[readingnews]

I do loathe the screen, however, am I the only person to note this problem with the new car climate controls? I see this on Honda, Nissan, Acura, Toyota (that I know of):

  - Set the climate control for say 70
  - If it is 80 outside, the AC comes on. Great!
  - If it is 69 outside, the HEAT comes on. Even if the car HVAC is off. Uh, not so great?

So you end up during the milder months in this strange battle of the AC. Even when the unit is off, the car lets in some outside air. That air passes over the coils of the system, which are primed for heat or cold depending on where the control is set. This sort of drives me nuts in the nissan (it does it the worst). The system should be off when it is off.

Back to the OP article, wow that Benz control is nutty. I had a (very) old Mercedes that was gifted to me years ago and the controls were a dream. Not one of them had words on it just symbols, and you could muscle memory them in no time. A very well thought out design. A wheel for temps and fan speed, buttons for activation. I think it might have been a total of 6 inputs. I would trade that for my Hondas sucky four touch screen buttons to turn the fan down screen any time, even if I had to pay dearly for it.

[andix]

Good automatics often use AC and heating in parallel, to dehumidify the air (to prevent foggy windows). It may be a waste of energy though.

And good automatics won’t crank up the heat if there is just one degree difference. Except electric cars heating is usually for free, because you just use the available heat from the engine.