climate control in winter

Augustus

I understand the frustration, as it seems weird to run the AC in the winter. But I don't think this is unique to Nissan. I've owned a couple of Subarus, an Acura, a Saab, an Audi, and a couple of Volvos with automatic climate controls and, of course, my Z. On "full auto", they'd all run AC basically all the time, even in the winter. The Saab's climate control was the best - it'd cycle the AC as needed. But the rest mostly just apparently ran the AC all the time, based on indicator lights or displays. The idea is to control interior humidity levels. Humidity that's coming from passengers' exhaled breaths.

If you don't like this behavior (I don't either...), then don't leave the fan control knob on "AUTO". Control the fan speed manually and it won't turn on the AC automatically unless you select the full-windshield defrost mode (which every car with AC fires the AC in defrost). That's what I do in the winter, and what I've generally had to do with every auto climate control vehicle I've owned, because they've all (except the Saab), worked like that.