Air con useful all year round

Air con and climate control are not quite the same. Climate control is air conditioning with an automatic interface. Photo / Supplied

Turn it on for 10 minutes or so every couple of weeks, writes Phil Hanson.

Winter's nearing, so what better time to talk about air conditioning? Despite what many drivers think, aircon's for all year, not just the muggy months.

Nothing clears the glass faster on a damp morning than a blast of warm aircon. And, heated seats aside, what's nicer than driving to work in a bubble of nice, dry, warm air?
Give it a go this winter; you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you remain unconvinced, turn it on for 10 minutes or so every couple of weeks anyway because regular use is good for the system's "health".

During summer, car salesmen reckon air conditioning or climate control leaps several notches in buyers' priorities. It's as certain as the premium price you'll get for a convertible in January.

Driven is suggesting you play with their minds: go into the showroom in midwinter and demand to know all about the car's air conditioning or climate control.

But first, something about aircon and climate control - they're not quite the same. Both provide a similar end result, but one does it all for you, just like an automatic transmission saves the bother of the driver having to change gears once it's in D.

Climate control is air conditioning with an automatic interface. You set the desired temperature and it does the rest, maintaining that temperature until the setting's changed again. It's controlled over a range that's typically between 18 and 28C, although some go as low as 16C.

Left to its own devices, it will squirt the air from outlets as it sees fit, at fan speeds its sensors select. However, the fan and ducting settings can be over-ridden. You'll probably also have to choose fresh or recirculating air modes, although some advanced systems can sense diesel fumes or other pollutants and automatically switch to recirculating.

Climate control may also offer the ability to set temperature in zones, so the driver can enjoy a different temperature from that chosen by the front passenger. Passengers in the back may be able to choose their own climate. But since each passenger isn't in a sealed-off compartment, the end result isn't as useful as the sales pitch suggests.

Multi-zone set-ups tend to be on more expensive cars. But just as conventional aircon found its way to the most modest models, climate control is becoming standard lower in the range, and multi-zone is following a similar path.

Aircon has become reliable and sorted since Packard produced the first car with a refrigeration-based system in 1940. By its very nature, climate air - which first appeared in some 1964 Cadillacs and 11 years later in digital form on Rolls-Royce's Camargue - adds complication to the basic mechanism, providing an opportunity for things to go wrong.

If you subscribe to the "less is more" philosophy, regular aircon's the answer.

Having the air conditioned automatically once a temperature has been dialled in sounds attractive, but drivers may rarely need to change settings on a trip, so all the automatic cleverness of climate control is largely wasted.

Still, if auto air is on the car of your choice, you wouldn't want to turn it down.