A "park" "not to park" inquiry

What?!

Putting it in park is a needless extra step that accomplishes nothing. That's not opinion. It is fact. Where did we lose you? If you WANT to go through the process of also pressing park, then all the power to you. It accomplishes nothing more than hitting the power button.

Uh, yeah. It works safely and efficiently (unless your definition of efficient includes pressing fewer buttons to do the same task)... and also is needless and accomplishes nothing. Still not opinion. And still fact.

But then I am egocentric, so all this is likely just moot.

 

I know a few reasons Toyota put the Park button on the dashboard. Maybe so you can listen to the radio while parked without holding your foot on the brake and without running your 12v battery down? Myself, I usually just hit the Start button to shutdown if I'm toward the end of a tank of gas and know my mpg. At the beginning of a tank and a little past half-full, I hit the park button, check the mpg on the mfd, and then power off.

Also, to avoid runaway cars and lawsuits, I can guarantee you Toyota provided the park button and instructions for using it in the manual so that when you just hit the Stop button too fast and get out and the car runs away and plows through a bunch of kids Toyota won't be at fault.

 

OUCH:boink:

 

If that's true, why do so many Prius owners here have the Nav system?? I was looking at a Garmin with my wife at Costco this afternoon.... I told her I don't need one because I never get lost. Wish I had my camera to take a picture of the face she made!

 

It puts the car in park, which does accomplish something. So, yes, it is your opinion, not fact, and inaccurate at that.

Exactly. It accomplishes less (by your definition), which is the goal for many of us, that is, to put the car in park, but not to turn it off.

See above. It does not accomplish the same thing, and it is not the same task. Still opinion, and still not fact.

And is your sarcasm really necessary here, or can we just have a discussion about this?

 

Oooh. Priuschat is your third choice? And you're assuming all men are the same? Nasty. You can find those secret compartments yourself, chick. I'm sorry I was nice to you earlier. I take it back.

 

Sonny Jim,
The subject at hand as stated in the original post is if it is true that . . .

"Thou shalt push in the park button before turning off the Prius, otherwise thou will be smolt (?) with a dead hybrid battery." . . .

. . . not whether or not the park button has any other logical purpose.

Once again. Pushing the park button prior to turning off the Prius accomplishes absolutely nothing more than if you were to just turn off the Prius. - Well, um . . . maybe it DOES serve a purpose after all . . . much like turning a light on and off thirteen times or so allows someone with Obsessive-compulsive disorder to finally leave a room.

 

More sarcasm and close-mindedness. That's really not helpful. Neither is quoting posts and responding to them out of context. Additionally, you never even responded to my post to you. Curious.

The thread took several turns; I addressed a response at one of the turns, to two of the posts, one of which was yours. As we are not limited to responding to the original post, I addressed both of those posts. It was then that the question of whether using the park button at all served any purpose was raised. It is to that which I was responding when you quoted my post.

Finally, equating putting the car into park before turning it off to an OCD condition is ridiculous, but I am fairly convinced now that any reasonable, foundation-based discourse here is unlikely, so this will be my last post on the thread. We have hijacked CyberPrius' thread (for which I have already apologized to her), so if you feel compelled to continue, please feel free to PM me to keep it off the boards. I have no interest in a flame war.

 

I too have a routine.
Hit the power button
push park brake
remove the fob from the dashboard (no SKS) You know it's off if the fob comes out.
undo seatbelt
open door
get out
close door
press lock button on fob
listen for lock sound
walk away

If I forget the last step I get back in the car and do it all again.
I have better things to do than individually closing down every system on the car individually.

The trouble with asking directions of a woman is the answer will be how not to get there rather than how to get there.

 

I think we're all correct here !!! (what a lawyer answer..... hehe) The manual does "insist" you put it in park, and I also believe it is in that tone so you dont get out having forgotten to power down , and your Prius goes for a ride without you.

for the first six months or so, I established a routine also, stop, set the brake, push park, power down. Now I just power down, I dont use the E brake everytime and I dont push "P".

 

I enjoy reading your contributions, cyberprius, and I hope you don't mind my sense of humor getting the best of me every once in a while!

I hit the PARK button before hitting the POWER button to turn my Prius off. It makes me feel more complete so I will keep doing it. A couple of times I have forgotten to hit PARK and went straight to POWER with the same result as my regular routine. Maybe it makes me feel better because Toyota put a sticker on my dash saying "Push P to park." If Toyota says it then I MUST do it.

