I was looking at the forums and heard of the humidity sensor up next to the camera. Does anyone know what it does?
It measures the inside humidity. It is a part of the heating/cooling system. It can turn on the "air conditioning" on low if the humidity is too high even if you have it "off".
It's part of the automatic climate control. I honestly don't know why all climate controls don't have a humidity sensor but I guess the Prius has one to better fine tune the use of the A/C compressor. (e.g. the Camry and Avalon Hybrids have humidity sensors but not their gasoline counterparts)
Almost. It's missing a GPS sun sensor that Lexus and Acura have (Those will automatically increase cooling on the side of the car that has more sunlight due to either a solar sensor or GPS software that tracks the location of the sun through the sky)
It hasn't been mentioned in a while but the Prime as well as the liftback have a feature called Smart Flow which senses whether the front and rear passenger seats are occupied, allowing it to avoid directing hot or cold air towards empty seats which wastes energy.
Sometimes newer isn't always better. This strikes me as overkill. When I am going more than a few blocks, I want the ENTIRE cabin to be heated or cooled......even if nobody is sitting in that space.
I would agree it would be overkill if it had no appreciable effect on energy use. I don't have the data so I have no way to prove that it is a worthwhile feature but just instinctively it seems like it would save enough energy to make the feature worth its while. Either way if you don't want it on all the time Smart Flow can be turned on and off with a push of a button. Or in models with the 11.6 inch screen its one tap on the display to turn it on or off.
