My current daily vehicle does a pretty fine job of figuring out what mode I want for HVAC.
Sometimes, I do mash the defroster button when weather commands warm/dry air on the windshield and it's easy enough to find that with muscle memory.
Otherwise, in normal seasonal weather, it works well and I don't change modes or temperature. Windows up, down, hot, cold, sunny, cloudy, dark, whatever -- it all works about the same.
Previously, I drove an older version of the same vehicle. It also worked well until it forgot how to figure out what day it was due to a software issue. After that, it kind of had a mind of its own.
(Now, a sane person would ask why that would have to do anything to do with HVAC performance.
It gathered the current date, time, and position from GPS, the bearing from the nav's compass, and the solar intensity from a sensor on th dashboard.
A bit of math and/or an almanac lookup later, and it also knows the position and angle of the sun relative to the car.
So it knows when sunlight is streaming on through the driver's window, and adjusts automatically to compensate by providing relatively cool air from the dash vents only on that side. It also knows not to do this on a cloudy day as well as other things that seem obvious once a person starts thinking about them.
Which is a magical kind of automation -- until the calendar is off by both years and months because Honda broke the clock and its understanding of the sun broke with it: https://didhondafixtheclocks.com/ )
