Drive modes

If PWR was doing something more than just changing pedal response, I'd suspect Toyota's PR dept would be all over it, would not be content with vague euphemisms.

I'm surprised by the amount of real estate these buttons take up. I put our 3rd gen back in "normal" about 5 years back, never bothered with it since.

 

My traction control was activated when I accidentally spun the front wheels in water. I heard (and felt) a very loud THUNK... BAM... and I though something broke. (I was in Eco mode at the time.)



Merged.

I'm also one of those dummies that accidentally hit the "P" button while driving. Don't know how I did that, but thankfully nothing happened. Just a polite beep beep or three... and a text appeared on the screen to advise me to pull my head out of my arse!

Update:

Just to satisfy my curiosity, yesterday afternoon I went for a drive and I continually cycled through the driving modes from Eco to Normal to Power... about six times... pausing only about 2 seconds between changes, while doing 50 mph.

No problems whatsoever.

When coming out of Eco (while accelerating), I felt the gas pedal "ease up" a bit and become less stiff.

 

Actually I would go 1 step further and say the manual is not really useful or well written. The car is really easy to use, the manual makes it sound and look, even by the sheer size of it, like an incredibly complicated thing.
They want to save their legal asses, fine, make a 1000 pages manual full of whatever stuff you need to save your nice person.
But please for the love of us buyers, make a compact, to the point 1-200 pages max summary of what is really necessary to know in a car like the Prius.
When was the last time we needed to know how to use the turn indicators?
I just use them tied and know already that they are where they should and if you press them lightly it will blink 3 times to notify lane change. Do I need graphics and 2-3 pages of drawings and safety legal jargon for that?

Ps: I never given a second thought about changing the modes at any speed. Because it was clear to me it is just a software mapping and the car already beeps and messages enough of you do something not allowed. And I expect that from any 21st century new vehicle. So suffice to say that I changed modes even at 100+ mph or more.

 

I've owned quite a few cars, and I agree the new Prius owners manual is probably the worst one I've ever seen.

If you just want to get in it and drive, the quick reference manual is really all you need.

 

The user's manual from my 2002 Polo from VW was nothing better. And written really small.
I wonder what a BMW 7 user's manual looks like...

 

What about all the travelers who rent a Prius for the first time? They don't know nothin' from nothin'.
I wonder if the rental company leaves the quick reference guide laying on the front seat. I'll ask my friend who has worked at Hertz for 25 years.

When I first opened the 800 page owners manual, I was a bit overwhelmed. I thought: "This is ridiculous!" The way it is written makes the car seem way too over complicated. I just got in there, and started pressing buttons. 3 months later, and I still haven't read the Navigation instruction manual. (I don't know how to work most of the features.)

I just want to simply drive the darn car... not take a course in Physics and Computer Technology!

 

I went from a Canon 5D (Digital Single Lens Reflex) to 5DIII. With the former the menu was all on one long scroll, and there wasn't that much; I was capable of more-or-less remembering the lot. With the new camera, there's main topics across the top of screen, and each has about four sub-screens, and each of those has a plethora of items. I'm totally lost, I struggle just remembering how to navigate, never mind find what I'm looking for.

 

One thing is to have access, when desired, to the nitty gritty, another is to flood the average user with so many options he doesn't manage to remember what each one does, let alone understand if he really needs them in the first place on a daily basis. This is bad design.
It's like with Windows vs OS X - the former gives you access in at least 3 different ways to the same function and down often to a very detailed level an average user should not be concerned with (except for the fact that defragmenting was always hidden and never scheduled to run under idle, rendering HDD of non-tech users wondering why their system after 6 months was grinding to a halt). OS X instead seems "simple" when in fact it is a UNIX with a simplified (at least at the "beginning") interface that makes common task easy and intuitive.
Manuals should be written in the same way. Want legalese? put it there, but all at the end and refer to it and make a huge one at the beginning on the first page to say, hey, I am writing less the first 200 pages, but there are all the save-my-company-nice person stuff in the end where the average user doesn't really care.... Also because if something goes all the way down to what is written as a disclaimer in the user's manual, it means alas that somebody got injured really bad or died which means the car is designed really poorly in the first place.

 

UK handbooks are greatly condensed now, only 200 pages for the car and nav all in one.
































Merged.




















The Prius is one of the easiest cars to drive, the gen 4 is obviously geared towards the new users and doesn't need a manual. When you get in you're greeted with a message on the MFD telling you how to start it and all you need to know, or be told, is that you need to put your foot on the brake to put it in drive and that the manual parking brake is a foot operated pedal. From there on all the features are trial and error, errors being accompanied by beeps, you can't break anything unless you crash it.

 

But without reading the manual you wouldn't know that a gentle touch will activate them 3 times, and that you can configure them to blink 5 or 7 times.

 

Another unnecessary feature and it's hard to judge what a gentle touch is as the actual switch is very light anyhow.

 

Actually I figured that out the first 5 mins driving the car...
The manual is actually helpful, to a point because I need a frigging dealer to change such a minor thing, to tell me I can change that to 5 or 7 repetitions. Clearly Toyota wants to help their dealers ripping customer off for setting things like this in option you can access with an OBDII device. Which the regular Joe will never buy.

 

I think the purpose of the feature is to avoid keeping the blinker running after the lane has been changed. Not a problem due to switch resistance. It is not a convenience feature, rather a functional one.
I see a lot of people changing lane and forgetting the blinker once they finished, because the steering wheel didn't rotate enough to automatically turn it off.

 

To each their own, but I disagree. I love this feature.

 

me too. I changed mine to 7 blinks.

 

I prefer 5

 

I'll raise you 20!!

(Hell, nobody in California even uses a blinker!)

 

My lane keep assist reminds me to use my blinker