Sometimes I'm not too smart

Gotta customize yours a little so it stands out. It's funny his hatch opened. Good story.

 

Haha that's why you're called dumb mike. I get it now, just kidding.

One time in middle school when my mom picked me up afterschool, this other lady had the same exact car as my mom (a green Volvo). I ran from behind and opened the front door and screamed "Hi mom!" Wrong car, wrong mom. Now that was embarrasing.

Dumb Mac

 

Stories that make fun of ourselves! I'm in! When I was in middle school, my mom was picking me up to take me to karate class. We had a van that was very popular at the time. Well, saw a van and without pause opened the side door, jumped in the middle seat and was very confused to see a different family staring at me. Took a good minute to realize what had happened. After I excused myself and apologized for the mistake, which got a good amount of laughs from that family, I finally find my mom sitting in the van busting out laughing. She literally saw the whole thing, and thought it was funny as hell.

 

With conventional car keys the mfg only uses xx number of key codes. I'm thinking this may be true of FOB's as well. A limited number of codes spread over a global production. The upshot...I think it's possible to have the same code for more than one Prius; just an idea.

The embarrassing story part of this thread may work better at FHOP, but here's my stupid. As a college ROTC student, I was walking through the campus parking lot on my way to be part of the honor guard for a Saturday night football opening. I stopped at a car window to adjust my uniform hat/beret. After a few seconds of being infatuated with my reflection, I realized that two people in the back seat were staring angrily back at me!

 

My wife just did this a few weeks ago...she is not a car person...our Prius is "The White Car", our Kia is "The Black Car" and our old van was "The Green Van". Her favorite car on the road is "The Red Car". Anyway, we were traveling home from Florida, stopped at a rest area. I was in the car and was watching her walk back from the facilities, right past our car, and across the parking lot. She walked up to another similar car (in that it was also black and approximately the same style, but not the same make or model), got in, shut the door and buckled her seat belt, all the while oblivious to my honking.

I worry about her sometimes.

 

Yes for the mechanical key; no for the fob code.

Tom

 

The OP makes it sound like the other car was already unlocked - he thought he didn't hear the beep cause of the wind, but it was just already open...

 

Presumably the fob code is just a number. What is the range? Probably easy enough to make each FOB a unique serial number. On the other hand, there was supposed to be a key tag when you buy a car, how large is that number?

The key is four pins IIRC, and probably not more than 10 possible positions. That is a maximum of 10000 different keys. So your key should open several hundred other Prii.

 

I have an antenna ball on mine. Easier to spot. Its a Disney ball.

 

What is four pins????? If the key is stored as 4 bytes, that translates to 4.295 million different possibilities - that's a lot of combinations. Add to that the fact that Toyota probably re-uses that storage in only one region (eg USA), the odds of your key fob working in another car is very very remote (pun intended).....

 

Hmm..the OP called himself "DumbMike" 164 posts ago...

Well, I've seen Caddyshack and I wish him well with his battle with the gopher.

 

A while back, I walked up to the rear of my car in a parking lot, to load the items I purchased at the store. As I approached, I noticed a 6 inch long scratch on the corner of the bumper, down to the plastic. Bummed me out--I assumed somebody parked next to me did it as they pulled into or out of their spot. The trunk wouldn't open when I touched the sensor, so I took the fob out of my pocket and it wouldn't work. As I walked towards the driver's door to see if the SKS sensor on it worked, I noticed the car had the standard 15" wheels (mine is a V with 17"). Boy was I embarrassed...and relieved about the scratch that...wasn't...on MY car!

 

I think that might have been more embarrassing for them! :rofl:

 

The physical metal key is four pins. Thus it is likely to match at least hundreds of other prii.

The fob has a number. 2^32 is 4.29 Billion not 4.29 million. If it in fact uses 4 bytes, there will never be a duplicate. I have no evidence that it does in fact use 4 bytes. I can easily see Toyota using 2 bytes, which would have your fob matching 2 others.

 

deleted.

 

Personally?
If I were ever to consider upgrading mt Prius driving experience to Prius ownership---I'd pay extra to delete the [sic] "smart key." and just have a dumb old metal key with a transponder chip (like my POV.) Buuuuuuut, Prius weenies are really into the fobby-thingy experience, and we're already shed enough blood and treasure on that topic...

I've opened a co-workers G3 door with my fob (or more accurately, with my hand---as it was probably already, and illegally unlocked) and I would have gotten into it if I hadn't noticed the fact that it was filled with trash, and obviously not my car...so the OP isn't the only one.
Of course....you don't usually see more than 1-2 Priuses in parking lots around here...

 

Or you could trade your II for a used I, which lacks the smart key.

 

G3-I's are like unicorns.

I've heard of them.
I think I know what they look like, but I've never actually seen one, and I'm beginning to doubt that they really exist.

"My" G3-II is a company provided vehicle, so I think that my boss would take a dim view of any attempt to trade it in. I'm really, really surprised that my beloved company didn't buy a bunch of level-I G3's for its employees, but my last company car ('Squeaky') was (is) a '97 Chevy Cavalier with lunar mileage, and so I didn't ask very many questions when they handed me the keys [sic] to my '10 G3-II....call sign: "Goofy". I would have named the car "Rattle", but that name is already taken, and my car didn't start to creak and groan for me until I'd already named it.

I've only got 8,000 miles in type, and I'm still wrestling with the question of whether or not to buy a G3 when I trade my Sierra in for a new vehicle.
If I DO......I plan to get a II, and insist upon a third key fobby thingy and place it in the car, since I still don't know if I believe the whole unicorn theory.