Featured Here’s Why The 2021 Toyota Prius Has Become An Undesirable Electrified Car

Re NA market being a profit center for Toyota. If you like at the various plugins… primarily RAV4 Prime and the new Lexus NX… you pay more, but you can’t get a fully spec’ed out vehicle as with the non-plugin versions. There’s no RAV4 Limited Prime, for instance. With the NX, certain options like Mark Levinson audio is unavailable.

I don’t really understand this. I can kinda see the point with the RAV4, to avoid the press that, “fully spec’ed you’re looking at a whopping $$$,” but that doesn’t make sense for a luxury make like Lexus.

we used to own a Mercedes GLK. In their wisdom, in the US power folding mirrors wasn’t offered, but was in Canada, nor was ventilated seats, but was in Jamaica.

 

It is likely weight concerns. A hybrid system adds weight, moreso with a PHEV. Allowing all the extra features available to the ICE could push the curb weight into a heavier bin for emission and safety regulations. Then that fully loaded hybrid model will need to be tested on its own at high expense, and will very likely have its own, lower, efficiency rating.

Part of the reason the Prius Eco has a higher rating is because Toyota cut weight enough to get into a lighter bin, which meant easier test parameters. Getting the solar roof in Europe for the Prius PHEV means giving up many luxury features because of the roof's weight.

 

The gen 2 Prius radio interface is pretty poor. Its a mixture of steering wheel buttons, button next to screen and then screen menu's. I have a 2002 Corolla and its has one button for AM/FM and then 1 to 6 station presets buttons which are easy to feel in the dark without taking your eyes off the road ... the humble Corolla button solution works so much better.

 

I’m pretty pleased with Gen4. I just cycle through the presets using the steering wheel controls. Six station presets would be very limiting. Chrysler back in the day had a good solution where each button stored two presets, depending on whether you press it once or quickly. press it twice.

 

My only fault with the recent Toyota radio interface is that the scan button is so far from the driver. I don't stream from my phone or use any of the extra cost services like Sirus so when I run out of an area where station A's signal is usable, I don't know the local stations so I need to scan for my station preference. I like the skip through the presets buttons on the steering wheel for local use or the Audio touch screen for the same.

 

You can do scan from the steering wheel. Just keep the button held down when pressing. Radio will scan to the next station available.

 

Yes Prius 2 has them on steering wheel .. but 10-12 buttons all close together with little differentiation. Been driving it for many years and I still have to look and that's OK ... but not as easy to use as the Corolla.

 

Thanks, I presume that is a true band scan and not an only presets scan. Does it stop at the next station and you just press again for the next etc. Oh, and which button? The rightmost of the next station buttons?

 

Correct, not a presets scan. So if you press the steering wheel preset next/previous button, it’ll go to the next/previous preset. But if you hold down the preset next/previous button it’ll do a scan to the immediate next/previous station it can tune to.