Locking / unlocking Doors with remote and Car On

I don't believe it can be done. Just have your wife reach over the front seat and lock the door from the front door panel push button.

 

Oh my God, that was the funniest thing I have read this week! My breakfast flew out of my nose reading that. How is this not a more popular thread with an answer like that!

 

I had started a discussion on this topic some time back. Someone had provided a pretty good reason why the remote should be disabled with the engine on.
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...59-sks-cannot-use-outside-car-when-power.html

 

You can lock and unlock the vehicle while it is running if you have the metal key in your posession. That will allow you to leave the electronic fob in the vehicle and with the key you can lock and unlock from outside the vehicle. But without the metal key, SKS is useless on the outside of the car.

 

Why doesn't this answer work?? Wife's arms real short? Holding the dog in her lap? Body cast??

 

I actually have an ordinary mechanical key on the same keychain as my keyfob. That way I don't have to fiddle with taking the small key out of the keyfob in order to lock/unlock the car with the A/C left on. Very useful when making a short visit to a store or ATM machine when the weather is uncomfortable.

 

Not sure if this is the right place to place this comment but I had an incident happen yesterday that has my mind boggled. This happened when I was locking and unlocking the car with the touch areas. I did not open the door. I continued working in the garage close to my car and about a minute later, I heard the doors lock automatically. The keys were in the seat. Fortunately I had the drivers window down. Is this "automatic lock" feature a good idea? should the car have locked itself with the keys inside? Have only had this 2010 Prius for two weeks and I am still learning. Someone please enlighten me.

 

The automatic lock feature works if you don't open a door after pressing unlock. Normally you can't lock the car from the outside with a fob inside. Is your SKS working normally?

Tom

 

Hey Tom: Thanks for the reply. You will have to be patient with me but I am not familiar with the term SKS.

 

I found the term and now realize it stands for Smart Key System. and yes for all practically purposes, it is working normally. Currently it is set up for locking/unlocking all 5 doors and I have not tried programming any of the other options ie locking at 12 mph or drivers door only. Any other thoughts on the subject? Is it perhaps a malfunction that should be investigated by a service dept?

 

Every once in a while my 09 thinks the key is outside the car when it's really inside. But I've never seen it go the other way (probably designed this way on purpose, I'd think).

I'm still not clear on the sequence of events, though. You say the key was inside on the seat. So when the doors "locked the key in the car", how did the doors get unlocked in the first place?

 

Thanks for responding. The window on the drivers door was down and I tossed the keys in on the drivers seat. I then "played" with the lock/unlock feature on the drivers door locking it and unlocking it several times never opening the door. After unlocking the door still without opening it, I continued to work near the car for about a minute when I heard the doors lock. when I attempted to open the door with the handle grip, the door would not open nor did it unlock as it is supposed to do. At that time, I reached in and retrieved the keys from the seat and pressed the unlock button on the fob. I then placed the keys on the open window ledge of the door and repeated the entire process in an attempt to reproduce the event. Sure enough, after about a minute, the doors locked automatically again. This is perplexing but I think I just confused the SKS by "playing" with the door handle repeatedly to lock and unlock the door without using the fob. Any comments?

 

In my experience, which again is with an 09, what you describe shouldn't have been able to occur. If the key is inside, the handle shouldn't be active.

As I said in my OP, every once in a while it thinks the key is outside when it isn't. But this typically only lasts for 3-5 seconds. It could be that when you were "playing", the car was in this confused state. Then when you went to unlock the door after the auto-lock (which is normal behavior), the car was no longer "confused".

The open window ledge test is more ambiguous. I think in that instance, the car is correct to conclude that the key is outside. I wonder if you could recreate it on the seat bottom.

As I said above, the auto lock is normal. If you unlock using SKS, but never open the door, it will re-lock the doors after 60 seconds.

 

This now makes sense. With the SKS, if you unlock the doors from the outside, but do not open a door, after a short time the car automatically relocks the doors. In other words, the car is making an assumption that you really didn't want to unlock, otherwise you would have opened the door.

This isn't a bad assumption. The car was previously locked, so all of the locking prerequisites had been met, so the Prius blindly locks the doors again. If you had opened the door and tossed your keys inside, the car would not have locked again. Even if you had tried to lock it with another fob it would not have locked. Opening the door would have canceled the automatic relock, and the keys inside would have been sensed when you tried to relock.

Tossing the key in through an open window creates an unusual situation, where the automatic relock is still in play, but the keys are now inside the car. I expect that the automatic relock does not check for the presence of keys inside, as this test was previously satisfied during the initial lock cycle.

It's not an issue unless you toss in the keys, reach in, and activate the auto window close button. If you do this you may have found a convoluted way to lock your keys inside.

Tom

 

That doesn't explain the handle being active with the key on the seat, though..

 

I must have missed that claim. Where was it stated that the handle was active with the key on the seat?

Tom