The air circulation doesn't seem to be working as it should in my car.
The setting is the same as my previous ES-350.
Re-circulate / Auto / Fresh air.

In my old 350 I would keep the setting on Auto. It would do its job, changing from Fresh air to Re-circulate
as needed.

In my new 350 it stays stuck on Re-circulate all the time!

I live in a clean, unpolluted town, so there's no reason for it to be staying on Re-circulate.
Any ideas how I can fix this (apart from seeing my dealer)?

Has anyone else had this problem?

 

You can adjust the sensitivity of the sensor for the clean air circulate mode.
During the hot months it stays in re circulate most of the time.

 

Thanks for letting me know.
I looked at the manual but couldn't find it.
Can you please help me out with this?

 

For AUTO recirc, you need to have 2 LED-s, not one.

 

I'm not sure what you are meaning here.
I have a standard Lexus 2024 ES-350.

There are three (3) LED's not one nor two.
LED 1 = Recirculate
LED 2 = Auto
LED 3 = Fresh air

It's set up the same as my 2007 Lexus ES-350 was.
When set to Auto, it should shift to either:
LED 2 + LED 1 OR
LED 2 + LED 3

As I mentioned in my OP, it's stuck on LED 2 + LED 1.

 

The name is called a smog sensor and I believe you go into vehicle settings.its been a awhile that I set it.

 

push vehicle settings then push climate then look on the right side of the screen and you will see a/c mode with auto, just scan down and you will see smog sensitivity push that and set it where you want.
easy peasy.
I have mine set to -1 which is the lowest setting so the fresh air will come on and stay on longer.

 

I mean, for the system to work automatically, you need to have 2 of the 3 LEDs ON.
If you don’t see it changing, then try to increase sensitivity of the smog sensor.

 

Thanks. I think you mean to decrease it.

 

OK now for an update. My trials and tribulations continue with my new Lexus.

I didn't have any of these problems with my 2007 ES-350.

I changed the setting to -1. It was set to 0. So just a small adjustment.
It made no difference. With the mode set to AUTO circulate, it stayed stuck on recirculate.

Now it gets even better.
So I turned off AUTO and set it to Fresh air. It stayed there and brought in fresh air.
But...only until I turned off the car!
When I started the car again it switched to Recirculate!

And it gets even better.
I turned on the Main AUTO setting for the fan.
In my old Lexus, whatever setting I set, it stayed there until I made a change.

When I started my car again the main AUTO was turned off! No fan.

Can someone please tell me if I have a lemon?
Because this is NOT how a new/old car should behave.

 

This has been the standard operating procedure for nearly ten years. When the ambient temperature is greater than 75 F, the A/C system will automatically select recirculate to save fuel. You can deselect recirculate by pressing the button. These fuel saving measures aren't done in your interest, they are done to meet EPA fuel economy standards.

From page 256 of the owner's manual:

 

Remember in
summer your switch is going to be in re circulated mode do to the heat and humid air unless you manually change it.In the fall you will see it change most of the time.Your 2024 is working as it should.

 

Well I learned some more about the air circulation buttons today.
Perhaps they work the same as in my 2007 ES-350, I don't remember exactly.

But basically even though there are three settings: recirc/auto/outside air there is only one button to push!

It may LOOK like there are three buttons but there is really only one.
That's right, only one button.
It doesn't matter if you push the button at its top, middle, or bottom it is still just ONE button.

What this translates to is that you must toggle between one or two modes to select a new one.
So if it's set for recirc. you can't jump to outside air, you must toggle through auto first.
And if you are in auto mode and want to get to recirc, you need to toggle through outside air first before it lands on recirc.

What bothers me most though is that unlike my 2007 ES-350, I need to press 'outside air' every time I start my car.
Which involves two presses (to add insult to injury), because it defaults to recirc.

 

OK time to revive this thread.
It's that time of year again when things are heating up again in my
neck of the woods. What this means is my car wants to be the boss
again and tell me I am going to have to do the 'air-circulation button
press dance' again for the next few months each and every time I start
my car.

So it got me thinking. In order to fix and bunch of things with my car in the months
after I purchased it I bought an OB2 port scanner.
It worked out nicely. You can get into almost every single setting in your car and make
adjustments on the fly.

Does anyone know if their is a setting somewhere that I can change (with an OB2 scanner) to keep the air circulation
'stuck' on 'fresh air' instead of 'recirculate'?
I'm a 'fresh air' type of person rather than a 'stale air' type of person that Lexus wants me to be.

 

Carista has under Heater & A/C :
A/C recirculation exhaust sensor sensitivity

• Lowest
• Very low
• Low
• Normal
• High
• Very high
• Highest

The sensitivity of an A/C re-circulation sensor refers to how well it detects outside air pollutants and odors, like exhaust fumes or strong smells, and automatically switches the air conditioning system from fresh air intake to re-circulation mode. A more sensitive sensor will detect even faint odors and switch to re-circulation more quickly, while a less sensitive sensor might require stronger smells to activate the switch.