With So Much Stuff Right....

Your frequent use of the word "NEEDS" begs the question of who.

What purpose does the additional information serve for joe consumer?

That's nice for those with special interests (as described by owners who purchase aftermarket displays like ScanGauge), but it fulfills a want... not a need.
.

 

Donee,

I'll agree that if Toyota were making the Prius for just you or me you would be right, I'd like lots more information. (A scangauge helps).

But I think you need to look at the car from the typical driver's perspective. Most drivers don't like to be overloaded with data that they have no control over, and they wouldn't understand what to do with the information anyway. Toyota had a hard enough time making people believe the car could be driven just like a regular car. To add all that extra data would just give more ammunition to the nay-sayers that claim the car is too complex or required a engineering degree to drive it.

I do like the concept of the eco mode and power mode in the 2010 version, but everything else you ask for is pretty well managed by the computer, and you get immediate feedback on how economically you are driving via the MFD, which already has the most comprehensive economy data of any car I've seen. If you want more, I'd suspect you are in the extreme minority of Prius drivers.

 

I agree. The typical Prius driver doesn't need additional gauges. I think people have been making this sort of plea since gauges first began to be replaced by warning lights. Early on, these complaints were probably valid because the cars had no safeguarding against their destruction if the driver unknowingly continued to drive when oil pressure dropped off or the car began to run too hot. However, modern cars basically prevent their own doom in the event of a system failure.

But really, aside from hypermilers and other such enthusiasts, who cares what the engine rpm, coolant temp, etc are? If any of these parameters strays from its normal range, warnings will be issued and the car will likely shut down. The average driver would be better served by some sort of an index that represents the various parameters that are representative of instantaneous fuel efficiency, and this is exactly what the current MFD provides. If the driver so chooses, he/she can monitor the MFD to maximize fuel efficiency. Measurements like oil pressure are vital to the life of the ICE, but what is the average driver going to do if the oil pressure appears to be out of range? They will never see this because the computer will intervene before they can do anything about it.

I would argue that the MFD could be made simpler yet. I think the average driver would benefit most from an aggregate of all the pertinent parameters that maximize fuel efficiency. This aggregate measurement could be displayed in a convenient location, say next to the speedometer, and provide instantaneous feedback about the drivers habits, but ignore what warmup stage they are in and indeed whether they are gliding or not.

 

I hope there is a hidden screen that we can unlock to see those details for the pros. If not, someone will come up with after-market device such as CAN View.

 

Hmmm. The HiHy has a battery "gauge" and a coolant temp gauge. At least the 2009 Highlander Hybrid Limited that I sat in at the dealership had those features, along with an "Econ" button and an "EV" button

It would be easy to add many more features, but leave them hidden from the average Joe Consumer. Eg: my folks used to have 2003 Buick LeSabre Limited. It was actually a nice car, I liked driving it

The cluster was fairly basic: speed, coolant temp, fuel level. However, the Driver Information Center you could drill down to see many live values: instant coolant temp, instant battery volts, and instant oil pressure

I agree it would be nice if the Prius offered a similar drill-down menu system. Actually, the Prius already offers a bit of that, but it requires a MFD and button dance to get it to display.

It would have been nice to have an extra button target on the MFD, eg "Options."

Touch the "Options" box, the first level gives you stuff like "HSD System," "Engine," whatever. Touch one of those, get far more detailed information

I actually drive with my MFD off most of the time. Especially at night, it can be a distraction. I'm quite frankly shocked that more new Prius drivers don't get into crashes as they fixate on the MFD, and rear end somebody at a red light

 

Recall when Classic Prius was available for sale and 53K units were sold in the US over three model years. Graham Davies built a wonderful miniscanner that provides far better Prius-specific info than the Scan Gauge, was priced at $189 and even allowed connection to a laptop computer to store data parameters under observation.
http://www.ecrostech.com/Products/MiniScanner/Intro.htm

Yet he managed to sell only one hundred units to customers in US and Europe (less than 0.2%), which helps to demonstrate the market for this instrumentation is tiny.

 

Labview made display screen programming so much easier. I, like Tom, is from a much earlier generation and exposed to such systems as Honeywell TDC 2000 (Hiway Data Network), TDC 3000 (Local Control Network with Hiway Gateway interface), and Bailey INFI 90 (INFINet)

For example, to set up the TDC 3000 Universal Station touch screen (Of COURSE it had a touch screen!), one had to mount the Engineer Personality and start the Picture Editor.

