New Feature - Disables headlight disabler!!!

Veeeerrrrryyyy interesting!

 

its not disabling it, per se, the car is thinking the driver is still sitting in there and would turn the lights off if they wanted to.

 

It's a feature of the Prius.
The auto-off only works if you exit via the driver's door.
It will kill the 12 volt battery in a hurry though.
Don't know if it has to be the last door closed to work, I'll have to try it.
Enjoy....but beware. Jerry

 

I became aware of this last week. I wanted to check something in the car and climbed in on the passenger side. (it was closer) Hit the start button, wrote down what I wanted, turned it off and got out. As I was walking away I noticed the headlights on. Then I remembered reading about this on these forums.

Really flawed design, IMHO

Of course, if we had true automatic headlights we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Bob

 

OK, so I may be the happy recipient of a Prius because of this anomaly. My FIL would sit in the car while his wife got her hair done or shopped or whatever. 3 times when they went to leave the car would not start and they called the dealer who sent a wrecker to tow. It always started for them. She will not own a car that is that unreliable so they passed the car on to their daughter, my wife. BUT, if he is in the car with the remote the ICE should start before the battery runs down, No? Incidentally he did not know to try the remote directly into the slot on the dash. We never could figure exactly what was going on. He drove the car for nearly three years so he should know how to start it. Smile

Gene Lueg

 

If we had true automatic headlights I'd have something to complain about. I hate the Intrigue's--no off switch. How hard is it to just turn the lights off?

 

Hi Gene, welcome to PriusChat! :welcome:
If you're in the car with the headlights on and it's parked and the READY light is on, the ICE will start to charge the HV battery which charges the 12V battery.

If you're in the car with the headlights on and it's parked and the READY light is NOT on, the ICE will not start to charge the HV battery which charges the 12V battery, so the little 12V battery dies and you can't get to READY.

Solution: when you're sitting in the car, keep it in READY. Then you're always READY to go.

 

Hello Bill,

In a similar vein, I pulled into the driveway the other day, stopped to get mail from the mailbox, leaving the car on and Ready with the headlights on, smart key in my pocket. I then got cornered by a neighbor from across the street who talked for about half an hour. When I finally got away I discovered that the HV battery displayed three purple bars on the energy screen. I've never before seen purple bars. The ICE never started to recharge the HV battery. My question is, which of the above factors kept the ICE from starting? Thanks for any insight on this.

Paul

 

Yup!!!!

 

Here's a question for those who think this is a design flaw: How would you want it to work? What if you wanted to keep the headlights on, turn the car off and stay in the vehicle (or have the passenger get out while you stay in)?

Automatic features are convenient, but I find that there's rarely a way to make something automatic without making the system more difficult to use in non-standard situations. When you have the headlight switch turned to ON, you're sending a command to the car to say "leave the headlights on". Shockingly, the car leaves the headlights on if you take some strange route to get out of the car.

That said, I do think that Toyota could make better use of the "weight on seat" sensors. I think that the MFD menus should be accessable at speed if there is weight on the passenger seat. Also, if there's no weight on either front seat and the car is off, then the headlights should turn off.

 

I suppose everyone has their own idea of how this should work and I wouldn't try to speak for anyone but myself. That said...

I would like the "automatic headlight" feature to work just like it did in my 07 Camry and before that, my Chevy S-10. After more than 10 years of never having to think about headlights being on or off, I just don't think about it anymore. In those vehicles I never had a situation where I couldn't override the auto feature when conditions warranted it. 99% of the time I never gave the headlights a second thought.

I'll get used to it, no doubt. For anyone who has had a car with the auto feature, for any length of time, this just seems like a step backward. The fact that this feature is available outside of the US tells me this is a marketing choice, not a technical one.

Bob

 

Great advice!


ZC1

 

Why would anyone want the passenger to be able to turn off the lights after exiting the car? Why are folks to lazy to turn the lights off manually instead of having the car do this for them? (Yes, I know some people like the idea of having the lights come on when they get in the car. Sort of a day time running light thing.. To me it's not worth burning up the HID's for no good reason.) The Prius is not designed to have any other door control the "automatic" light feature other than the drivers side. Makes perfect sense to me. You could rewire the other doors to do this, but why? The drivers side switch for the lights can be disabled, but again why?

 

As a matter of fact, Canadian Prii come standard with Auto headlights (but we can't get HID), and they behave exactly the same with regards to staying on if you don't open the driver door. If you turn the car ON while the ambient light is low enough to trigger the full headlights, then proceed to shut the car off and exit from a door other than the driver door, the headlights will remain on.

The only difference is this is only something to worry about at night... and it is usually pretty obvious if you are walking away from a car with bright headlights shining away.

Also, for US cars without the formal Automatic feature, I don't see it as a "design flaw". Rather, it is drivers using a behaviour of the car in a manner for which it was not intended. I am sure Toyota did not engineer this behaviour so people would leave their headlights on all the time, but rather to save the occasional driver who forgot to turn their headlights off from a dead 12V battery. If you feel this is a significant risk for you, then simply turn the headlights on and off as necessary, as in a conventional car... that's all.

 

Well, since the US gets HID headlights and Canada gets Auto, it would appear there is some incompatibility between these features. I have heard that frequent on-off can significantly shorten the life of HID lamps, though other manufacturers such as BMW seem to mate them, so who knows.

As to why Toyota does not offer Auto on the US non-HID cars, I suspect this is a marketing plan that does not want to provide customers a reason to forego the expensive HID upgrade. They want customers to buy expensive stuff.

 

I, for one, would prefer to buy new HIDs when needed in order to decrease my chances of an accident by not using them. I do use the auto on/off feature, and once did kill a 12V battery by doing the open the passenger side door while listening to the radio when I was cleaning out the car and forget the lights. Yes, I could turn them on/off manually each time I get out of the car, but choose not to.

The efficacy of "DTRs" is well evidenced in studies in Scandinavian countries, and I live in an area where the daylight in summer is dim and we have lots of rain. Although it does also utilize more power and thus probably decreases my mileage, the financial and personal costs of an injury from a serious accident would far outweigh that. Insurance doesn't cover everything.

That said, this is my choice, and I'm certainly not telling anyone else what to do, nor would I support legal requirements for DTR's. But I'm not being "lazy".

Daytime running lamp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I see Auto Headlights in the same category as Electric Windows and Electric, Remote Door Locks. Got nothing to do with being lazy. It is a matter of convenience.

Anybody want to go back to window cranks?

Bob

 

My experience is that the ICE won't start until it gets to 2 bars.