Has anyone living in a hot climate put thermal windows on the car.
either full replacement or thermal layer to the originals?

 

Not sure what you mean by thermal windows, but a previous owner had my car's windows tinted, which is something I usually do to my cars here in Florida. Car still gets hot when parked in the sun, but it IS cooler inside driving around than cars without the tint. The AC has no trouble getting the car comfortable pretty quickly.

Whoever installed it was very good, as the rear windows is a single piece of tint film, no seams, which means they used heat to form it to the compound curves of the glass, and it has not bubbled.

 

Ceramic tint does a very good job at keeping the interior cooler.