Am soon to order my xb. Having recently moved to hot Florida, I'm a practical type who believes the Polar White to be far less of a solar collector than the darker shades. Is this a non-issue or can this former Wyomingite ever find comfort in his new found paradise?

 

IMO from living in FL for my whole life, any damn car gets hot. I've been in white cars and black cars, both are hot. I would get the color you want, and just crank the AC as soon as u get in after it's been sitting outside during the day at work etc. Drop the windows and Max AC and your good to go :D

 

My suggestion, get the Polar White cause it will look SWEET in that beautiful Florida sun...

 

What about those exterior window trim pieces, do they keep the rain out?

 

The rubber trim? I've never had a prob with water getting in my Echo, i imagine the xB would be the same...

 

Polar White is a great color, obviously I think so (IMHO), but you should get the color you really want, and figure it may be a little hotter when you first get it, but you will still enjoy getting in the color you really want. Out here on the Mojave Desert, there are lots of black cars. Go with the color you like best.

 

Ditto.

 

I vote PW because it's safer against accidents and it is cooler and it will look clean for longer than five minutes at a time.

Black is a wonderful color but it's not an easy color to live with: the slightest mark on black sticks out terribly. The dark xB's are consistantly rear ended more often than yellow and white. (there's one instance of a white xB getting plowed to dozens of BOP and blacks and cherries and even TCMs.

Black heats up faster in Fl sun and cools down inside more slowly because while parked the interior -will- get hotter than that of a white car. This a natural law of reception and emission of infrared energy. It may not make a huge diff if you like to roll down all the windows to vent the heat and speed the AC process,
.

White is easy to touch up and black is one of the hardest, esp. when the black is a metallic. Beautiful colors are sometimes impractical. The sun here in So. Fl is intense and drivers do not see black cars at nighttime. I see dark xB's at night only by their punk running lights.

safety and practicality first is a good motto for a daily driver

 

That's why my husband just had a Polar White XB in his body shop that was totalled. Hit in the rear. P;lus I saw a woman in a white one in a fender bender and she was hit from behind. So, in Florida also known as the me first state nobody is safe from driving morons.

I do dislike the darker color xb's. Get white and tint the windows asap!!

 

to me, no matter what color, it's still too hot in the xB here in FL.
my top half is silver, so i dunno. bust a sweats though.

good luck.

 

I'm in AL, which though a bit north of FL isn't that much cooler. Temps here have been in the mid to high 90's all summer, and with the humidity, heat indices have hovered around the 110-115 range. I've owned a black car with gray leather seats for the past 10 years. It's no hotter than the silver car I used to own with fabric seats. Once you reach a certain point, hot is hot and it's hard to discern any difference. I think that the (felt) difference between a black or a white xB would be negligible.

I say get the color you like. Even if you get a white one, you're still going to have to crank the air. The xB is a "greenhouse" on wheels with all the glass. And remember, the interior is dark gray no matter what color paint you get.

When/if we order an xB, it'll be TCM or CM because those are the colors we like, not because it'll make the vehicle any cooler. Just gotta crank the A/C!!!

 

Jamo, you're a guy with a lot of practical good sense and helpful advice. Thanks for your constant good vibes.

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Say....Maybe many xBs don't cool as they should. That's been discussed in numerous prior threads.

Mine is only five months old, an RS2. We were discussing in another thread the air vent tempertures that might be gotten by a thermometer.

Although this is not a "test" of any certain nature (*The TSB* sets rules for that I hear), I took the probe of a wired, LCD thermometer and plunked it into the center right eyball about six inches and took a drive on a low-nineties day here last week.

The temperature probe registered as low as 46 degrees. Even allowing for some probable error in the cheap thermometer (five bucks at KMart I think it was), That's pretty darned good.

At any rate of cool I don't often need to crank my car's AC except when its been in the sun baking and then I can turn and must turn down the cool after say 15 minutes, when the interior surfaces have about all equalized down to room temps.

In other words: xBs older than ?? months but still in the warranty period, that don't seem to cool so efficiently as mine,... might benefit by doing the TSB test yourselves on your cars to see if you're in the ballpark.

hope this is a minor help to anyone reading.

I recall the old days of freon that made visible frost in the air stream on cold days. Have not seen this in the xB yet.

 

Could you tell my wife that???



I too remember the days of "recharging" my A/C and having it blow "frost" out of the vents for weeks later! It'd turn you into a popsicle in no time! Ahhhh, the good 'ol days...

 

I had a BCP xB, and I have a IIP xA. Both can get hot, but the IIP xA is a tad bit cooler.

My Super White Prius, however, is a lot cooler. And, as SciFly said, is stays cleaner, longer, then the darker colors.

 

Get the PW. I live in Tampa and the color does reflect heat. Also tint ypur windows, and park in the shade as much as possible

 

i say that to myself everytime that i go out into my driveway....but i would black out your windows so that it heat stays out somewhat....worked on mine...

 

I have a 2005 XB bop in california and the air conditioner works great!!