What does the AC button (air conditioning) mean?

The AC button in the car is located near the air conditioning settings and activates the air conditioning compressor, i.e. the air conditioner. AC, often too A / C simply stands for “Air conditioning“, so the air conditioner. Instead of the letters AC, a snowflake is often simply depicted on this key.

A fundamental distinction has to be made: with one simple air conditioning the AC button activates the compressor, i.e. the actual cooling function itself. At a Automatic air conditioning, If you set the temperature digitally, you can set it to 18 degrees in summer, but cooling is only really done when the AC is also active, i.e. the cooling compressor is running. In most vehicles, the air conditioning system draws very little from the engine power. Nevertheless, you can save fuel with the AC button – although not really much. When the vehicle is stationary, you can usually hear a running cooling compressor faintly from the outside.

In winter you don’t have to deactivate the air conditioning in most cars, especially those with automatic air conditioning, as the cooling compressors usually switch off at outside temperatures below 4 degrees. In spring and at temperatures around 10-20 degrees it is often worthwhile to activate the air conditioning, even if you want 22 degrees inside: The dry air removes moisture from the interior, which means, for example, windows less fogging up.

Manual air conditioning in the Dacia Sandero