2012 Prius Four Radio Mode changing issue

Hi All,

I'm new to this forum, not new to the Prius. I owned a 2007 package option 5, Barcelona Red up until about 2 weeks ago. I was rear-ended and it totaled my beloved car. So, what did I do? Went out and got another Prius of course!! This one is a 2012 Prius Four with solar roof package and upgraded nav with Entune, Barcelona Red again. I'm sentimental about my red Prii.

Anyways. I love all the upgrades that have been made in the last 5 years to the Prius. However, I am not loving the radio so far on my new one, and I'm hoping it's just a programming issue that I can fix.

Within the radio portion of the system I have 6 pages of programming options with space for 6 stations each for a total of 36 stations. I programmed them as follows: Page 1 and 2 are FM stations, Page 3 is AM stations and Pages 4-6 are Satellite radio stations. I have found that when I push the mode button on the steering wheel to change between FM and Sat (or AM to FM, etc.) the mode will change, but for one station only. As soon as I push the up or down button on the steering wheel to scroll through the stations in the new mode it jumps back to the previous mode I was in. The same thing happens if I chose the AM, FM or Sat buttons on the face of the radio.

So here's what it looks like while I'm driving. I start off listening to an FM station. I push mode on the steering wheel and I see that it changes to Sat. I push the up button on the steering wheel to change to a different Sat station and instead it jumps me back to FM.

In order to actually scroll through the new mode stations that I want to change to I have to push the audio button, manually scroll through the 6 different pages on the screen and choose a station within the programmed mode pages on the screen in order to be able to scroll through them with the buttons on the steering wheel. Trying to do this by looking down at the screen at 80mph on the freeway is NOT SAFE!!

If I were to scroll just with the steering wheel buttons, I would have to scroll, potentially, through 36 different stations just to find the one I want. Please, somebody tell me I've just programmed the stations wrong, or I just need to change some setting within the system!! I can't image this is truly how the system was supposed to be designed. So much of the engineering on this car is designed to NOT take your eyes off the road, I can't imagine the radio system was overlooked.

 

I agree that it is VERY annoying. I ended up rearranging my radio stations to have my most used FM closest to my most used Satellite, so I don't have to scroll through 36 different stations to get to where I want to be. But I still end up looking down at the Nav screen to change between modes. Bye bye benefit of the HUD!!

The way Toyota designed this makes me wonder why they even have the AM, FM and SAT buttons on the face of the Nav system on the dashboard. They are almost useless.

This has been a BIG disappointment for me with this new car.