Are you a fan of Condoleezza Rice? I saw her in person for the first time yesterday as she was getting into an armored SUV (the armored Prii are on backorder until next year). She is a smart and awesome lady.

BTW, we only grab our shoes and run out the door to get a big tool so we can bring more force to solve the problem.

 

No chance of that, there is already a whole new set and another set on stand-by ready for as soon as one of those is worked out.

 

I don't believe anyone in this thread has claimed that the Park button is useless. The Park button severs the very real purpose of keeping the car from rolling while the engine is still engaged, keeping in mind that on a Prius an engaged engine is just a control state, and not mechanical. This is exactly what you want when waiting with the radio and A/C running. In park, the ICE can run as needed to charge the batteries, while the parking pawl keeps the car stationary. So, obviously, the Park button is good for that.

The original post was about needing to push the Park button before powering down, which is a different question than whether the Park button has any use. It is an immutable statement of fact that the Park button is not needed for powering down, as the power down sequence includes the park sequence as a proper subset, including the same visual indication that park has engaged. It is simply not needed, but permissible if desired.

I do something similar with radios. I am a pilot, and with older aircraft there is a chance that an electrical transient at power up can fry the radios. It used to be true with cars too. Remember that "Pop!" you'd get with some radios when you powered up? The risk was and is small, but it's one of those things you hear about and eventually it becomes gospel. It became standard practice to always shut down the radios after use, just to make sure they were off before the next power up. Newer electrical systems are much more tolerant, with soft starts and highly sophisticated voltage regulation, but still I turn off radios. It's not completely useless, as I don't enjoy having a radio blasting at me when I power up, but that's mostly a rationalization. It's mostly my OCD kicking in, but I can live with that. I like that extra step. It provides me with a sense of order. If you enjoy pushing the Park button, keep doing it.

Tom

 

After a year with an SKS-equipped Prius and not hitting P before powering off, I am now trying to get into the habit of pressing P first. Why?

I've *lost count* of the number of times I hit the Power button, started getting out, and felt the car hunker down against the parking brake, still trying to creep forward in D.

Good thing I always use parking brakes (which is an offshoot of having seen people put their car in Park, get out, and have it roll away and crash, with the shifter still in Park when you catch up to the thing on foot). The mechanism that holds an automatic transmission car in place (the park pawl) is plenty strong enough to hold the car once engaged... these failures come up when it just fails to engage in the first place, and the car gets away before the driver can react. Or, in my case, when you don't push the Power button firmly enough and hop out before you notice that the car didn't turn off.

I hadn't thought of it as being partly SKS related until reading this thread, though. Certainly the lack of "engine running" cues in a Prius is a major factor, but since with SKS you don't have a fob in the dash to remove, there's no cue there either.

The irony is that my Prius came with a little sticker on the dash next to the gear selector reminding you to put it in P before powering off. I already had read so much about the car that I had no intention of pushing P separately, and immediately peeled that sticker off. Now I'm starting to see a little wisdom there after all!

 

What if you don't hit park hard enough? Then you have the same problem, although you do have the back stop of needing to hit the power button too. Why not make sure your Prius powers off before you take your foot off the brake? It's takes no more steps than hitting park and then power, and it's certainly more certain.

Tom

 

Oh my goodness! This is just a variation of the "power down" argument I've been having with my brothers since the days of 1962 Ramblers (my first, and maybe worst, used car). I have always turned off the radio, windshield wipers, heat and air since I started driving. They didn't and still don't. They were very derisive, those brothers of mine.

So, of course I hit "Park" on the Prius when I'm ready to park. And now that I know Park is optional in the Prius, I'll hesitate, but continue to do it on principle. Because I can...

 

Here I was, happily living in oblivion and pressing "P" before turning the car off. Now I find out I can do without that! I figure that can now save a cumulative 1.3682756 hours of my life by skipping the "Park" step over the time I own the car....WooHoo!

Seriously, I checked this out and agree with Evan - if you look closely, the green LED on the "P" button turns on briefly when you turn the car off with the power button. I also leave the running and fog lights on when I power down because I always drive with them on day or night - I figure if the Prius can remember to do this stuff then I don't have to. And fortunately it works every time! :clap2:

This explains why Prius Jill sends me on wild goose chases to Home Depots in New Jersey...

I may need to find a new co-pilot, like Kristy Lee Cook. I'll take her wherever she wants to go....