Yes, the car's heating/ventilation/air-conditioning (HVAC) system does turn on the air-conditioning compressor whenever you set it to Defrost mode (or even point air flow toward the windshield) but if you find it too cold, you can turn the temperature up to allow hot air to be mixed in.

Turning on the compressor acts as a dehumidifier, blowing drier air toward the windshield. Turning on the defroster also disallows the recirculate function from working; you want fresh air to defrost/dry off the inside of the windshield, not humid, re-breathed inside air.

 

I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you there...

My old '06 Acura TL had a god-awful climate control system. I had several issues with it.

--On its highest fan setting, the air just dribbled out of the vents. Say on another car with manual climate control where there are 5 settings for fan speed, full blast, recirc mode in the TL would be about a 3. Unacceptable on a hot summer day. If I didn't have window tint that blocked out the sun, it would have been literally unbearable. I'm hot natured, but still. Other people noticed it too. I even took it to the dealer bc I thought something was wrong.

--I had to set it at 60 to stay cool in the summer, and close to 80 in the winter to stay warm. On my LS I hardly ever touch it. Just set it to 70 and forget it. That's the whole point of auto climate control. On another note, lol, one of my pet peeves is when people don't set an auto climate control to Auto. It's like "ding ding ding there's an auto button there so you don't have to adjust anything!" Haha. My estimation of peoples' intelligence drops when I don't see them using Auto. Not really, but still. Lol. When you get into a cold or hot car, turning it to 60 or 90 WILL NOT cool/warm the car any faster. Lol I just don't see how people can't grasp that.

--The "dual climate" was a joke, obviously just there as a gimmick. You could set one side 10-15 degrees cooler/warmer than the other and there would be *no* difference, in anything. Passengers noticed that as well. On my LS you can set one side to 60 and the other to 90 and it really works as intended. You'll have ice cold air on one side and blazing hot air on the other. I wouldn't want to stress the system doing that 24/7, but it's cool to know that it functions as advertised.

On the whole "cool air from the vents and warm air from the floor", I actually like that. It shows me the system was very well engineered and is flawless in its execution. They didn't skimp on the details like Acura obviously did.

Just my .02.

 

The system in my LS was weak as well. Especially on auto. That's why i stopped using auto. It would blow harder on manual(but still not enough imo).

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Wow, could there be something wrong? My a/c blows strong and is good and/or better than the Yukon in our family. Everyone knows that if there's one thing the Americans get right, it's a/c.

 

Maybe they messed it up when the moved to dual zone. My 2000 TL and 2004 Pilot HVAC were much better than my IS; especially on the temperature.

 

It's possible. More things were broken than weren't on that car.

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Well, I could do that, but my point is that it's not always neccesary to run the AC just because I'd like to blow some air on the the windshield. And while turning up the heat to counter the affects of running the AC in winter will work, it is pretty silly to have the AC compressor sucking energy all the time. It would be far better to let me turn on the AC when and if it's actually needed.

 

Auto as I've always understood it simply adjusts fan speed based off temperature. As it stands, I'm not a fan (no pun intended - well maybe a little )

Some people such as myself prefer to do it manually. I like to be in control of temp/fan speed/air outlets, I know what I need best, not the car.

 

So--what about when I hit "AUTO" and the system decides to blow air only out the foot vents, and not the window, and it gets fogged up--I have to override the system to make sure air comes out the vents too. Or if I just don't want the fan blowing as hard as the system chooses. Or if I don't want the air blowing in my face. The system isn't run by some genius supercomputer, and I'm not going to blindly follow its settings if they aren't making me properly comfortable.

My view is actually just the opposite of yours--I think that people too blindly follow their AUTO features in the car--climate control, headlights, etc. You need to also use your common sense depending on the circumstances. Like--when there's dense fog, my AUTO headlights don't come on--I need to override them for safety. But many, many people don't even bother.

I'm with you on not turning the temp up to 90 on a cold day to get the car to warm faster--but that has nothing to do with the AUTO feature.

 

I do agree with OP on this. I never use Auto precisely because I almost always have it on cool (yay for CA weather) and I like to have the cold air blowing on my feet in addition to the upper vents. But there's no way to change the mode to have it both be on Auto and blowing out all vents.

So I've settled into a routine of keeping it at 73, all vents, and 1-2 bars of fan speed. I'll occasionally adjust the temperature or the fan speed up or down a click or two, but I almost always keep it blowing out all vents.