I live in the Florida keys and am forced to take heated seats and heated steering. Here the sun takes care of that for us, often you need a towel on the seat and oven mitts just to drive after an hour of the car being parked in the sun. Two Prius's ago Toyota offered a solar panel on the roof that charged the battery and ran the fan to keep air circulating and not let the interior reach oven temperatures. Why was this discontinued. Wth, Toyota heated steering and seats in the tropics? help keep us cool.
Solar roof: Discontinued because of problems with this option. Heated seats: The Prius is a global car, built in a nation whose climate is a lot cooler than it is in the keys. Treat them like chopsticks. If you don't use them? Don't use them. Options these days are a package deal. Look at it as a feature that might be more valuable when it comes time to sell your car. Now....see if you can PM a mod and get this thread moved out of the newbie forum and into the g4 sub-forum. Good Luck!
I agree - here, a lot of manufacturers, if you want the Luxury (?hmmm?) version, you're forced to take rough-riding fat wheels, as well as stuff like sunroofs, heated seats, leather, heated wheel - all of which I don't want. Leather isn't much good in tropics, cloth is far better, same with sunroofs, heated seats. But forced to take them because you want some useful stuff. Within a couple of days of buying my VOLVO 2 decades ago which came with leather seats, I had sheepskin seat-covers installed on the front seats. But then, I guess they don't want to get to the stage where you pick from 5 engines, 3 rear axles, 4 transmissions - then start of other aspects like if we want reversing lights!!! like in the '50s.
The SOLAR Roof - I checked a Gen 3 with it - I believe it didn't charge the battery at all. It only provided power for circulation circulation fans through the car while parked. Here, cars with SOLAR Roof also had remote A/C - could select it on the remote from a distance and it would run for a couple of minutes to cool the car down.
