Are the front seats power adjustable on the V? I don't see it on the standard or option list, but most cars in this price range have them? Marty D
No, at least not on the Canadian version. You reach down and lift up on a bar. On the plus side, the rear seats are also adjustable, with a bar for each. There is an electric adjust for the driver's lumbar support.
It is much faster and more practical manual adjustable seats than power button ones. One quick lift of the side bar and the seats is fully recline; how log would it take with electric motor? Besides that 12V battery has enough strain on it; kids would drain that battery in 30min. :-/ with power adjustable seats.
I was surprised there is no power seat option on the v but you can get them in the Liftback. I suppose they had to draw the line somewhere to keep the cost from going into Lexus territory. The one advantage I can see with power seats would be the ability to make minor adjustments while on the go. I've never personally owned a vehicle with power seats but when I have driven a car/truck with power seats in the past it was nice to be able to make these little adjustments while driving to find the perfect seat position. Height and lumbar are the only things I can safely change while on the move with the Prius v seats. As it is when I make adjustments to seat-back angle and fore/aft position while parked I notice no matter how hard I try, the way I sit changes ever so slightly when I am actually driving so it is a longer process to find a comfortable seat setup with manual seats. By the way, does anyone else notice when adjusting seat height, lowering causes the seat to tilt backwards slightly while raising the seat tilts it forward?
The last thing we did before my wife bought her Prius V/ATP in August was to have the salesman verify that power seats were not available on special order. The lack of a power/memory driver seat would be a bigger problem if I drove the Prius v more than once every 2-4 weeks for five miles or so when I wash and fuel it. I can't seem to get very comfortable in either the driver or passenger seat and I'm a normally proportioned 6 foot, 180 pound guy. I'm not hard to please - we've owned several vehicles made by Toyota with power/memory seats that I found to be very comfortable. My 5 foot wife is fine with the driver seat in the Prius v and that is all that matters since she is essentially the sole driver. It would be a different story if we used the Prius v for trips and I had to drive or ride in it for very long. The main issue with the Prius v seats seems to be the seat shape and padding. I just turned in a fun-to-drive, tiny Mercedes/Smart rental car after driving it for a full month while my primary car was being repaired (rear ended while stopped at a traffic light by an idiot using his phone) and can tell you that the driver and passenger seats in the Smart Fortwo are wonderfully comfortable and vastly superior to the seats in the Prius v. (The Smart has better seat heaters too.) That the driver seat in the Prius v tilts back when lowered helps a bit but I could likely get more comfortable if it had power seats. I especially dislike the "bicycle pump" height adjustment - the "wheel" manual height adjustment on my wife's recently departed Camry was so much easier to adjust. We would have gladly have spent more to have power/memory seats and the many other features that are standard or available on the Prius v/+ sold in other parts of the world but Toyota seems to have "dumbed down" the Prius v they sell in the U.S. and Canada.
The lack of a power-seat option is a drawback for me. We have them in our '07 RAV4 and our '12 Camry hybrid and we really like them. I only wish Toyota would have included a multiple-memory function like we had in our '00 Volvo S70 and also in our '97 Volvo 850 (included with cloth seats, even). I test-drove a Ford C-MAX SEL hybrid with all the trimmings the other day and found its leather power driver seat very comfortable -- more comfortable than our Toyota seats because of its more generous thigh support. (Why does Toyota persist in designing seats for the American market that are better suited for shorter Japanese drivers?)
