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What I meant was that I think there is some kind of ballast in the system. So the compressor comes on, chills the coolant, then goes off again - like a home fridge. You won't notice the actual switch coming on or off, or the air temperature changing - to you, it's ON all the time but the compressor is not actually running the entire time.
This is only a supposition tho based on a few bits of reading on forums and such.
Personally I would rather have electric compressors along with electric water pump and PAS
The new Prius has no belts at all, not even a cambelt - for the reasons you describe. Mine only has one on the water pump. You've got as much electrical power as you need at any given time, so you might as well take advantage of it.
Some mechanical aircon systems do this already (the old peugeot 306 one does) in that the magnetic clutch releases during hard acceleration to free up engine power
Even really old cars have this - my crappy old 94 Passat had, if you had one with AC which I didn't. It was built into the injector pump.