Has anybody ever hacked the cruise control on the Prius? Instead of having to flick the cruise handle up and down to get to the speed I wat I thought that hacking the system to allow input from a knob would be useful. I was thinking of mounting the knob/dial on the armrest, sort of like in the position where BMW has the iDrive knob. Also, I was thinking of mounting a small LCD readout to show the speed at which cruise it set.
A better hack for the cruise would be one to adjust how "agressive" it is in maintaining the set speed.. so on hills it doesn't floor it to maintain speed.. Or better yet a mod to make it a dynamic cruise that uses a laser to measure the distance and rate of distance change to the vehicle in front.. but that would be a "monster" mod to do..
I forget which car he mentioned, but our son said that one of the new cars, it may have been BMW, has some kind of setting that you can select economy or power.
I assume you are being facetious. If you have ever watched an instant MPG gauge, you realize the wild flucuations that the MPG goes through to maintain speed. Since one directly affects the other, if you try to maintain MPG, this would result in wild flucuations in speed, not a safe driving practice. An adjustment for the agressiveness of CC could be feasible, but would have to take ihe topography into consideration. Obviously the agressiveness would have to be greater on the Blue Ridge Parkway through Virginia than on an interstate through Oklahoma. CC will drop below the minimum and cancel on a, downhill followed by an immediate transition into an uphill, if is not agressive enough. At some point "The Law of Diminishing Returns" applies and except for the quests of the hypermilers, the results does not justify the means. It is, however, always good to explore new possibilities.
Maintaining a constant speed will give you a better overall mpg than trying to improve MPG by allopwing you speed to vary significantly. Whenever you allow the car to slow to maintain a lower MPG, it will, overall, take more enery to accelerate back to your desired speed than it would to maintain a constant speed. That's why I use my CC on the Avalon anytime I can over the 35mph minimum. Of course, the exception would be allowing it to slow significantly when cresting a hill and gaining the speed back on the down side of the hill, but this is an exception, which I may do occassionally, but only if there is no one behind me. P.S. The pulse and glide on the Prius may also be an exception as a result of efficient use of the ICE.
How abouit a hack that keeps the cruise on like a normal car? I hate having to puch the button every day, ebery other car I've had cruise in, even some toyotas, always had an on that stayed on
Eeeexactly what I was going to say. That's the "hack" that should have come standard with the car. Every time I get in the car and want to use cruise, I first have to turn it on, and then set it? Why????
The hack I would like to see is one that would keep it from forgetting the set speed when the car comes to a stop. My 05 Avalon cruise control remembers the previously set speed after a stop and after the car gets up to about 25 mph just hit resume and it goes back to the speed before the stop. When I first got the Prius, I thought the cc was broken because I had to reset it after every stop.
i would like it to use engery regen. to slow the prius back to the set speed when going down hill. when ever i go down a hill the prius will pick up speed. this seems like a wasted opertunity to recover some engery. it also seems like a simple program modification. my uncles civic hybrid does this. its the only feature that the civic has that the prius lacks that is good.
While we are discussing cruise control mods... I would be happy if the Cruise light in the dash was illuminated ONLY if the cruise control was engaged, not simply powered on. Les ---
My only gripe is that there is no readout saying that Cruise is set... In our 04 Grand Prix, every time I would set a speed, it would flash a message on the MFD saying Cruise Set. I also do agree with a Effeciency/power switch or option. I have the feeling that ALL of this is just programming for use in the MFD. The Steaks
