Joining the Prius owners with my 2006 Prius

Hi everyone. I just purchased a Japanese import 2006 Prius here in New Zealand. It's done 123,000km (76,000 miles) and I love it so far I previously had a little 1991 Madza AZ3 1.5l Auto so this is quite a step up, haha. I'm a gadget nut, so all the electrical systems in the Prius appeal to me.

It doesn't have an Aux Input, Cruise Control or Smart Key System, which all seemed like quite cool ideas, but it does have a reversing camera and an EV mode button

I tried a few times to disable the reversing beep but didn't have any luck. I thought I read somewhere that it can't be done with Euro/Japanese models, so perhaps that's why.

I didn't find the car loud or uncomfortable, which I'd read about many times. Phew Since I only had a 1.5l before as well, this seems powerful enough for me. It's fun to drive, especially when it's silent (sneaky sneaky ) Although there is a rattle in the front of the car, which stops only while I press and hold part of the dash down firmly. I pressed down say, hmm, half way between the speed display and the MDF.

The buttons on the right hand side of the MDF (which I think are the nav features?) just turn the MDF to black with white lines down it. Not that I could use the GPS feature here. I ordered a mount for my Galaxy S2 from ProClip to use as my GPS.

That should arrive tomorrow, and then the day after I'm having an Aux / iPod feature added (the first model on this page About Sound Ltd 12V Experts ) and an FM Band Expander so I pick up radio here.

The tyres on there seem fairly new-ish. I don't know much about tyres to be honest but they are "Yokohama DNA ECOS ES300 185/65 r15 88s".

Finally I asked Toyota to check if this car needs a new waterpump, under the recall. So they'll get back to me on that one.

Just thought I'd introduce myself, it's great to be here!

 

Thanks guys Love your signature there by the way

Ah that's very interesting about adding cruise control. I just did a search online and see a few around, so I'll order one of those today.

 

Had the band expander + aux / ipod cables installed today. The guy also showed me that by pressing the Disc button, my Prius has a hard drive built in to store music. Interesting!

So far I'm pretty impressed with how often the electric engine kicks in. Several times even when I was doing over 50km/h the petrol engine turned off for a while. Cool

 

I noticed last night the orange car logo with a key inside was flashing, even hours after I'd used the car. I looked online and found it's the immobilizer, and it's meant to flash like that. Phew! I wonder though, does an alarm and immobilizer come built in as standard? When I got insurance I told them it didn't have an alarm, as I assumed it didn't.

Thanks Wow, that's a lot to read through that link. I've read some so far, and will come back for more. Yesterday I got what converts to 48mpg, which was from a mixture of highway and city driving (maybe 1/3 highway, 2/3 city). That's at the top end of the scale you wrote shows people are living a hybrid like a normal car, so it's probably a good start for me

Luckily the Toyota dealer here didn't hesitate at all when I said the vehicle is an import. They said it'll all be free of charge. I think because NZ is so small, while we do have a lot of NZ new cars, there's a high percentage of imports here too.

There's restrictions and such here, but probably not as strict as importing to the US. Generally anything older than 2005 doesn't meet our emissions rule, so can't be imported.

Ah that's awesome you have SmartKey. It surely makes the car feel even more futuristic, just walking up the car and pressing start, no need to press or insert a key anywhere. EV mode? It's an interesting addition, but since the reason it was left out of the US version is because the battery might not last long enough for US law requirements with EV mode, it makes me wonder if I should use it often? Or maybe it's just Toyota being overly safe with battery usage in the US. It doesn't sound like many Prius owners anywhere have had to replace their batteries.

 

Ah, thanks for that. I'll give it a test today To turn it off, I assume I just put my key fob into the slot?

 

No alarm, just tested it That's ok, from the sound of it they aren't popular targets and I read somewhere they can't even be hot wired because they lack a starter motor.