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Why is Auto Climate control not really Automatic? - Fan Speeds for Auto

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ezatnova

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
One thing that continues to baffle me since I bought the vehicle months ago is the lack of a truly automatic climate control system. In my BMW and Mercedes (and the Acura traded in for the Volvo), and most moderately equipped cars in the world, there is a climate control button for Auto. Once you press that, the car controls everything that it needs to in order to achieve and then maintain the set target temperature with absolutely no intervention needed on any setting.

Why is it that in the XC90, there is a Fan Speed selection along with Auto? Why can't Auto simply determine what fan speed is needed and go about its business without manual intervention? If it is 110 in the car and the temp is set to 70, the fan should automatically blast full force. When it is 71 and cloudy and the temp is set to 70, it should be an inaudible low fan speed.

The other day, I got in the car and it was very hot outside. After driving for a few minutes, I realized it was barely cooling down. The fan just did not seem strong. After pressing Auto, I realized that the system was on "Auto - Fan 3", and I had to manually press "Fan 5" for it to give the proper amount of air force that would naturally be needed when trying to cool the car down rapidly. Then, after having it on "Auto - Fan 5" for a few minutes, the fan speed was simply ridiculous and excessive. Back into the "Auto" menu to reset the fan speed to "Auto-3". I mean, the car might as well have the manual fan and temp control dials from a 1995 Civic or something. It seems inexcusable that it operates this way in a $70k vehicle.

On a related note, I absolutely understand having a separate, manually activated "Max Cool" setting (activating recirc and max fan speed). No issues with that. I am just frustrated with the normal operation of the system and why we need to choose a fan speed when the thing should just operate autonomously.
 
#3 ·
100% agree. Had my dealer look at it and they said it was fixed in the May update that I just had loaded. Nope...

Along the same lines, the temp setting always defaults to 77 degrees for me, presumably something I accidentally set during driver profile setup; but I can't seem to figure out how to change that default temp setting. Very annoying to have to change the temp every time I get in, especially when Sensus is so slow to the touch on startup. Sorry for digression ;)!
 
#5 ·
I have an S80 and I have the opposite problem from you. The system defaults to Full Auto at the highest speeds and I manually lower the fan because it is too loud for me.

Old Sensus had a setting in the car to limit the fan speed, but I still find it too loud.

See if maybe this is hidden somewhere in the menus. "Climate settings Automatic blower adjustment. Choose between Low, Normal or High."
 
#6 ·
ezatnova said:
One thing that continues to baffle me since I bought the vehicle months ago is the lack of a truly automatic climate control system. In my BMW and Mercedes (and the Acura traded in for the Volvo), and most moderately equipped cars in the world, there is a climate control button for Auto. Once you press that, the car controls everything that it needs to in order to achieve and then maintain the set target temperature with absolutely no intervention needed on any setting.

Why is it that in the XC90, there is a Fan Speed selection along with Auto? Why can't Auto simply determine what fan speed is needed and go about its business without manual intervention? If it is 110 in the car and the temp is set to 70, the fan should automatically blast full force. When it is 71 and cloudy and the temp is set to 70, it should be an inaudible low fan speed.

The other day, I got in the car and it was very hot outside. After driving for a few minutes, I realized it was barely cooling down. The fan just did not seem strong. After pressing Auto, I realized that the system was on "Auto - Fan 3", and I had to manually press "Fan 5" for it to give the proper amount of air force that would naturally be needed when trying to cool the car down rapidly. Then, after having it on "Auto - Fan 5" for a few minutes, the fan speed was simply ridiculous and excessive. Back into the "Auto" menu to reset the fan speed to "Auto-3". I mean, the car might as well have the manual fan and temp control dials from a 1995 Civic or something. It seems inexcusable that it operates this way in a $70k vehicle.

On a related note, I absolutely understand having a separate, manually activated "Max Cool" setting (activating recirc and max fan speed). No issues with that. I am just frustrated with the normal operation of the system and why we need to choose a fan speed when the thing should just operate autonomously.
Click to expand...
I may be wrong, but I think that if you tap "Auto" twice the fan speed will return to automatic. It's been a while since I've changed my fan speed. In the past, I have set my climate control to a set fan speed, but was able to return to full auto fan speed by tapping "Auto" twice. My climate control is currently set to fully automatic and I never need to adjust the fan speed. The fan starts off on high if needed when I first start the car and adjusts back down to a lower fan speed automatically when the cabin reaches the set temperature.
 
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#7 ·
I suspect this is a work-around for the fact that people have differing tastes as to how much fan speed they want on Auto. Every Auto system I've ever used before has driven me crazy with the high-speed fan that takes over until it reaches the target temperature. I would definitely choose a lower fan setting and wait a bit longer for the temp to reach target. So if the new XC90 gives me some control over it, that's a plus in my book.
 
