foganime

Manual A/C Compressor Control w/out Going Menu->Climate every time

1) In your ES 300h Lexus Personalized Settings, choose A/C control to "OFF unless commanded ON"

2) Turn down the temperature and set air circulation to: RECIRC. + AUTO
A/C compressor turns ON as pictured:





3) Now to turn the A/C compressor OFF without changing temp./turning on ECO, etc. :

Just press the RECIRC. button twice. First time turns off AUTO recirc. mode. Second time you will see the following:



4) To manually turn A/C compressor back on, just choose air circulation mode AUTO again.

MrlexEd88

Aha finally! Thanks for sharing! Just curious how'd you find this out?

foganime

Just from experimentation after my LPS settings were programmed correctly by the dealer.

Caydoc

...does the "off unless commanded on" setting have to be set by dealer, or is it a user setting?

Arty101

User setting.

lesz

Some time ago, this method of disabling auto air in the personalized settings and using the auto and and recirculate buttons on the dash to control whether or not the compressor was being used. I tried it that way for about a month, and I found it to be more cumbersome to go through the sequence of button presses on the dash than it was to use the mouse, go to the climate settings, and click on AC to turn the compressor on or off. My preference would be to have a dedicated AC button on the dash, but absent of that, I'll continue to use the menus to turn the compressor on and off as opposed to using the sequence of dash button presses after disabling auto AC in the personalized settings.

Arty101

This was discussed a while back on what we liked or not liked about the new ES. I personally don't like using the menu/mouse to turn on/off the AC and thought a dedicated AC button should have been included. That said, I use the auto/recirc button to turn on and off the AC since I don't want look over several times at the display to turn the dang thing on or off.

Caydoc

I tried this and it works as described! what an improvement! One question: once the AC is turned on by recirc/auto buttons, is there any way to change to outside air/non-recirc without turning off the AC?

Arty101

Outside air w/AC will switch on at a higher set temp, but will depend upon the outside ambient temp. I've played around with my temp to get it to go to fresh air, and it may take a set temp of 75 degrees or more. I also think this may depend upon whether you're in Eco, Normal or Sport mode. Fiddle with your temp and see if this works.

lesz

It has been quite a few months since I experimented with disabling automatic AC in the climate control menu, and my memory could be faulty, but I believe that, when you do so and, thus, use the buttons on the dash to turn the AC compressor on and off by the method described in this thread, you lose the ability to manually control whether you are getting fresh air or recirculated air. Instead, the way that it works is that, if the outside temperature is 75 or above, you get recirculated air, and, if the outside temperature is below 75 you get fresh air.

For me, that was a major deal breaker for using this method. Except in very rare situations, I prefer to use the fresh air setting. With recirculated air, the air in the vehicle cabin just starts to feel a bit stale, and, if you search this forum, you will find a couple of threads from last summer where people were complaining about a "musty air smell" in their vehicles, and I'm confident that this air quality problem was/is the result of using the recirculated air setting (which is the default auto setting, again, when the outside air temperature is 75 or above). I'm confident that, as we move into this year's air conditioning season, we will be seeing some of the same complaints about stale air (from those who are using the auto setting and letting the system decide to send recirculated air into the cabin).

I believe the reason why Lexus set things up the way that they did is because there are supposedly minor fuel economy savings if the climate control system is using recirculated air, but, even if there are minor fuel economy savings, for me, the price of having to deal with stale air is too steep to pay to get those fuel economy savings. Thus, losing the ability to manually control the fresh air/recirculate setting and, then, adding in having to deal with the sequences of dash button presses (and remembering them) to turn the compressor on or off makes using this method a non-starter for me.

Arty101

The temp around here in the morning and late afternoon was hitting the mid 60's. I set my temp to 67 on the Auto AC on, and the majority of the time the Fresh Air and AC was working. It would occasionally go to Recirc with AC. Again, I think it depends on the outside temp and your temp whether the Recirc or Fresh Air with AC kicks in, but I suspect only if your set temp is near the outside temp that the Fresh Air with AC will kick in.

lesz

The cutoff outside temperature is 75. If the outside temperature is 75 or above, the auto system will set itself to recirculate. If it is below 75, the auto system will set itself to fresh air.

As I said in my previous post, I wish Lexus had not designed the system to automatically switch to recirculate when the temperature is 75 or above. After my own experience last summer and after reading lots of pots, I have no question that keeping the system in recirculate for an extended period of time results in poor/stale air quality. While I know that Lexus designed the system this way for very modest fuel economy gains, in some situations, fuel economy is actually worse when the recirculate mode is used. On a hot day, if you the car is parked in the sun, the inside air temperature could be 120 degrees (or warmer). If the system is operating in recirculate mode, it actually takes more compressor "on" time (and, thus, more fuel consumption) to cool the car off because you are recirculating that 120 degree air. In that situation, you actually want fresh air because that fresh air, even on a very hot day, is going to be cooler than the air inside the vehicle when you first start up the vehicle after it has been parked in the sun. And that is my main problem with the method of turning AC on and off being discussed in this thread. If you use this method, you lose the ability to switch to fresh air when the AC compressor is turned on and the outside temperature is 75 or above.

Arty101

I was driving during my lunch hour and the weather was 70-71 degrees. My temp was set at 75 degrees and it still went to recirc./AC. I raised the temp to 80 and higher, and still recirc./AC. I couldn't get it to refresh air/AC at this ambient temp.

lesz

But have you disabled auto AC in the climate control menu? That is my point as to why I don't like disabling auto AC. When you do that, you lose the ability to manually change to fresh air when you turn on the AC. When auto AC is enabled in the climate control menu, that is when the system will go to recirculate when the outside temperature is above 75 and will use fresh air when the outside temperature is below 75, but, at least, you can manually change it from recirculate to fresh air, which you can't do if you disabled auto AC in the climate control menu.

Arty101

Based on your comment, I disabled the auto AC on the Personal Settings driving home yesterday. Outside temp was still around 70, and I set the inside temp to 75. It still went to recirc/AC mode. Raise the temp to 80, and still no change. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I guess I have to manually turn the AC on in the Climate Control via mouse for AC and fresh air which sounds like your complaint about the system.