Quote:
Originally Posted by niky
I'd stand by the idea that AC becomes less of an issue at speed.
At speed, you have more air going through the condenser. Which means the compressor cycles off more. As Daox stated, it will do this as a matter of course, without input from you. And the wind cools down your car, too.
Perhaps if the compressor was a constant load, and never went off, then it'd be different. You'd need to live somewhere really hot to test this, though.
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This is possible. However I think the temperature control on newish cars (newish being like 2004+) is done by adding heat to the air conditioning not cycling the compressor, and I have a strong suspicion my car doesn't cycle the AC either. It blows about equally cold at any speed but I think it may be that the cooler condenser at higher speed is making up for the extra revs wasting energy at the compressor and heating up the system.
I wish there was a way to tell if the AC were cycling, but my instinct is it doesn't on my car because when I manually cycle it, I can immediately feel the air starting to warm up, and that never happens with the compressor on.