There were many tasks one could do. For example, build a touch box target and assign a behavior to it. Eg, say a large multi-stage compressor hooked up to a batch reactor. The compressor is tagged using a floating value at address FL5028:

IF (CMP_S(GS_ENM(FL5028.PV),EQ,"ON"));
ENT_EXEC ("PRESS ENTER TO TURN OFF FLAG");
SS_ENM(FL5028.PV,"OFF");
ELSE;
ENT_EXEC("PRESS ENTER TO TURN ON FLAG");
SS_ENM(FL5028.PV,"ON");
ENDIF

You don't even want to know how to set up flags and numerics to track running hours for a CMMS. It's downright scary, but if you wish, let me know

You young whipper-snappers with your LabView had it easy ...

 

Donee,
All I'm saying is that you (and I) are a very small minority of Prius drivers who could/would use that info. I think most would be confused, and it could actually scare some potential buyers away if they think they have to understand this stuff to drive the car.

I use my scangauge for lots of the things you mention. But I'm pretty geeky about these things.

 

I must disagree. Most of the important stuff in other, far simpler cars is also hidden. Most cars are now designed to be operated as a common appliance, a toaster, for as much function as possible. A lot of detail scares away many customers, and creates a large number of support calls and costs from users who don't understand, and others who know just enough to get themselves into trouble. Those groups far outnumber the techies who can make good use of it.

 

Count me as one of those people who would never use all that info and would rather just drive the car. I'd prefer the Toyota software be programmed to do a better job of taking all those factors into account if it's really that useful to increasing MPG. That would be the main purpose of the gauges, right? Right now, the system doesn't even do a simple thing like feathering/backing off the gas, even though I've obviously gotten up to and am maintaining a steady speed and a steady pressure on the pedal. Why should I have to work so hard at feathering the pedal? Why should I have to work so hard at making the system NOT use the battery, if that is so important to increasing MPG?

 

Example: in the "old" days, automobiles actually had engine oil pressure gauges, believe it or not. Then you'd have owners wondering why at a certain vehicle speed, their gauge only read x while their friend's automobile's gauge read a higher value y.

In the current day, you have PriusChat owners asking about traction battery SOC and being worried because their gauge shows too much green or too little red, etc. So the more instrumentation that is available, the more there is for people to worry about.

 

An "instrumentation package" would have been a nice choice but Toyota is dead set against giving the end users access to their car's data.

 

There is a big difference between the information needed to drive safely and the information needed to fully understand the Prius internal operation. I'm not sure things get safer with indications that are valuable to a small group and potentially distracting to a larger group. (Hey Leroy, start driving to make the battery indicator top out.)

My complaint is that there are too many lights, indicators, and other stuff that try to communicate something (important or minor?) with an strange icon. Just today the wife was mentioning some strange light came on ("Maint Req", the frigging oil light) and she was not quite sure what to do other than to drive home and tell me.

The one thing I think could have been done is for the MFD is to provide basic diagnostic information and help information to the non-technical driver, (e.g. the oil reminder, or tire pressure, or abs, etc. This should only be available when parked) That was the lost opportunity.

 

As much as I disliked my 2000 GMC Sierra - nasty reliability issues - it seemed to have a decent balance of information.

Eg: Ig-Off. Press and hold the odo button. The odo display would show elapsed engine time in hours. That's a handy way of doing maintenance if there is a lot of idle time

When the oil life monitor thought it was time for an oil change, the Driver Information Center would put in amber "Change Engine Oil" The newer GM trucks would also display the percentage of estimated oil life left

A lot of this data can be kept safely hidden, but it would be easily drilled down for those who really want to know. It's not very difficult to build touch screen menus, I was doing that in the mid 1980's with Honeywell TDC 3000 Universal Station operator displays

 

Adding an analog tachometer took care of the issue for me. Now I know what the ICE is doing, and that's the only thing that is truly hidden from the driver. I use the Scangauge, too, but mostly to display things that are already there (SoC, etc.) at better resolution than the MFD allows.

 

I think one of the things that Toyota and other foreign makers have done, vs. the domestic US automakers is to deal with the fact that large numbers of people don't want to think about their cars and trucks. They just want them to get them from place to place. They don't want to know about the percentage of oil life left, or the RPMs. They just want to know when they really have to change the oil. The foreign makers made their cars help keep people from screwing them up without thinking about it. US makers on the other hand made cars for Americans who expected to have to Fix Or Repair Daily, etc. No one thought that much about it.

The fact is that through most of my driving life (1972-2008) I drove vehicles that were supposed to have "much worse than average" repair records, i.e. my 81 Pontiac Grand Prix, my 89 Cherokee Pioneer and my 01 Chevy Blazer. I've had no serious problems with any of them. That's because I was trained on the need to watch all this stuff and take care of my vehicles. Most people today aren't. Messing with video games or iPods is so much more interesting than changing your own oil (to most people under 30!).

 

It would be "nice to have" if toyota had the option button to enable/disable super-advanced instrumentation on the MFD like on the japanese can-view. but most people probably won't use it.