Warning: Gen III front seats are a torture device...

11 inches driver's seat travel. 1 1/2 inches steering wheel telescope. Bit tough to reach the wheel.

I don't have problems with the 3rd gen seat. Find one post where I said the 3rd gen seat itself is bad. Good luck.

 

my mistake, i thought you were getting ready to trade it in.

 

Can't think of one new car I'd buy these days even if i could afford it. Would only buy used, no need to bother.

You have the seatback reclined slightly? or is it more bolt upright? Upload a photo?

 

I had a 2000 Volvo V70 with very comfortable seats; my 2001 Avalon has comfy seats. I really didn't have a prob with the 2010 Prius III seats or my new Persona. I think they are acceptably comfortable, even on trips. I'm easy I guess!

 

Mentioned you didn't test drive it in Jan '12.


2010 Prices Paid and Details | Page 69 | PriusChat

 

I guess it's a matter of perspective. We traded in our 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid for our Prius. We had added padded seat pads to the Civic and the seats were still horrid. They have to be the most uncomfortable seats I've ever had in a car. We sat in the Prius and said "Aaaaahhhh...."

 

The OP seems to have drifted away, my question is...What do "you" consider a comfortable position, is your lower back against the seat, as well as your shoulders and head, if not "your" slouching and no seat will help.
Yes my opinion, the lumbar adjustment just meets the lower range of usability and and the seats are adequate.

 

In my 2012 Gen III model 2, the driver’s seat also has a height adjustment along with the backward, forward, and recline adjustments; plus the steering tilt and telescope adjustments. I had no trouble finding the right combination of these to achieve good comfort. Are you sure you have tried all the possible combinations before you dump the car? Of course everyone is different and if it truly is that bad for you, by all means get a car that is comfortable for you. You will still be losing a lot of money on the exchange though.

 

Maybe if you're a T-Rex

 

Completely agree. Worst seats of any car I've owned. Only car I get out of after long drive where I'm stiff and sore.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the Prius seats.

I noticed immediately after driving it on long commutes. Missed on swapping out for a Prius 4 with the power seats by a couple days. Dealer told me he could have done a swap in 30 days

The power seats are much more comfortable and infinitely adjustable though I have not driven them for any period of time. It may be that even the power seats, having the same basic design, are also a problem.

Not sure what the point of "they work for me" posters. If the seats cause a real problem for a large proportion of users there is something wrong with the seat design.

 

If you drive off the lot with seats that are uncomfortable to you, than that is your fault, not the fault of everyone else who owns the car and is fine with the seats.

There are options. You don't have to buy a Prius, or a Prius without power seats.

Prius seems to sell pretty well even with the current seats.

 

I don't have a problem with the seat, but I agree with everything else OP said about the car, especially the part about driving a washer/dryer and being cheaply built. I'm not a picky person, pretty easy to please actually, but I regret buying the Prius.

 

As a former Volvo owner and fellow cyclist, I appreciate your dilemma. I traded a Volvo S80 T6 to buy my Gen II Prius to support my extraordinary commute. Going from a Volvo to a Prius is an exploration of extremes in terms of seating comfort. You're comparing a perfectly sublime seat to what I'd classify as a pretty lousy seat. I now drive a Gen III and can only say that the seats are marginally better than the Gen II (which is damnation with faint praise).

I transitioned from the Volvo to my Prius because I was seeking a better transportation appliance. The Prius has been all that and more. I have 220K on my Gen II currently and it really has been an extraordinary transportation appliance albeit devoid of creature comforts starting with the seating. My Gen II cost less than $900 in repairs over 220K while averaging 49.1 mpg.

I traded the Volvo at 154K: the first car I ever traded in my life because I definitely did NOT want to know the guy who wound up with this car. Despite that my Volvo looked like the day it was made at 154K, the car had virtually no resale value. I bought the car for $45K, and Volvo dealers would pay me $5K IF I BOUGHT ANOTHER ONE as part of a Volvo-sponsored owner support program. If I didn't buy another Volvo the dealer wasn't interested in mine because as the dealer explained, "the word is out on this car". The Volvo cost $34K in repairs while averaging 18 mpg on premium fuel. (Keep in mind that Volvo paid for the repairs for the first 50K under warranty)

When I hit 200K in my Gen II, I did some quick math and discovered that the cost differential in fuel alone comparing my Volvo S80 to my Prius reflected a net savings over 200K totaling $27K. I paid $26.6K for the Prius new; the car basically paid for itself.

Not a day goes by behind the wheel of my Prius that don't I find myself longing for those Volvo seats, but I dare say that I paid a significant premium every day I sat in them, and in retrospect I think dealership technicians probably enjoyed them more than I did.

 

The Prius was not built to stroke your ego or make your life worth living. It was built to get you from point A to point B in reasonable comfort and safety, while using the least amount of fuel. I hate to break it to folks, but a car is an appliance, and this appliance does exactly what it was designed to do. Amazingly for a “cheaply built” car, they seem to be incredibly reliable; I have never seen one on a tow truck.

Is it just me or did a bunch of people not test drive one before they purchased one. If you test drove one and it seemed “cheaply built” or the seats felt like “torture devices”, and you hated the car why did you buy it?

I don’t see where the seats cause a major problem for the vast majority of Prius owners. Toyota certainly wouldn’t want to purposely make their customers uncomfortable or they wouldn’t be able to sell cars.

It seems to me that there are some folks who purchased a Prius, and for whatever reason they don’t like the car, so they are looking for any reason to justify their displeasure.

 

Don't have a problem with the seats at all. Of course, at 5'7", I'm probably pretty easy to please. Also have taken it on trips from Ohio to NYC and DC and never had a problem. I do adjust the height, wheel and seat back tilt from time to time on long trips so maybe that helps. But I don't see it as a "cheap car" built just for good mileage. I admit I'd like to see a little better design in some interior areas but my biggest complaint is with the electronics, i.e., the GPS and blue tooth phone system. For a country known for their advanced electronics, I can't imagine why I have to jump through verbal hoops to get the car to make a damn phone call. But at least the seats are comfortable

 

^This.^ What are these people doing when they test drive the car? Fiddling with the radio? Talking to the salesperson?

 

After one experience, I get along fine with the base gen 3 seats. I am a 64 year old, somewhat worn in the body, retired farmer, and my normal dress style is pretty casual "Joe 6 pack", farm product logo baseball cap, Tee shirt, blue jeans and work boots. The Prius base seats used to make my bum hurt until I experimented on one early trip. A few miles down the road, my left bum started to ache. I stopped and moved my wallet from the left R pocket to the right R pocket, soon my right bum started to ache. I stopped again and put my wallet in a front pocket. The rest of the 700 mile trip was comfortable.
Since that "experiment", the wallet goes in a front pocket when I walk to the Prius, and I have no problem with the base cloth seats.

 

Issue is that test drives are typically fairly brief -- discomfort on a long trip takes ownership to discover.

 

So do you buy mattresses by spending the night at Sears?

 

I'm good for about 30 minutes in the Prius driving seat. Anything more than that my tail bone gets uncomfortable. My commute is only 17 miles one way so I avoid the discomfort.