overhead console trap door?

I see there is a little spring-loaded compartment in the roof console that opens to reveal... nothing, that I can see. I assume this is for the moon roof or something in the higher models that we don't have.

Has anyone come up with a good use for this since it doesn't seem to have any purpose in the II trim level car? We thought at first that it might be a good place to store sunglasses, but they don't fit at all. Just trying to be creative here....

Thanks for any idears.

I think it's for sunglasses...although the owners manual says not to store them there since they might melt!

Supposed to be for sunglasses, but its more for reading glasses.

Works great for a spare pack of smokes.

My sunglasses fit perfectly. But not my Oakley Blade style sunglasses. Just normal aviator styled ones. I also leave a spare pen in there.

Yup, after seeing these posts I just went out and tried again and I see they do fit nicely. I'm going to have to think a little more before pressing the ol' enter key! Thanks guys.

radio

I have two sets of Oakleys and they don't fit.

My Maui Jim's don't fit, but they fit fine in the bottle holder in the door.

I keep my sunglasses in that storage compartment. I started doing that in the 2004 Prius, and have continued in the new one. The only downside is that when it is really hot out (like all summer here in Austin), the sunglasses get HOT!

I store a small flashlight and a pen in there

I put my garage door opener in there until I wire one up to one of the button blanks.

Careful with the pen in there. When it get really hot the pen might leak and that would not be good.

I think this sunglass compartment is identical to and in the same location as a repair/modification Toyota made to the Lexus in 2004-2006. At that time they had to drop Lexus Link - the Toyota version of Onstar because it was analog rather than digital. They replaced the control panel with the sunglass holder. When the system stopped functioning the dealer removed the controls and installed the sunglass compartment. Maybe there was or is a plan to offer an updated version of Toyota/Lexus link in the Prius in the future.

That's where my garage door opener is housed.

My sunglasses don't fit, so I use it for my mailbox key. Can't come up with anything else to stick in there.

Correct:
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...fety-connect-availability-pricing-toyota.html

I wish mine would fit in there, but it's too big so I have to keep it down on the console shelf.

Someday I'm hoping we'll upgrade our garage door opener so I can use the HomeLink buttons...

Mine was almost too big, but I manager to fit it in there. I don't believe my Prius II has the home-link buttons like most cars do. Oh well, I'll keep it oldschool.

Prius II and Prius III don't have the homelink with autodim mirror. The IV is the first one to offer it.