We took delivery last month on our 2023 X-Dynamic SE 110 with three-zone climate. My wife noticed not long after we got it that while the passenger-side rear vent seemed to work fine and blow cool air, the driver-side rear vent was only blowing (weakly) hot air regardless of fan, vent, or damper settings. I've also noticed that even with the vents open and fan all the way up, the driver's side front vents don't seem to consistently blow air that matches the fan and temperature settings. Sometimes they seem to be working fine and other times not, but weather has been mild enough I hadn't really noticed either way.

My wife did some googling and determined there may be an issue with the 'blend door actuator' which fits my limited understanding of how multi-zone climate control works, but the behavior in the rear vents seems strange considering that I would think it's a single zone that works the same instead of a difference between driver / passenger side. It makes me wonder if we technically have four zone climate, just the two rear zones are slaved together. Either way, it took a bit of time to diagnose if there was actually an issue or just HVAC doing its thing autonomously and we were able to confirm it definitely seems way off this weekend. I called our Service Department and they are saying December 20th is the first date available for service - I told them I'm not going into the dead of winter with HVAC messed up in my brand new car and they are going to try to call me back.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues? I am just going to be annoyed if it's an intermittent issue they can't diagnose when I drop the vehicle off but then keeps acting up for us on a drive.

 

I think the blend door actuator problem was resolved way before 2023 model years (more a 2020 build issue), but anything is possible.

I would bet it's a software issue... When I first got my 2020, I could not get the HVAC fan to blow more than a very low (trickle of air) speed setting in auto, in any situation in hot weather or cold weather, and the Pivi setting was set to "powerful and forceful" (or whatever it is called). LR dealer thought I had a blend door issue, it was not the case, anyway LR dealer updated software and it did fix the issue. So I'd bet it's software. (I do have 4 zone climate so a bit different than your system)

 

Just an update on this, I dropped the Defender off on Monday for service and they were able to look at it today.

Once they removed the cover under the dash the tech found that one of the connectors to the blend system was adrift. Once they plugged it in everything worked perfectly.

Very relieved this was something simple and easy to fix and didn't require parts. Surprised it made it through initial QA / QC, but those things happen and you can't catch everything. Maybe it was plugged in but not fully seated, and the shipping / initial vibrations worked the connector loose. Either way.