the passenger seat in our 2015 hyundai sante fe sport is not power but the seat can manually adjust forward and backward and the back rest can be moved backward and forward. The seat cannot be moved up and down. It is way too low and it feels like sitting in a “pit”. The dealer said to sit on a pillow but when I sit on a pillow the air bag light will not go off (so the passenger air bag is not activated). If I sit on a book, the air bag light does go off but who wants to sit on a hard book all the time. Any ideas?? The air bag warning light does go off when I sit on the seat itself.
Ask the dealer if the 2015 Santa Fe has a power adjustable seat as an option, and if so see how much it would cost you to have that added. Alternately, there are a number of shops that specialize in customizing auto interiors and they may have an attractive seat option for you. The downside is that you would have to replace all the seats so they match.
If you’re comfortable sitting on the pillow then just do that. The airbag light will be on and the passenger airbag won’t deploy, but that’s no different than when you drove around in a car that didn’t have passenger airbags in the first place.
You might call a automotive handicap modification service or see if the local handicap council can help. But for petes sake did you not test drive this thing?
The Passenger side power seat is available in the Premium package on the base trim (standard with the turbo engine) which including the other equipment package required runs $4,650. Not sure how much a power seat from the dealer would cost.
I’ve modded seat mounts on older cars but odds are it would be near impossible to find a dealer or shop that would commit to any kind of modification due to the fact that the U.S. is lawsuit happy.
If someone crashes due to a tire blowout they could easily find a lawyer willing to blame it all on the seat modification.
If there’s a height difference between the manual and power seat which could solve the issue you then run into the cost factor. Odds are those seats are well into 4 figures.
You might consider checking with an auto upholstery shop. They may be willing to rip the seats out and modify the padding to gain some extra height.
I understand the feeling. My oldest son has a '96 Camaro and I feel like I’m rolling around in a pit while in that car; made even worse by the shoulder level door panels. Kind of feel like Bugs Bunny peeking out of his hole in the ground… 
You had to sit on a telephone book at grandma’s for Thanksgiving dinner and now you’re right back to where you started…Life does go in circles!!!
I’d take @Asemaster’s suggestion and check out if they have an optional power seat for the passenger side.
Yosemite
Make sure you consult a pro if you decide a diy seat modification. The seats are an important part of the car’s safety system. I don’t like those low ride feeling seats either, but it’s probably better to sit a little lower than you prefer if putting up with the inconvenience makes the ride safer for the passenger.
WalMart sells some nice, pretty thick, seat cushions with e faux leather top and antiskid bottom. I think they’re about $12… maybe a bit more. Try one. Keep the receipt and if it doesn’t do the trick, just return it.
I drove a rental Ford Fusion and had the exact same experience. I didn’t look under there, but seats used to be bolted to the floor, and they were pretty easy to take out. Now, with electric cables for airbag sensors and maybe seat heaters you can’t just lift them out, but someone did put them in, so there is a way. You need to find a way to create brackets to raise up the mounting points.
My wife bought a seat pad made for cars that raises her up a couple of inches and she likes it (she bought it at either Wal-Mart or Target). It’s nice in that it’s easy to move the pad to the driver’s seat or the passenger seat depending on where she’ll be sitting. The airbag lights behave themselves as well.
Either go with a seat pad or have the factory adjustable seat mechanism added. I wouldn’t do anything else.
This would take a decent amount of custom work, but you could score the 8-way seat base from the drivers side of a wrecked Santa Fe and replace the passenger seatbase with it. You’d need to cut new holes for the switches so you can relocate them from the left to the right side of the seat, otherwise you won’t be able to use them because of the center console. I would not recommend attempting this unless you have experience.
All good suggestions. You just have to get the seat out of it and see what the frame looks like and if the lift mechanism is already there for power and could do a manual adjustment like the old chryslers. If it were me I’d probably get the welder out and make a raised platform for it. Gotta be careful of the air bags though.