A few ways to keep your Prius cool in the summer

My suggestion is not to worry about it, besides keeping an eye on engine compartment fluids. There is no lack of summer heat here in southern AZ, 110 degree highs are pretty normal. The Prius does great in that environment.

 

One of the really neat things I like about this car, for relatively short stops I have left the car in Ready with the climate control on AC/Auto and lock the door with the mechanical key. Interior is still cool upon return.

 

I second that. In Tucson, AZ, we do try to get about six or seven cars under any tree in a parking lot, use the windshield cover and buy white cars. Other than that we just turn on the ac, watch the mpg plummet and live through the summer at 112 degrees. Whatever we can do so we can touch the steering wheel when we get in the car is helpful.

 

For those of you who want to keep the interior cool in very hot sun...
I made my own sunshades for both windshield and hatch glass that install OUTSIDE of the car. They are made from a reflective bubble-wrap type insulation that sells in Lowes (called Reflectix), cut to custom-fit to the shape of the glass. I made them folding from 3 parts attached together with a little gap by heavy duty clear tape. The gap is then covered by aluminum tape. These shades a kept in place by blue masking tape (my car is blue). I tried magnets but after a season use they have scratched the paint a little. So Painters tape it is, cheap looking but works great.
This (especially if you leave side windows cracked a little) keeps the car MUCH cooler then a regular sunshade.

Thanks,
- Alex

 

I sometimes buy Ice in bulk to bury my vehicle in ice to "get it's temperature down" .
Also a cold water enema helps.

This isn't a horse, or a human...I kind of think Toyota has taken into account that their vehicles will be driven in hot summer environments.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of these things are good ideas all the time....checking coolant level etc, etc...

But it's a machine, designed and built to operate at high temperatures and also be operated in high temperatures.

Just use some common sense if you are driving up a mountain on the hottest day of the year.

Otherwise, a car wash is NOT a bubble bath and your car isn't going to get heat stroke.

 

double post

 

There is a long-standing joke here that you learn to drive your car in the Summer using only two fingers. That is about as funny as having to run your home air conditioning for a couple hours during the winter so you can enjoy your fireplace. It is the desert after all.

 

After moving to southern AZ four years ago, I installed light-colored leather steering wheel covers on our two Prius to cover the black plastic steering wheel rims. That works really well.

 

I never saw much proof of white cars being cooler, but here is old NYTimes article on school buses with white tops. The idea started in California they say...gotta love 'em.

 

Just yesterday I put in an order with the Heatshield Store for one of their windshield covers. Same one that is listed in the PriusChat Store, but I couldn't figure out how to place an order there. That should help keep the direct solar heating off the center console, and maybe even reduce the interior temperature a bit. You can't do much about that when the free-air temperature is 109 F outside.

 

My opinion is interior/exterior color of car makes very minimal difference on interior temperature. The outside temperature of the paint (if you put your hand on the hood) is much higher on dark cars.

This study in Wisconsin agrees: Does a dark-colored car heat up more in the sun than a light-colored car? | The Why Files


"The external color does not significantly affect how much the inside of a car heats up in the sun, says Sanford Klein, director of the UW-Madison Solar Energy Laboratory and professor of mechanical engineering.
Cars warm up in the sun due to the greenhouse effect: Sunlight passing through the windows into the car is mostly absorbed by interior surfaces, then radiated back to the air as heat. That heat does not pass back through the glass, which is an effective insulator for radiation, and the inside temperature can rise above the outside temperature.
“The visible radiation that we see is transparent to the glass but thermal radiation is not and gets trapped by the glass,” Klein says. “As a consequence, the inside of the car will warm because radiation is coming in but not much is going back out.”
The interior color may make a small difference in internal temperature, he says, because darker internal surfaces will absorb slightly more solar energy than light ones do.
Tinted glass will have an even more pronounced effect, he says, by reducing how much solar radiation enters the vehicle in the first place."

 

That's probably correct. It's consistent with most other posts we have seen here. But why do some cars have white roofs? Is it just style? I think some mini-Coopers and some SUV have white roofs.