Best way to get outside air without affecting range

I've tried playing around with all the settings I am not sure what I can do to get a little bit of air flowing through the cabin without affecting range. I thought that there would be something similar to an ICE car where I can set the vehicle to outside air and that would flow through the vents which would vary with vehicle speed.

I've tried turning the fan on at the lowest setting (with a/c off), but regardless of the temperature in degrees I set, it affects my estimated mileage. Has anyone found the best setting for having some outside air without adversely affecting the range too much?

Thanks!

Hope someone has a more definitive answer to your question. Have our FFE about a month now and can't figure it out either. Sometimes I just turn off the fan completely, that saves energy and often works but sometimes I would just like a natural flow of outside air. I suspect that openning a window at higher speeds would increase vehicle drag but at lower speeds it lets in air but lets in more noise than I want.

Rolling the windows down is nice too, but I agree with the noise and the drag issue.

This might not have any logical basis either, but I feel that because there is no flow of air coming in from the outside, my windshield has been starting to get fogged up more quickly causing me to either roll down the windows or turn on the defroster.

I noticed yesterday that if I set the climate control temp to 63 degrees without A/C and the fan speed on low, the range indicator does not take an immediate drop. I'm not sure if this is related to the external air temperature, but the same effect happened this morning. Try it out and let us know if you see the same thing..

thait84 said:

I've tried playing around with all the settings I am not sure what I can do to get a little bit of air flowing through the cabin without affecting range. I thought that there would be something similar to an ICE car where I can set the vehicle to outside air and that would flow through the vents which would vary with vehicle speed.

I've tried turning the fan on at the lowest setting (with a/c off), but regardless of the temperature in degrees I set, it affects my estimated mileage. Has anyone found the best setting for having some outside air without adversely affecting the range too much?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Okay let me try it. I've been setting it at 60 or low, and I see a slight drop.

I hope we can figure out the ideal temperature settings would be where you can just tell the Focus to leave the air as is. :lol:

The other thing that irritates me a little with the Focus is that it doesn't remember the last used AC settings if I turn it off. Say I have it set as level 1 fan with AC off, when I hit the power off button, if I hit the power button on again, it will be at some other ridiculous setting like "Auto" and "AC on". Even if I hit the button to lower the fan setting while it is off, it will turn it on to level 1 fan setting but with AC on.

I set to Temp to Lo and minimum fan speed with AC off to get airflow and this does not effect the range. Setting the temp to anything but Lo may engage the heater. That draws WAY more power than the AC. Set up your myTrip indicator to display the instantaneous power draw. It shows Climate and Other. Climate is only the draw of either the AC or Heater. The fan seems to effect Other.

If you don't mind driving with the windows down, it actually DECREASES drag - not increases it. Although it's somewhat counter-intuitive, I have verified it on my last 3 cars. They all got better gas mileage with the windows down than with them up. Note that I had the A/C off with the windows up to make sure it wasn't a factor.

Thanks for the post. The foggy windshield issue has been bugging me. Lo temp settings and warm seats here I come.

-Rob G.

Thait,

I think you are referring to the Recirc switch to switch between recirculating the air in the cabin to allowing only the pass-through air from outside. I know in my ICE car whenever the recirc is off, I get air coming in through the vents without any fans turned on. Have you tried pushing the recirc button to switch it off? I am guessing you have since you said you tried everything. Unfortunately, I don't have an FFE, so I can't test it myself.

I found the part in the manual where it talks about that function, on page 124 on the first version of the manual that was uploaded to this site. It is in the climate section in case it has changed since then.

It wouldn't make sense that the pass through function wouldn't work on this car. Unless, maybe the climate control is set to default on defroster or something that requires the recirc function(manual says it will turn on automatically if in certain functions). Try turning on the system, set it to push air out through the front vents, if it isn't already, then turn off the recirc function(if on), then turn off the system.

If air is still not being pushed through, while driving like you would expect, then I don't know what else to tell you. Hope this helps.

Gatorman82 said:

If you don't mind driving with the windows down, it actually DECREASES drag - not increases it. Although it's somewhat counter-intuitive, I have verified it on my last 3 cars. They all got better gas mileage with the windows down than with them up. Note that I had the A/C off with the windows up to make sure it wasn't a factor.

Click to expand...

http://greenliving.about.com/od/travelinggreen/a/Air-Conditioning-MPG-Gas-Mileage.htm

Turn off the climate control
Press the small fan button
Turn off the AC

This should leave you in a state where the vents are open with almost no impact to mileage. Fan can even be increased.

dmspen said:

Turn off the climate control
Press the small fan button
Turn off the AC

This should leave you in a state where the vents are open with almost no impact to mileage. Fan can even be increased.

Click to expand...

Correct, but also make sure the requested temperature is at or below the outside temperature (shown on the right hand dash display), otherwise the heat may come on, decreasing range.

I wish there was a way to "disable" heat just like we can turn off AC.

A/C off and setting the temp to "LO LO" (both sides) seems to keep the heater off for me. Usually run like that with the floor vents on and fan speed at low when it's cold out, until my toes are ready to freeze off. Then I switch to the defroster vents for a few minutes, until I get a slurpee headache, then it's back to the floor. It sucks being zen.

I think the heater controls are done that way to model how old-fashioned heaters work.... slide the lever all the way to the left, and the heater's off. Slide it just a bit to the right, and a valve cracks open to let some hot coolant into the heater core, and presto... the heater is "on". Slide it waaaay to the right, that valve is now full-bore and the distinct smell of ethylene glycol permeates into the cabin along with gobs of heat, and the needle on the coolant temperature gauge drops. No distinct on/off switch. Apparently that's what we're used to, so that's the way these newfangled electronic controls are designed.

I'm with you, it's time for a major paradigm shift.... give us a separate on/off switch for the heater!