Whisper drive mode uses less energy

[macchiaz-o]

... by a negligible amount.

My car (and probably most of yours) still has that glitch where it sometimes switches to Engage shortly after starting. When I switch it back to Whisper, I've recently been noticing that the cabin air conditioning blower gets slightly quieter. Meaning, it's reducing its speed slightly, even though the only thing I've changed is the drive mode.

I thought maybe this was just another aspect of the Engage bug. But I finally tested my theory today. Got in the car after work. Air is on auto-3, recirc on, 67° target. I turned off the radio. Then I switched to Whisper and it immediately got quieter. Switched back to Engage and it got louder. I also tried Unbridled, it seems to me to be the same blower speed scaling as Engage.

IN SUMMARY:
When the auto-blower is at higher end speeds and the cabin is otherwise quiet, you will hear the AC "working harder" in Engage or Unbridled than it does in Whisper. So Whisper is not only quieter, but ever so slightly more efficient since it keeps occupants less comfortable.

I submitted audio feedback to @Ford Motor Company as I think it's a strange choice to do this but not document it anywhere. I can't believe it took me more than four years to figure this out. Efficiency be damned, I think I'll be driving in Unbridled during summer heat from now on.

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[GreaseMonkey]

Quieter so you can whisper.

 

[ChrisO]

@Mach-Lee I think you and others might get a kick out of this reply by Copilot:

As I said in another thread, AI is great at searching and consolidating information. And you can see by this it does dynamic searching.

 

[macchiaz-o]

That's some impressively fast indexing by Microsoft, @ChrisO. Wow. I'm especially impressed because when I clicked the Post button, the forum immediately went down for an hour or two.

 

[Mache_Nor]

Quieter so you can whisper.

 

[Creaky]

Have you also noticed that when someone calls you or when you start a call, the cabin fan speed is also turned down, so that the noise doesn't disturb your call? The Ford engineers have seriously added a lot of these small but genius features in the MME. Examples are, the windows accelerating and decelerating when going up an down, the automatic high beams coming on slowly instead of wham bam bright like in other cars. I'm sure there are more!

 

[Mach1E]

@Mach-Lee I think you and others might get a kick out of this reply by Copilot:

As I said in another thread, AI is great at searching and consolidating information. And you can see by this it does dynamic searching.

Great? I think this is a perfect example of how it’s terrible.

I could post a thread claiming literally anything and now AI will immediately use that as a source to answer my own question?

If AI used actual intelligence it wouldn’t put any weight into a single persons claim on a forum. It would also weight the validity of claims based on the source.

Especially considering we have 3 1/2 years of threads on this forum stating the exact opposite- that drive mode has no impact on efficiency. Whatcha going to do now AI? ?

I am curious about the blower speed thing, I’ll have to test it myself.

Since you are in “auto” mode for temperature though, I’m not sure that a lower blower speed actually would be more efficient as it will take longer to cool the cabin so the compressor will have to be on for longer (which uses much more electricity than the blower).

It’s probably just for noise more than efficiency.

 

[Adventureboy]

@Mach-Lee I think you and others might get a kick out of this reply by Copilot:

As I said in another thread, AI is great at searching and consolidating information. And you can see by this it does dynamic searching.

Big brother AI is watching..... everything...... waiting....... learning...... plotting...... building...... And they won't tell us how much they really know.
If your BlueCruise driver looks like this, get out.....

 

[MachSteve]

Great? I think this is a perfect example of how it’s terrible.

I could post a thread claiming literally anything and now AI will immediately use that as a source to answer my own question?

If AI used actual intelligence it wouldn’t put any weight into a single persons claim on a forum. It would also weight the validity of claims based on the source.

Especially considering we have 3 1/2 years of threads on this forum stating the exact opposite- that drive mode has no impact on efficiency. Whatcha going to do now AI? ?

I am curious about the blower speed thing, I’ll have to test it myself.

Since you are in “auto” mode for temperature though, I’m not sure that a lower blower speed actually would be more efficient as it will take longer to cool the cabin so the compressor will have to be on for longer (which uses much more electricity than the blower).

It’s probably just for noise more than efficiency.

I would have to agree with you, why would share the post like you mentioned anyone can type anything. STRANGE!

