make it do this, so far so good, but after I've stopped and re-started the car however the unit seems to remember all the other settings (fan comes on with A/C off) but it always resets back to recirculate. It's really getting annoying, I stop for 5 minutes at the shop and get back underway then start to notice the car is getting a bit hot and stuffy. Oh yeah that's right its back on recirculate and I've got to frig around with the MFD to set it back to "fresh" again. I'm doing it 5 or more times a day but in reality I'll want it to stay on fresh for the next month or more.

Is this the case for all 2004/2005 gen-2 Priuses or is mine kooky or is there a setting that I haven't figured out yet to make it remember this setting.

 

Thanks Pat for confirming that this really is a bug in the climate control logic. The tip about the button on the steering wheel will certainly help the situation (save me from fumbling about with the MFD every time I start the car).

This is my take on why Toyota choose to implement it the way they did. If you're actually using the climate control (for either heat or cool) then it's obviously inefficient to always use fresh instead of recirculate. So effectively the computer is saying "naughty naughty - that's a bad inefficient setting that you've chosen, ok I'll let you do it for now but then I'll override you later when you're not paying attention".

The problem is they completely failed to take into account that it's not at all inefficient to use "fresh" when the outside air temperature is already perfectly comfortable and you're neither trying to heat or cool it.