Haven't seen any discussion of this, so I'll ask... Is there a way to get the climate control to operate in a "vent" mode, where the fan is bringing in fresh air but not heating or cooling it? Now that we're into cooler weather, there are times I'd like a little fresh air but don't really want to burn power on the heater. As far as I can tell, even with "Auto" off, if the fan is running, it will still heat or cool based on the temperature setpoint. As a workaround I have been setting the temperature to close to the reported outside temperature, but it seems like there should be a better way to accomplish this.
I posted the work around for this but am in the car and can’t search it up for you. Basically the only way around that I know of (and has been posted) is to set the temperature to LO (lowest setting) and manually select AC Off in the menu and hit the fresh air button. This way you get outside air with no heating and no compressor cooling. This setting will remain in effect as long as you don’t hit the auto button. You can adjust fan speed and use the center on/off button all you want and it will retain this setting. @Steven B’s method will work but without selecting LO temperature you run the risk or triggering the resistance heater depending on inside and outside temperatures.
Just to add something that tends to confuse people, when you go into the climate screen where it shows AC: ON OFF sometimes neither on or off will be highlighted. You have to press OFF so that it is now highlighted. Also maybe I am a little slow at times, but it can be annoying that the climate screen turns off so fast if you don't press any buttons and you have to press the climate button again. You can change that in the settings: Settings -> System -> Others -> Climate Screen Timeout Never/5 Seconds/10 Seconds/20 Seconds The default is ten seconds, I increased mine to twenty seconds which is a little more user friendly while driving.
Thank you all for the info - it's good to have a work-around to get what I was trying for, even if the designers didn't make it easy.
Thanks for this advice. I can't believe there's no simple way designed into the car to just turn on the vent. I guess setting the temp to LO is the moral equivalent of turning the old-fashioned knob that goes from blue to red to the cold end. The climate control design is definitely one of the weak points of this car.
This Vent Mode 'feature' of the Clarity has bugged me from the beginning. A voice command might be useful here, but alas, it does not work, I just went out and tried it.. It recognizes the command and repeats it to me, but as far as I can tell, it does NOTHING. I can see no change to any of the climate settings when executing the voice "Vent" command. It really seems that you have to turn on the fan, explicitly turn the A/C to OFF, dial the temperatures down to LOW, and make sure the external air flow button is on. 4 steps depending on where you are starting from !
Another solution is to move to Mississippi where we have two seasons: "Hot & Humid" and "Cool & Damp". Either way you're going to be running the AC, so having a "vent" option is irrelevant.
Still the main thing I don't like about the car (and I really love my Clarity) -- I'd love to have my '07 Civic's basic climate controls in this car (or even better, my '95 Neon's, with 3 big knobs that were easy to control by feel and had more intermediate control between floor/vent/defrost) If there was a way to disable the heater (by switch), that'd be 90% of the solutiion because it would allow leaving the temperature at a good cutoff for the AC and getting fresh vent air below that. No, stupid "automatic" climate, when it's 65 outside I don't want heat blasting at me just because I had the AC set to 70 the previous day!
What I have started doing recently, more as an experiment, is driving with AC set to LO. No that doesn't mean that I am driving around in an icebox, it just means that I have to control the fan speed manually. Which really isn't as bad as I thought it would be, after all we somehow survived in the past without automatic climate control. The advantage is that the heater does not get used, and also it's easier to switch to vent mode since I don't have to first set it to LO, and also have to remember later to put it back to normal temperature the next time I turn on AC. It also eliminates most of the annoying clicks and whirls as the climate system constantly opens and closes the air mix doors as it tries to maintain an exact temperature at all times. Probably most people don't notice those sounds, but I do and it's nice not having to listen to that. I tend to doubt that doing this has much of an impact on EV range, if I get tired of using it this way I will go back to using Auto mode. But so far I'm kind of getting used to using it this way. The only unknown at the moment is if running with it set to LO causes the AC compressor to run constantly instead of cycling. If it does then that probably negates the benefits. But I'm hoping that even at LO that the compressor still cycles on and off at the same evaporator coil temperature as it would otherwise.
