Over the course of long drives, maintaining the delicate balance of the air conditioner can be tricky. This is especially true if it's cold or rainy outside, since the that causes the inside of the windshield to fog up. Alternating between face vent for comfort and defroster for being able to see stuff is a careful process, like maintaining the pH in a saltwater aquarium. But when you are worrying about comfort, I think that people underestimate the floor vents in their car. The conventional wisdom is to use the face-level vents to control the climate in the automobile because you feel it first. Also, people don't generally wear shoes on their face. I am here to tell you that the floor vents are not to be ignored.
This is especially true if you are driving with flip-flops. If you have warm air blowing over flip-flop shod feet it's akin to putting on socks fresh out of the dryer for the entire trip. That itself is worth consideration. It also slows down the rate at which the windshield will fog up on the inside, since it takes longer for the air to reach the windshield (or as they say in England, windscreen).
My AC has like 12 divisions on the temperature dial and the standard 4 for fan, plus the on/off switch for the compressor. That is sometimes not enough gradations to get the ideal temperature in the car; I could talk about heat transfer here, but that would be a discussion involving Watts and Navier-Stokes, and nobody wants that. But here's the thing: you can use the floor vents to divert some face vent air as like a half step between temperatures! It's brilliant, especially if you're wearing shoes. If you're wearing flip-flops, it's just delightful.
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