"Stealth" Mode Button

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Presumably, Toyota did not offer the EV button on American Prius cars because of the lengthy warranty offered here (especially in California).

I recall posts from this past winter in which a Prius owner was going to be denied a replacement warranty because the car had an EV button installed. Toyota had claimed that the modification voided the warranty. My further reclamation is that Toyota agreed to replace the battery in exchange for the owner's removal of the EV button and agreement not to install one in the future.

OK. I found the post. It was Naterprius, and his posting was just over a year ago. Follow this link for interesting reading.

There also is a brief discussion on this EAA Wiki page about whether installation of the EV button could/would/should void the Toyota warranty.

Some of the same persons participated in a similar discussion on the GreenHybrid site. Follow this link to read those postings.

In the case of the fight between Naterprius and Toyota, his battery started to go bad at about 3900 miles, so it seems clear that the EV button had nothing to do with the problems. Still, Toyota gave him two months of grief dealing with it. The EV button cost him $40, and it gave him the option of driving away from home without having the ICE start until he was a couple of blocks away. There is very little (if any) MPG assistance. It is a fun and cool thing, but it has value (MPG-wise) only if you are moving the car from the driveway to the street and don't want the ICE to turn on.

Question: Is it worth it to get into a battle with Toyota over such a thing? Regardless of whether it really should void the warranty, the battle could not be worth the cost (at least to me).

 

As I'm in Europe I have one, and quite never use it... I'd gladly exchange it for HID lights, autodim mirror and such...

 

You already the have STEALTH ability. That's the standard in all Prius, electric-only drive up to 42 MPH.

What you want is the EV option, which reduces the top electric-only speed to 35 MPH with the trade-off of additional power before the engine starts back up.

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There are 3 other ways to get the EV mode other than the button. The software is already there, so all you need to do is activate it. There is a open spot in a plug in the far right hand side. To activate the EV mode (assuming conditions are right), you short that open spot (with a pin inside) to ground. There's a company called Coastal Tech, which sells a gizmo that allows you to use the Cancel lever on the Cruise Control (it still works for Cancel, just pull for over 2 seconds), but they are a bit flakey on customer service. You can stick a pin in that spot, and run a wire to a ground with a push button in between. You can also convert the "Flash to Pass" lever to do the same thing. You'll have to do a search in order to find those instructions.

 

That's some heavy driving. It also could be a great way to pay for your car! Having the ability to expense at 58.5 cents per mile, I find that I do very well. My lifetime cost per mile is below 6 cents. I know it it higher today, but not too much higher. At worst, I think I am pocketing 50 cents per mile after paying for gas. By my calculations, I have already received enough money this way to pay for lifetime maintenance of the car plus two sets of tires. I am now busily recouping gasoline costs and insurance.

The car will not pay for itself at my rate (15K per year and only a portion is business), but I wonder what it would be at 25K per year -- and mostly business.

 

After some running around, and paying too much for ten connectors, I have discovered the source for connectors used in the Sigma EV switch kit and all those Toyota connectors the instructions tell us to salvage out of the Prius harnesses.

The part is made by Tyco, available from Newark Electronics in both tinned copper and gold plated copper.

The tinned part number is 1123343-1
The gold part number is 1123343-2

They are available on the web though Newark at six cents or less each, The Newark page says you can order as few as one! I'll believe that when I see it happen, not before.
I'm talking about the one six-cent part order, not the six-cent price.

Another place is at a GM car dealer. The number is the same and the service people will love you for bringing in the number and not making them waste time trying to match the connectors on those pig tails in the Sigma kit. The connectors are parts in the Kent-Moore electrical repair kit all GM dealers must have to service modern computer controlled cars.

It's possible you could go into a large Toyota dealer and find them there also. My local Toyota dealer didn't have such a connector kit in the Toyota shop.

In any event, having clean, new connectors to use for the EV wiring task is a necessity for me; I don't like the idea of messing with any more than is absolutely needed to make a clean install. Trying to salvage connectors from the installed equipment is just asking for trouble. Buy new and avoid any potential disasters.

It goes without saying that these connectors are automotive communication wiring parts. DO NOT try to make do with D-sub (RS-232) parts from Radio Shack. They will not stand up for any length of time in an automotive environment; they don't last all that long just connected to a computer.

Think of how badly the vibrations in a car will effect them. Retention of connectors in a manually assembled unpotted RS-232 plug has always been a problem. Being in a car will just encourage those connectors to fall out of the automotive plug; the retention method is completely different. The computer part is friction retained, the Toyota (read Tyco) automotive part is positively latched in with a spring latch.