On “Prius Cheers & Jeers”
Date: July 13, 2007 14:58:58
Subj: Prius Cheers and Jeers
Owning a 2004 Prius myself, I thought I'd add or comment on your Cheers & Jeers page. Specifically, just the Jeers.
1) Rear window wiper. Maybe it's a testament to the aerodynamics, but I find when the car is in motion, *nothing* hits the rear windshield. Unfortunately, that means I'm constantly turning the rear wiper switch on and off, to avoid the dry scraping noise when I'm in motion and nothing hits the rear windshield, and to clean the window when I come to a stop.
2) Cruise control. Why does it need to be turned on or off at all? When you haven't hit the little "set" button, there's no difference between it's being "on" vs. "off". I don't get it.
For reference, my Dodge minivan behaves the same way -- cruise control is off when the car first starts, a light comes on when you turn it "on", but there's no indicator showing "engaged" or not. It may be a standard these days, but I hate it.
Also, I find that the cruise control is rather slow to react to changes. If I hit a hill, my speed will drop a good 5MPH before the cruise control picks up. (The aforementioned minivan is much more quick to react. It also has the nice feature of, if you're going downhill, automatically downshifting to maintain speed. Probably not quite possible in a CVT like the Prius.)
3) Spedometer. Why have a dedicated dashboard button to switch between MPH/KPH? Seems like a waste to me. Maybe if I went back and forth across the Canadian border a lot... But speaking of the metric system, why is there not an option to change the temperature readouts from F to C?
4) Trip A/Trip B MPG displays. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it would be nice if it didn't automatically reset your MPG counter on every fill-up.
5) Odometer tenths. I've noticed on most legal documents, you are informed to not include the tenths. I don't know if that's the reason behind it or not, but there it is.
6) Reverse buzzer. Fortunately, I followed the Prius group on Yahoo for some time before I finally got my own Prius, and those who went before me had already discovered the dance to turn it off. It was one of the first things I did with my new car. (Second thing was to turn off the "buckle your seatbelt" beep.)
7) Temperature switch. I'd actually like a lot more "analog" buttons, especially, say, radio controls, rather than having to go through the display for everything. It is possible to set the temperature with a voice command, but it seems that rapidly tapping the buttons is quicker than waiting for the beep, speaking, and the confirmation. (Note that you can also hold down the steering wheel buttons to step through the temperature.)
8) "Max cold". I have not witnessed this; if my A/C is off, I still have a temperature display, until I go to Max Cold manually. It does seem like there are a lot of steps to go through if you just want to turn on the vent, without heating or cooling the air -- seems like that would produce less drag than opening a window.
9) The key. Yeah, nothing to add here. It does seem bigger than normal.
10) Fuel consumption screen. Never really bothered me; I guess I had already been conditioned to view time graphs getting older to the left.
11) Energy monitor screen, or "What is a bar worth?" No clue, really. :)
12) Displaying screens. The "Info" button on the steering wheel goes straight to the "Trip Info" screen (fuel consumption or energy monitor), without the extra step required pressing the "Info" button next to the display.
Also, if you have a slightly newer screen (I got one when I had the "Display Lockup" problem replaced -- thank goodness I got the extended warranty, otherwise the price the dealer quoted me to replace it was $4500), the steering wheel Info button will toggle the display between Fuel Consumption and Energy Montior.
13) There are *some* options, and there's also an ability to "switch users", but I don't know what settings are saved per-user. (It'd be nice if it would tie a user to a key to automate that a bit, but how would it know, if my wife and I were both in the car, whose key is in the driver's seat? When I drive alone, my key is in my backpack in the passenger's seat.)
14) Outside temperature display. No argument there. I think there are a lot of ways the display could be used and improved, like an always-present "status bar" that displayed things like the radio messages, inside/outside temperature, maybe current MPG. I don't like that the display is, in general, a "one-function-at-a-time" interface. It almost makes me wish it was used less, having a separate set of analog A/C and radio controls. Why do I have to push two buttons to change the radio station?
15) Ashtray. Never thought about it much, but I agree.
16) Lower back window. Yes, it gets dirty very quickly, and because of the spoiler, it's very hard to clean with your average gas station squeegee. I have found, though, that the spoiler seems to line up between the rear view mirror and most cars' headlights, which is nice when someone is riding your tail with their high-beams on.
17) Dashboard finish. Mine is covered with little bits of dust. I once tried to take a paper towel sprayed with Windex to it, and it made it worse -- the coarse texture tore the paper towel apart, and captured the fragments to add to the dirt.
18) Towing. Maybe I should've read the manual, but I spent 5 minutes trying to punch out that little circle before the guy offering to tow me suggested prying instead of punching.
19) CD player. I don't use mine much, to be honest, so I've never thought about the lack of pause. I do listen to audio books, though, and because of the lack of auxillary input or MP3-playback on the 2004 model, I have a cassette adapter (actually a "Digisette" - an MP3 player in the shape of a cassette), which does the job.
20-21) Nothing to add.
I'm surprised you didn't add another major annoyance: the display's "safety lockouts". If you have the navigation package, you can't use the system while the car's in motion. You also can't dial random phone numbers (only quick-dials that you have set up ahead of time), and when a call comes in, you aren't shown the phone number (just the name, *if* they're in your address book). Also, the radio message screen only shows "For safety, no message is displayed while driving", although messages that scroll in the call-letter area display fine (ironically, I find I have to stare at that longer to read a message, making that *more* dangerous than if it would just show me the full message all at once).
Also, why is it when it displays phone numbers, it doesn't format them? Would it have been that hard to add dashes? What's that, phone numbers aren't the same in all countries? Sounds like something that could be added to the spartan Options menus.
Despite the jeers, though, it's still my favorite car. :D
A paragraph from my response to “D.J.”:
Oh, you also mentioned some things related to the navigation package and the voice recognition package. I don't have either of those. So it's now my turn to say to you: Agreed! (I particularly liked that you noticed the unformatting of phone numbers.)
