Agreed... I've never had to drive one, but it looks intensely claustrophobic... And if you're tall it seems awful. But maybe if you're small and you want to feel like your car is hugging you?
Correct... Prius V center console is same design as Gen2 and Gen 4 so you can remove it and open up a huge amount of space. In Gen 3 if you remove the center console you'd have to tear apart the dash and flying buttress and fabricate a new dash in that area, likely have to move the shifter elsewhere to. I'd love to do this work if anyone wants to hire me to do it though. It'd be super fun to get paid to do it!
Gen 3 is claustrophobic, unless you're a small person... TRD does make a push button shifter that plugs in to your existing shifter plugs and that type of shifter would be easy to mount elsewhere so you could remove the flying buttress entirely and really expand the amount of space available upfront.
Yes, you really should try a night or two in some hybrid now BEFORE you buy to see if this is a satisfactory solution for you. I've always consider the camping aspect of a hybrid to be a strong plus of the technology but after having to do it for a couple of nights after an extended power outage at home during the summer heat and humidity, there's no way I would voluntarily camp or live in one now. Needing a/c and the windows rolled up (security+mosquitos), the ICE would cycle around 2-3 minutes every 10ish minutes. Enough to wake me up several times during the night even with ear plugs used. YMMV
