Summary of proposed improvements for future versions of Prius

A couple of suggestion...

Rear seat air vents (mounted in the door posts please) for the hot south.
Slightly higher and cushier door arm rests (for sore elbows) which would cost nothing i.m.o.
Pading or soft material on dash top.
Greater sunvisor functionality i.e. pull-out extensions.

 

Please mount the auto-dimming/Homelink type rearview mirror a little higher up the windshield glass. I think there would be room to do this even with the Safety Connect device on the roofliner.

You don't want taller drivers ducking down to see - building signs just off to the right before pulling in a driveway, metering light blocked while going down a circular onramp, etc...

 

get rid of the rear 'wing' entirely...just plain rear window.

 

It is on the forum somewhere!
Basically, it isn't man enough to charge the HV battery and could only trickle charge the 12V battery so a fan was considered a better idea. More sunshine = more power = faster fan = more cooling.

 

Oh, I know it couldn't possibly do much charging but it would be something...maybe comparable to the brakes when just touched? I just figured every little bit would help.

 

I would prefer just a rear window too, unless the rear spoiler is part of what reduces the car's drag (thus increasing mileage).

However, if the rear spoiler could be re-placed so as not to split the rear window, that would be a bonus.

 

On #6, 6a. The reason (good or not) that the MPG are now not on the same screen as the NAV is that the NAV and its screen are an option, but showing the mpg info is not an option. Having had both a gen 1 and a gen 2 it was a bit of a shock to have the "lesser and lower quality" display for mpg. However, after getting used to it I like it better up higher so I don't need to take my eyes away from the road as much. When I drive my gen 2 it now feels unsafe-ish (I made up that word) to look down to see the mpg.

On #8. I think you are talking about building a different car. The Cd (coefficient of drag) for the Prius is quite good. Sure, making the overall height could lower it, but then there would be less interior room and taller people would not want to buy the car or ride in the car. I'm short and wouldn't mind, but then any bigger/taller people who ride with me would want to laugh at the little toy Prius.

I'm thinking that there are at least 3 categories of improvements that this thread should have:
1) zero (or near-zero) cost improvements -- things that could just be better if there was a bit more thought or a cosmetic-type change made (i.e. better button placement)
2) changes that would take some minor effort and/or new options to be installed, but realistically could be done within the gen III basic design. I doubt Toyota is going to make any body changes for another several years -- at least 4-5 years. An example would be a cold-weather option (heated cloth seats, heated steering wheel, etc).
3) Items for the gen IV Prius or some other Prius-like car that might come out such as a Prius-mini (smaller hybrid 80-100 mpg) or a Prius-luxury (bigger, less mpg but more luxury). Many of the suggestions, realistically fall into this type of redesign.

3PriusMike

 

Some ideas for the overall user interface in the car:

Seat Heater buttons. Current location is dumb, so a better location would be nice. But, even given the location why is left on top and right on the bottom? It should be left on the left and right on the right.


The symmetry between the fuel gauge and mpg display is asthetically pleasing but useless. The gas gauge changes very slowly and you only "need" to glance at it once when you get in the car or maybe every hour or so on a long trip while you may want to glance at the mpg much more often -- thus the mpg display should be much larger and with more granularity. There are only two things that change frequently enough on the dash to need to be large enough for a frequent/quick glance -- speed and mpg.

The "trip" & "display" buttons on the steering wheel are quite cool. But what they do is not. They force you to toggle between numerous modes to see what is really a limited amount of
information for the number of button presses. For example the trip button toggles through trip A, trip B, odometer, distance to empty (DTE), and then none. Why the choice of none? Why not remove "none" and put the odometer and DTE on the same toggle, thus reducing the full cycle toggles from 5 to 3?

Is seems that the display should be a bit larger (I know that it is more expensive) so that some of all those toggled modes can just be fixed elements. I understand that back when digital odometers were "new" and the display had just a single set of digits, it was efficient to re-use this same set of digits for the odometer, trip A, trip B and whatever. We are beyond that era, IMO. Therefore, with a display that is 5-10% bigger the trip button could just toggle from trip A to trip B and that's it...everything else is always shown.
(I acknowledge that this is a bit extreme, but since the trip button would be pushed fewer times it would then not need a warranty replacement as often).

3PriusMike

 

good stuff!
I was gonna mention the heated seat buttons next there are several places that would be better than the seeming afterthought placement they currently hold

 

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Don't think I saw this one: The car's interior lights should shut off after a period of time of no activity, meaning no light switches changed, no doors opened/closed, nobody in the front seats. GM does this and it saves dead batteries from doors not closed completely and kids leaving lights on from reading on the way home. It's about the only good I can say about GM vehicles. All LEDs inside would at least help this as well.

 

The probable reason for being where they are is that the seat heaters draw a lot of power (relative to other electrical loads) and the 12v outlet is right there as well. So they are running multiple large gauge wires to one general location in a wiring harness...as my guess. So they could at least make the buttons left-right instead of top-bottom.

3PriusMike

 

Make that darn EV button do something! If there is sufficient charge in the battery pressing it would override everything else at speeds under 30. Pressing it at startup would prevent the warm up cycle and allow short trips under pure electric power. That would great for me 'cause I live about 100ft from the supermarket!

 

With all due respect to the former SAAB owner, I have owned a lot of hatchback cars in my life and hinged rigid parcel shelves are a pain in the backside when you have larger than normal loads to carry.

And when they are in place, they tend to squeak with an flexing of the car, over poor road surfaces.....which we had a lot of in the UK!

Much prefer the roller blind type luggage cover the Prius comes with.

 

Have a tire monitoring system that can be programmed for two sets of tires, winter and summer so the system does not have to be reporgrammed every season or poeple ignoring tire monitoring for winter tires since it's too expensive.

 

Really? I tried it as a test by switching on the overhead front map lights with the switch between the lights and an hour later they were still on. My kids have also tested it for me a few times but I've caught it each time, so far.

 

Daytime Running Lights (DRL's). They are safer and reduce insurance premiums and are already mandatory in Canada and the EU.