Please help,
Just purchased a 2021 Corsa F Elite Nav Premium.
The heating panel is a manual AC (2knobs) which I’m sure wasn’t standard! My question is can I swap out the control panel with an electronic climate control panel, which are available on EBay, they seem to be ‘plug & play’ obviously the 10” TFT screen is in situ! So is the tech already on the tft to upgrade the heating control panel !
Thanks in advance!
Climate control panel switch!!
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peskdale61
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2025 1:46 pm
I bought my 2021 Corsa-e Elite Nav a few months ago. With modern car design going heavily towards touch screen controls for everything, it was a relief to find the climate control still had physical knobs and buttons in the Corsa.
My car has the three-knob electronic panel with the digital fan speed and temperature display. As nice as this is, the one thing this panel does seem to lack is buttons to control the direction of airflow - this is exclusively controlled by the infotainment touch screen. Worse, it's on a menu only available by pressing the physical "menu" button on the control panel, and not from simply touching the temperature display on the touchscreen.
I'm not a fan of this, as it results in a lot of extra steps to change these all important airflow settings, and ultimately it's a distraction whilst driving. So, I thought I'd take a crack at a downgrade to the "inferior" two-knob manual version.
The good news is this (mostly) just works. I removed the old panel from the center console, unplugged the single cable in the back, and plugged in the replacement panel. Turned the car on, and all seemed well.
I was very worried that the system would get confused by the swap, as the knobs behave differently on the two panels. The three-knob electronic panel has free-spinning incremental knobs, whereas the two-knob manual panel is more "analogue" with a fixed range. As it turns out, this wasn't a problem at all - the climate control immediately turned on to match the physical settings on the panel.
All buttons and knobs work on the panel function as one would expect. Even better, unit temperature and fan speed still show on the infotainment touch screen. You can't change them on the screen, which makes sense, so the physical panel is now the only way to control the climate system. I suspect this also means the remote preconditioning via app would no longer work either - at least not without physically setting the temperature and fan the night before. I haven't tested this yet, but I rarely use this feature so not a huge problem for me.
Now for the bad news... despite all of the above, there does seem to be one side-effect which is a bit of a dealbreaker and needs further investigation. With the replacement climate panel connected, the infortainment buttons under the touch screen stop working. The touch screen itself still works, but I'm unable to switch between audio/nav/apps with the buttons underneath. External triggers still work - so things like reversing camera and AA/Carplay still switch the output as expected.
My suspicion is that some background service is expecting the old panel, and is preventing the other physical controls to work. Indeed, I am able to hot-swap the panels with the car still switched on, and as soon as I plug the old panel back in, the infotainment buttons start working. Possibly there is a simple fix with some NAC re-coding... I'm ordering some parts to find out. But for now I've had to revert to the three-knob panel, as not being able to access vehicle status and settings (especially on the electric model) is problematic.
I appreciate this doesn't fully answer OP's specific question as to if an upgrade from the two-knob manual to the three-knob electronic panel would work... however from the above I would be inclined to say the upgrade is possible. However, expect some similar bugginess with the infortainment if the car wasn't spec'd with it originally. It's quite possible the original owner of OP's car was of the same opinion as myself when it comes to physical heating controls, hence the mismatch of panel to the car spec.
My car has the three-knob electronic panel with the digital fan speed and temperature display. As nice as this is, the one thing this panel does seem to lack is buttons to control the direction of airflow - this is exclusively controlled by the infotainment touch screen. Worse, it's on a menu only available by pressing the physical "menu" button on the control panel, and not from simply touching the temperature display on the touchscreen.
I'm not a fan of this, as it results in a lot of extra steps to change these all important airflow settings, and ultimately it's a distraction whilst driving. So, I thought I'd take a crack at a downgrade to the "inferior" two-knob manual version.
The good news is this (mostly) just works. I removed the old panel from the center console, unplugged the single cable in the back, and plugged in the replacement panel. Turned the car on, and all seemed well.
I was very worried that the system would get confused by the swap, as the knobs behave differently on the two panels. The three-knob electronic panel has free-spinning incremental knobs, whereas the two-knob manual panel is more "analogue" with a fixed range. As it turns out, this wasn't a problem at all - the climate control immediately turned on to match the physical settings on the panel.
All buttons and knobs work on the panel function as one would expect. Even better, unit temperature and fan speed still show on the infotainment touch screen. You can't change them on the screen, which makes sense, so the physical panel is now the only way to control the climate system. I suspect this also means the remote preconditioning via app would no longer work either - at least not without physically setting the temperature and fan the night before. I haven't tested this yet, but I rarely use this feature so not a huge problem for me.
Now for the bad news... despite all of the above, there does seem to be one side-effect which is a bit of a dealbreaker and needs further investigation. With the replacement climate panel connected, the infortainment buttons under the touch screen stop working. The touch screen itself still works, but I'm unable to switch between audio/nav/apps with the buttons underneath. External triggers still work - so things like reversing camera and AA/Carplay still switch the output as expected.
My suspicion is that some background service is expecting the old panel, and is preventing the other physical controls to work. Indeed, I am able to hot-swap the panels with the car still switched on, and as soon as I plug the old panel back in, the infotainment buttons start working. Possibly there is a simple fix with some NAC re-coding... I'm ordering some parts to find out. But for now I've had to revert to the three-knob panel, as not being able to access vehicle status and settings (especially on the electric model) is problematic.
I appreciate this doesn't fully answer OP's specific question as to if an upgrade from the two-knob manual to the three-knob electronic panel would work... however from the above I would be inclined to say the upgrade is possible. However, expect some similar bugginess with the infortainment if the car wasn't spec'd with it originally. It's quite possible the original owner of OP's car was of the same opinion as myself when it comes to physical heating controls, hence the mismatch of panel to the car spec.
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