planet4ever
Well-known member
The climate control system in the LEAF quite likely has the worst user interface of anything in the car. I suggest that we debate what it should look like and, if we can come to some agreement, find a way to bring our proposal to Nissan's attention. As a starting point, here is my present opinion as to what the system should look like and how it should behave. These ideas just came to me today, and I may well change my opinion on some of them based on your input.
Ray
- The MODE button is inconvenient to use and rather inflexible. Relabel it AIRFLOW, and display a ribbon of touch buttons at the bottom of the console when it is pressed. The five buttons would be: Outside air; Windshield; Dash; Floor; and Rear. (I understand that a rear vent is being added in the 2012 model.) Each button would indicate whether it was currently on or off, and each could be set independently. Pressing AIRFLOW again would hide the ribbon.
- The most serious omission in the current system is the lack of any heater on/off button. With outside air controlled by the Airflow ribbon, the Fresh air and Recirculate buttons can be repurposed as heater control buttons. Use the top one for high heat and the bottom one for low heat. Clicking either on when it was off would turn the other off if it was on. Clicking either off when it was on would turn off the heater.
- Clicking AUTO off will cause all buttons to behave independently in a true manual mode, though they will initially be in whatever state they were in automatic mode. The one interaction is that if only one of the A/C or heat buttons is on, the temperature setting will control cycling of the A/C or heater. If both A/C and a heat button are on, or if neither is, the temperature setting will be ignored.
- Clicking AUTO on will allow the system to control several of the button actions, including fan speed, high/Low heat, A/C, and Outside air. The system will respond as it considers appropriate to manual changes made to temperature settings, fan speed settings, and airflow ribbon buttons. Pressing the A/C or high or low heat buttons will turn auto mode off.
Ray