Fairly frequently, the passenger side climate controls including the temp display on the dash turn off and the controls on the center display grey out. When this occurs, any ability to change any settings is completely disabled.

Sometimes, if I then kick the driver side temp up or down a few degrees, the passenger side re-enables but will then disable once again if I change the temp back to the usual setting.

My Lexus dealership can't seem to pinpoint or replicate the problem and have done a complete system firmware update.

Has anyone else experienced this? At first I thought it was a feature wherein if there isn't anyone in the passenger seat, it disables the climate control on that side but there doesn't seem to be any consistency to it to indicate that this would be the case.

It seems to work just fine when someone else is sitting in the passenger seat and it isn't a huge issue but admittedly it is troubling to see in a fairly new car.

 

Sound like the Split Flow (S-Flow) feature is engaged and working as designed.

Hard button in the climate array in 2016/17, buried in the Climate screen after.
Reduces A/C distribution when you drive alone and responds to a passenger when
the Supplemental Inflatable Restraint (Air Bag) turns on the passenger side.

The mnemonic I use is: "Think Green", when the S-Flow light is on you are saving
energy and money. Can be defeated but I think I read that it defaults back on under
some temp and driving conditions.

 

Thank you for answering this! I went out and checked on this and turns out you were 100% right. I will claim both my own fault for not reading the owner's manual where I would have most likely found this out on my own and a bit of fault for my dealership spending so much time attempting to diagnose what, in fact, turned out to be a feature!

Thank you again!

 

Glad to help, I'm a Lexus Technology Specialist and enjoy both in person and on line symptom decoding!

When the A/C is on "Auto" it will send warm air to the floor vents in the winter (warm air rises, right?) and
cold air to the dash vents in the summer. The ventilated seats pick up floor level air and percolate it up
through the seats...to your seat... to cool you. To enhance the effect in very hot weather try tapping the
HVAC Mode button just once to change the Auto system's choice of dash only to dash and floor.
Now you will have cool air on your feet and seat!