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The results are in, and I love my icewater-cooled seat cover! I've driven about 1000mi in hot and humid weather during this long weekend, and it's great. I can drive for eight hours and feel fresh instead of exhausted, and ice consumption is very reasonable.
I cut an old wool blanket so it would slide over the headrest and cover the back of the seat. There's 14' of vinyl tubing sewn on to it, and a washer fluid pump running to a cooler of ice water. The fact that it only modifies the seatback means you can use it in addition to all the other techniques for keeping cool, which gives it a huge efficiency advantage over cabin A/C.
The only pump I could get in time for my trip was a washer fluid pump. It works fine. I run the pump for four seconds to fill the seat cover with cold water, then I let it sit until my back no longer feels cool. That could be anywhere from one minute to ten minutes, depending on sun, wind, and humidity.
The only time it I was uncomfortably hot was in a construction zone near Chicago where traffic was moving 0-20mph, so having the window down was only intermittently helpful. It was 99F and 65% RH in the car, and the ice water wasn't enough to keep me comfortable, so I had to sweat it out until I got back up to speed. I can only imagine how sweltering it would have been without the ice water seat cover.
I used about 25lbs of ice on a very hot day during the 8 hour trip to Indiana, 10lbs on the 6hr trip to Wisconsin (didn't turn the system on until I got to Chicago), and 20lbs on the way back from Wisconsin.
If you don't mind fussing with ice, or if you have a long trip coming up, I highly recommend this mod.
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