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Ice vehicles automatically turn off the AC at wide open throttle.
Some do if the belt drives the compressor. Humans have built many cars, exceptions exist
Belts drive the clutch. I haven’t seen a single production car that has a direct driven compressor.
Im thinking of something where an electric motor does it so probably a hybrid… Maybe a Lexus
Then turning it off doesn’t give you more power in those cases, and even those ones will limit the kw output to the electric AC during wide open watts if the battery can’t supply the output. But most evs don’t need to turn off the ac because the battery output exceeds the electric motor requirements
My brother’s first car was a 1989 Dodge Colt. He couldn’t run heat, wipers, and headlights at the same time. So driving at night, in the winter, when it was raining, became this dance of running the wipers until your ass was almost frozen to the seat, then turning them off and running the heat until you were almost blind, then repeat.
I would guess that would have had vacuum powered wipers. And the heat comes from the engine - was the blower motor really struggling that bad with the headlights on? I don’t mean to sound skeptical, but this is really surprising to me!
Vacuum wipers in 1989? 59 maybe. Sounds like the alternator output was too weak to keep up with the electrical demand of headlights, blower, and wipers.
I have no idea. He was also like, the third owner, so it’s quite possible that things were failing.
I would also like to autopsy this car.
+1 for hybrids lol
I used to drive a lot of 4-bangers and remember having to do that with pretty much every one of them either to overtake another vehicle or even sometimes driving up a steep hill lol. The air conditioning just sucked so much power from those little engines.
Been driving a hybrid for 6 or 7 years now, which also has a little 4-cylinder engine, but the electric motor more than makes up for that. It’s got a dash display showing the electric motor/ICE power split, and when you punch the gas, you can see the electric motor doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Love it.
The AC compressor shuts off when your engine exceeds ~4k rpm on most cars anyways. It can only spin so fast without causing problems. And if you’re trying to pass you’re probably exceeding 4k (on a gas engine) and the car is smart enough to figure it out.
A lot of newer cars don’t have the clutch anymore, they instead use a pressure valve to reduce pressure on the compressor. Should have the same effect though
But it gives you a fraction of an edge on the beginning before you hit 4k in that scenario. So you have a faster start.
2005 1.0 Opel Corsa on a hot summer day ahh feeling. Brings back memories
Yes, don’t idle in the sun without running the blower full tilt on warm with the windows down or risk your motor overheating.
2003 1.2 Vauxhall Corsa (which I still own!), yeah had to hit that boost button, god it was slow with aircon on.
