Leather Seats Require a Lot of Air Conditioner Use?

I won't buy a daily driver with leather unless it is perforated with seat coolers / fans. I made an exception for my S2000 - but it's certainly not a daily driver.

Some GM vehicles used to have a lap vent located below the steering column that you could direct toward the offending area.

 

Goo point about the perforations on the seating surface!
Luckily I ordered perforated Clazzio's last spring and they were fine with the summer heat.

One minor downside- the OEM seat heaters weren't as effective with the Clazzio's installed- the leather is fairly heavy duty and there is a layer of foam on them too.

 

Hey, I grew up as a kid riding in the back of a 1967 Mustang with no air conditioning and vinyl seats.

Which probably explains a lot.

But on long, hot drives? My brother and I would literally peel ourselves off the seats in the back. Having bonded on a DNA level with the seats.

Does Leather mean you NEED to use the AC more?

Not necessarily.

If I wanted leather...and this was a problem, I might invest $16.99 or less, into one of the many seat inserts that can act as a ventilating barrier. Take em out when the worst of Summer heat has passed.

 

Very affluent people have climate controlled seating surfaces in the back seat. The chauffeur can provide Palm Springs Desert type heat to Arctic Expedition Icing, depending on outside weather conditions or needs.

 

This is why I prefer cloth to either plastic or dead animal skins.

 

Yeah, but not using the air conditioning to it's max on muggy days kind of defeats the purpose of having air conditioning.

I suspect you could of kept yourself in a humidity free and luxurious coolness and NOT of experienced any great loss of economy.

On days when I need the air conditioning,- I just use it. I've never been shocked by any DRASTIC loss of economy.

 

There's an old joke about how to tell that a person doesn't live in Las Vegas by the car he drives. One of those reasons is that the car has leather seats. I've been to Las Vegas in the dead of summer too many times, and it was definitely more comfortable with fabric seats than leather seats. Also, as I got older, I decided that is wasn't worth driving my Prius without using the A/C on hot days. I've paid my dues and will live out the rest of my life with the most comfort that I can easily afford.

Mike

 

Moderate A/C use is fine. When it gets warm, set the A/C to dehumidify and cool the interior to a comfortable level. You don't have to frost the windows to get comfort, even in the hottest weather. I do the same with heat in Winter. Dress for the weather and adjust climate inside car to a reasonable level.

My MPG doesn't suffer too much in any season, unless the temperatures go to extreme low levels in Winter. That doesn't happen as often as it use to.

 

I really like my $35 San's Club sheepskins.

My $35 Sam's Club "genuine" sheepskin seat covers. | PriusChat

They are warm in the Winter and cool in the Summer.

 

wouldn't it be cool if someone had aftermarket a/c seat covers?

 

An interesting thing about this discussion is that I think it brings up a reality about what we are taught or programmed to believe.

Some things that are considered, the entry level, base or frugal, I think are just victims of perception. Again, I remember back to the 70's and 80's, when I was a kid. Many of the vehicles my parents bought were sold with Vinyl being the entry level upholstery...the first step upgrade was cloth. The vinyl was crappy, it got hot, sticky and split and cracked. So cloth seats were considered far superior. Leather was still the benchmark for the highest "luxury" but it pretty much went Vinyl-Cloth....and Leather if the vehicle was upscale enough to warrant it. I still remember my parents being proud of the new Corolla Station wagon they bought with "luxurious" cloth interior. Well it was luxurious, especially if compared to the vinyl seats of the 1967 Mustang.

That is why I'm actually more than willing to like my "entry level" cloth seats. There are real benefits to cloth seats.

The other "economical" or some would say "cheap" thing I actually like? Plastic Dashboards.
People will complain about hard plastics being used in abundance in a dash board. But I like it. It's durable, IMO looks nice, and usually very easy to keep clean. I wipe down the Prius dash maybe once every 6 weeks with either Meguiars Interior Detailer spray, or 303 Aerospace Protectant. The rest of the time as a result of "cheap" hard plastics, I can keep the entire interior looking great by just using a Swiffer Sweeper insert or a duster to occasionally pick up dust.

Thank god, I evidently have horrible taste and thus are not easily tempted by those things that are told to me to be the finer things in life.

 

When I was a kid, my DAD bought a brand spanking new '61 Chevy.


The dashboard was ALL steel with sharp protruding moldings. The came the steel padded dash wrapped in vinyl with a thin layer of foam plastic. Either of these would have resulted in a bad injury from even a 5 mph crash.

Plastic, in the form of HDPE apparently is soft and crushable. I rather that the plastic dash crushed than my face and my skull. A crash onto a solid immovable dashboard also means a sudden stop. The brain inside the skull continues to move forward from inertia. This is what has caused most of the brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'll take plastic any day.

 

It's kind of funny how we've gone full circle on the seating surfaces with Toyota.
Now?
The entry level is cloth and the upgraded seats are plastic....unless you go aftermarket and get better plastic or sometimes a for-real dead critter.

I tend to go with base trims, so I guess I'm "stuck" with the cloth, which is probably the best seating surface going these days - especially when you toss something like a dead sheep skin on top.
Most people don't buy their options a la cart these days, so I'm not going to pay five thousand dollars in a higher trim level for a bunch of options that I don't want to get the one option that I'm looking for.

As always:
YMMV

 

I don't like leather or leather "like" seats for all the reasons being discussed.
If you wear shorts in the summer time........OUCH !!!

I think car makers make a huge marketing blunder if they don't offer cloth as an option on their "premium" models.

I'm presently shopping for a "road" car.
Two years ago, Ford had terrible choices for the interiors of the Fusion Hybrids.
Now it looks like you can get a top of the line Fusion Hybrid and still get cloth seats.
If that turns out to be true........big applause for Ford and probably a sale too.

 

The AC really doesn't hurt MPG too much unless you're stuck in gridlock traffic, or so i've found. It doesn't affect mpg on my commute at all since they changed it to an electric A/C compressor on the gen3. Sure, it depletes the battery quicker, but it takes a few minutes to do so. I was sitting at Sonic drive in with the AC set to 70 degrees on auto, ordered some food and ate half of it before i felt the engine turn on. I looked over and saw that the HV battery was fully depleted. I was actually really surprised it lasted that long before the engine kicked in.

So it really depends on your commute and if you're in the right half of the eco range alot, with your engine running to recharge the pack. It doesn't effect MPG too much. If you're doing pure city driving, it will probably take a good hit.

Double post

 

How is not using the A/C being frugal? Are you getting a monthly bill from your local electric provider when using your A/C?

 

Sounds like a solution.

From what I recall, the Gen 3 Prius AC is pretty much the state of the art in efficiency and a big step forward from what is in other cars. I would't worry much about using it for comfort. Whenever its hot I always use it to protect battery life.