#8 ·
jjd416 said:
I may be wrong, but I think that if you tap "Auto" twice the fan speed will return to automatic. It's been a while since I've changed my fan speed. In the past, I have set my climate control to a set fan speed, but was able to return to full auto fan speed by tapping "Auto" twice. My climate control is currently set to fully automatic and I never need to adjust the fan speed. The fan starts off on high if needed when I first start the car and adjusts back down to a lower fan speed automatically when the cabin reaches the set temperature.
Click to expand...
^^^This. There are 2 auto settings. Everything auto, but manual fan speed. And full auto.
 
#13 ·
carz said:
Exactly. If you see the fan speed in the main Sensus screen, then you are in the "fake" auto that doesn't control the speed fan, you have to do it manually.
Click to expand...
How do you turn on the "real" auto?
 
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#14 ·
Discussion starter · #15 ·
I think a lot of people are missing the point. Even with the underline on the fan speed, this is still a manual limitation/setting. It is NOT fully auto. Go ahead and set your fan speed to low (1) and it will still be underlined when you then press Auto. The car will then only blow super soft air. Do the same with fan speed 5. Again, underlined, it does not seem to matter, it will still blow full force.

I also repeatedly confirmed that the single vs double press does absolutely nothing...it has the underline on the fan speed after doing either The only thing that DOES do something is if you HOLD down Auto for more than a second or so. it then resets it to Fan Speed 3 and 72/72 for the temps.
 
#16 · (Edited)
Thanks for this thread! This has been driving me nuts too.

Any time the REAR AC is on 3 or higher, seems that drives the fan up font to push hard no mater what is selected for the front seats, the system just uses the vents to push less air into the front and more to the 2nd row while running the fan hard (higher than selected up front).

Once the rear is set to 3 or 2, the front fan quiets down and works across the slide. In short, the rear can also determine front fan speed even if the front doesn't need it pushing that hard.

This was perplexing as we have only had two speeds: high and low. Block 1 was low and blocks 2-5 drove the fan to the exact same speed (sound).

Probably other things going on too, not sure what those would be.
 
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#17 ·
There is no full auto mode. Holding auto just sets everything to default: 72F and fan level 3. Straight from the horse's mouth:
Image


I agree that it's a bizarre choice, coming from far less expensive cars that had true auto functionality. That said, I generally prefer low fan speeds, so setting it to level one or two has worked serviceably for me so far.
 
#18 ·
Listed below is what I found on Volvo Support forum: This is a question asked by someone else and then replied by Volvo Cars Topic Expert "Lars Lagström". The reply is confusing but the way I understand is that if you set the fan setting to 3 then that is the max speed that the system would choose and once the car is cool enough on a hot day then the system can lower the speed. If it is set to 2 then that would be the max speed an only can go down to 1 but not up. Please correct me if I am wrong if anyone has any more information.

Question asked on Volvo support forum:

"I feel like I am missing something obvious, but I am having trouble having the Climate Control automatically adjust the fan to satisfy the set temperature when in Auto mode. If I set the cabin temperature to Hi, I'd expect the fans to ramp up. However the fan speed never changes. I can manually set it, but it doesn't automatically adjust.

I did look at the manual, and pressed and held the Auto button as instructed. However all that happened when I pressed and held is it defaulted to fan speed 3 no matter what fan speed it was on before. The screen would briefly show "Auto Fan 3" above the icon of the fan speed then fade away. The fan did not auto adjust from this point. "

Answered by Volvo Cars Topic Expert "Lars Hagström"

The climate is controlled by temp end fan speed, the temp controls only control the temp and have no fan speed adjustment. Fan is controlling the airflow, to get higher temp in the cabin is not done by automatically increase fan speed, this done by the increase in temp.
If you set the fan speed to 3 you will access fan speed up to full, the system will choose the best airflow speed automatically. If you select 1 or 2 you will have a reduced maximum fan speed.
Long press is to set the default value on the climate system which is 22C/72F and fan speed 3.
 
#19 ·
It doesn't seem to actually work as described in that post. For example, based on that I would expect that if I went out on a 72-degree cloudy day, set the climate temp to 72 and fan speed to 5, the car would see that very little air flow is needed and choose to use some level well below this 'max' level of 5.

But in reality, if I set auto and choose level 5, I always get much more air flow then I do if I pick level 1 or two.
 
#20 ·
I just tested the system briefly in my XC90. As I see it, it does behave like a fully automatic system. In addition it lets you select the aggressiveness of fan speed (level 1 to 5) . So, in any of the five baseline fan speeds, if you set the temp all the way down to 'lo' the fan speed cranks up automatically but it will be more aggressive if ur baseline is 5 than if it is 2. For me level 3 works perfectly in terms of climate control, fan speed and fan loudness. Level 5 is def too loud. I hope it helps.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
 
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