It’s about heaters in cars. It’s been bugging me for decades.
I have this general opinion that the people who design the winter-driving features for cars have never actually lived in cold weather.
In the 1970s, most cars had a slider that allowed you to decide if you wanted the hot air to be directed to your feet, to the windows for defrosting, or to the outlets in the dashboard that give warm air to your hands and face. The slider physically activated doors and valves in the air ducts, so you could have a mix of feet-and-windows or feet-and-head, but never windows-and-head. My dad’s 1977 Dodge Monaco worked like this, and so did my 2002 Subaru Impreza.
Nowadays, most cars have electrically-activated valves in the air ducts, and have actual buttons you can push for the various combinations. But they’ve kept the old convention of not allowing you to defrost the windows and heat your hands-and-face at the same time. At least this is how my 2009 Honda Civic works, and all other cars that I know of.
My dad only wore thin winter soles on his leather shoes and wore rabbit-lined kid gloves, so I guess he needed the warm air mostly on his feet. My boots are plenty warm, but my gloves are not that good (and I keep forgetting them everywhere). So I need to defrost my windows and heat my hands, and my car won’t allow it.
Why can’t I use my heater as I see fit? How can I get the industry to change its evil ways?
I don’t know the answer to your question, but the electronic climate control on my 2003 Peugeot (a French marque not sold in the US, I believe) allows any combination you want.
I’ve never seen a car with electronic controls that didn’t permit all possible combinations of top, middle, & bottom.
Given that it snows in Detroit, all of Germany, and most of Japan, I rather doubt the folks who design these things are unaquainted with snow & cold.
Since the Civic is Honda’s cheapest model, perhaps the problem is that cheapo cars cut corners where they can, and including a less-fancy heater gives them some whiz bang “enhancements” to crow about as you move up their model line.
(Actually, in Canada at least, the Fit is the cheapest Honda, by a few hundred bucks.)
My Civic is a hydrid, with the pollen filter, thermostatic control, etc. The air flow is selected by pressing a MODE button that draws a little diagram on the display. And the MODE never reaches windows-and-head. I admit that the valves and deflectors underneath may be the same as for the cheaper Civics.
But I just looked up the manuals for the Lexus RX350 and LS460, and the Cadillac CTS. They all have the same limitation.
Are you sure? You didn’t specify which model you have, but I just looked up the Guides d’utilisation for the Peugeot 207 and 607, and found the same limitations.
(Along with literary gems such as salissures persistantes for hard-to-remove stains.)
Ma’s car has no floor vent on the passenger side. Who ever designed it should be left to freeze to death in a Wisconsin snow bank. The passenger only gets heat from vents chest high in the dash.
My 97 Ford truck is as the OP discribes. Not only that, if you have it on either of the two the defrost settings (windshield, windshield+feet) it cycles the AC compressor to dry the air…virtually never needed in this climate, and being that it is a diesel, I could really do without that cooling for the first 10 miles. Basically they kept the look and feel of the old slider/cable control but it is now electrical switches that control vacuum operated shutters.
Here’s a heater question: Why isn’t there an electric heater that can be used for the few minutes until the engine heats up? Sometimes people don’t have time to start their car and let it heat up for awhile before going somewhere. Seems like a simple, cheap and useful feature. Is it just that it draws too much power?
Yes. Let’s say you wanted to base it on something like this small 900/1500 watt heater. It would require up to 125 A of continuous current for 12 V operation.
I remember we used to have an electric area heater designed for car interiors, that you’d plug into the house AC outlet. Haven’t seen a trace of those for years, though; probably a fire hazard (or worse, a lawsuit hazard).
In light airplanes, the heater usually draws heat not from a radiator, from the outside surface of the exhaust pipe (which is normally ahead of the cabin).
Same complaint of my 2004 Honda Pilot. I cannot get defrost and face/hand warm setting. I can do face/hand alone, foot and face/hand, foot alone, defrost alone or defrost and foot.
My 2008 Mazda does allow this combination–which I saw as a feature, as I’d noticed the same problem in my earlier cars. Furthermore, I still have sliders. I don’t even have electric locks, let alone electric climate control.
It’s a 206, and I’m pretty sure. If I remember, I will try to check in the next few days. It sticks in my head because there is only a single button to control this setting, and you have to press it several times to cycle through all the possible (six or seven) options.
My 2001 Continental doesn’t allow any combination of air direction. If I want defrost, I get defrost, or defrost+floor. Defrost heats my upper body quite well. “Auto” mode (it’s climate control) directs heat only to the floor, but I can override that and direct heat to the floor+midlevel, or as said before, midlevel+defost. I almost never use midlevel; it’s just not comfortable for heat. In AC mode, “Auto” directs to midlevel, and I agree with the car that that’s the most comfortable.
I’m not sure what my 2004 Expedition does. I don’t drive it enough. Even though it’s never, it only has manual HVAC controls. I suspect that where I can direct the air is similar to my Lincoln. I think the Lincoln has separate driver/passenger controls, too (the Ford definitely doesn’t).
New cars are actually much more flexible than older cars in this respect. They have either vacuum- or electrically-activated flapper doors that can direct the air anywhere, in theory. The old cars with the sliders mechanically linked a single flapper that allowed you gradually direct the air from floor to mid-level to defrost. I’m pretty sure you couldn’t do it the “comfortable” way and have floor and defrost without mid-level.
I bet there’s only a certain amount of air flow in CFM that comes out of the blower up under hte dash, and if they blew it out of the main registers and the defroster, you probably wouldn’t get enough airflow to actually defrost.
My Dodge truck has a knob- it goes from full-on defrost, to defrost/feet, to feet/upper, to full upper, then to recirc upper, and recirc upper/feet (with intermediate gradations between each setting listed above.)
You use it in conjunction with the hot/cold knob and the A/C button to regulate the temp. It’s essentially the old slider system in knob form, from what I can tell.
The twin-engined planes in our flight school have a little furnace in the nose that burns Avgas from the wing tanks. That’s right… it squirts high octane gasoline into a little chamber and sets it on fire. What could possibly go wrong?
In answer to the OP, I think my 2010 Corolla actually has a choice where it blows on the windsheild and the mid-level vents. I’ll try to remember and check this evening on my way home.