At pages 24, 25 and 26 of the Plug-in Prius Owner's Manual, it states there are vehicle data recordings and event recordings available in the "sophisticated computers." It appears that some data is recorded all the time, and some just in a non-trivial crash situation. The manual says the data will be turned over to the police, court of law or government agency upon an official request. It will also be disclosed with the owner's consent or for research purposes where not tied to a particular vehicle. The disclosure of the event data recorder is slightly different. Data recorded includes engine speed, electric motor speed, accelerator status, brake status, vehicle speed, shift position and hybrid battery status. Event data includes how various systems were operating, whether seat belts were being used, accelerator and brake position and speed of vehicle.
I guess a lot of cars are starting to have these, but the law has recently changed in a lot of states to mandate that we are informed they are there.
The 2nd gen and 3rd gen Prii have black box recorders too. The computer interface use to talk to these black boxes is considered by Toyota as a corporate secret and is not shared with the outside world. Reportedly there are only three computers with this special black box interface - and they are closely guarded. One computer is in Japan. One computer is in North American. I forgot where the third computer is stationed. Toyota's black box computer came into the public eye during the 2009 "Runaway" Prius-Camry affair that put the head of Toyota on the Congressional witness stand in the spring of 2010. The black box recorder is part of a diagnostic system for the new drive-by-wire computer systems used in today's cars.