 

[Mach1E]

... by a negligible amount.

My car (and probably most of yours) still has that glitch where it sometimes switches to Engage shortly after starting. When I switch it back to Whisper, I've recently been noticing that the cabin air conditioning blower gets slightly quieter. Meaning, it's reducing its speed slightly, even though the only thing I've changed is the drive mode.

I thought maybe this was just another aspect of the Engage bug. But I finally tested my theory today. Got in the car after work. Air is on auto-3, recirc on, 67° target. I turned off the radio. Then I switched to Whisper and it immediately got quieter. Switched back to Engage and it got louder. I also tried Unbridled, it seems to me to be the same blower speed scaling as Engage.

IN SUMMARY:
When the auto-blower is at higher end speeds and the cabin is otherwise quiet, you will hear the AC "working harder" in Engage or Unbridled than it does in Whisper. So Whisper is not only quieter, but ever so slightly more efficient since it keeps occupants less comfortable.

I submitted audio feedback to @Ford Motor Company as I think it's a strange choice to do this but not document it anywhere. I can't believe it took me more than four years to figure this out. Efficiency be damned, I think I'll be driving in Unbridled during summer heat from now on.

I tested this out in my 2021 a few times. No change in blower speed in different drive modes.

Could be a bug? Or something with profiles?

 

[ChrisO]

One of the reasons I posted what Copilot answered, is in another thread where I posted what Copilot said @Mach-Lee that it was learning, when in fact it just searched and came up with @Mach-Lee ’s answer.

I wanted to show what it is really doing. Searching, consolidating, but it isn’t thinking or making real judgments. Given only one source it will “believe “ it. Given multiple sources it will most likely pick the what is said the most.

Currently AI is way over hyped, with many people not understanding its limitations. Already people have been fired when management thought all they needed was AI and the had to either hire them back or some consultants.

It can a great research tool, but only for someone that knows how to filter out the incorrect information.

 

[macchiaz-o]

Since you are in “auto” mode for temperature though, I’m not sure that a lower blower speed actually would be more efficient as it will take longer to cool the cabin so the compressor will have to be on for longer (which uses much more electricity than the blower).

It’s probably just for noise more than efficiency.

I thought the car's HVAC compressor was variable speed. Is it not?

I tested this out in my 2021 a few times. No change in blower speed in different drive modes.

Could be a bug? Or something with profiles?

I only have one profile. I wasn't using remote start, either. Hmm. Yeah maybe a bug.

Were you starting from a heat soaked car? I park outside at work, giant lot no shade anywhere nearby.

 

[Ravensfan1996]

Have you also noticed that when someone calls you or when you start a call, the cabin fan speed is also turned down, so that the noise doesn't disturb your call? The Ford engineers have seriously added a lot of these small but genius features in the MME. Examples are, the windows accelerating and decelerating when going up an down, the automatic high beams coming on slowly instead of wham bam bright like in other cars. I'm sure there are more!

I believe that is a setting in the car, you can turn that on or off.

 

[MellowJohnny]

Here's the thing about agentic AI agents like ChatGPT and Copilot - they are based on Large Language Models which must be trained on data sets. The free version of ChatGPT does not "know" anything past September 2021, and the latest paid model "stops" in Sept. 2024. For Copilot I think it's sometime in 2023.

So to fill in the blanks (because training models is expensive), the latest agentic AI models "mix" what is has learned from its training with recent "search results" style information - we call it Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).

Seems Copilot has taken its "RAG" result and acted like it was the Gospel truth even though it hasn't actually "learned" about it in the traditional LLM sense, it's just taken essentially a search result and presented it as if it was "learned" information.

Not a fan....

 

[MachEJoe]

Have you also noticed that when someone calls you or when you start a call, the cabin fan speed is also turned down, so that the noise doesn't disturb your call? The Ford engineers have seriously added a lot of these small but genius features in the MME. Examples are, the windows accelerating and decelerating when going up an down, the automatic high beams coming on slowly instead of wham bam bright like in other cars. I'm sure there are more!

Everytime I get a call I think my car just died suddenly.
Just like how the low battery warning from my phone makes me think my HVB just pooped the bed.
Everytime.

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