Most Obscure Gen III Facts (way out there)

Finally read all of them.

I have one. A typo or just lazy.

Page 474 of the owners manual, is for removing the RIGHT SIDE low beam headlight bulb. Step one is correct. step 2 is the picture of the LEFT side.

Toyota editors either missed it, or was too lazy to make picture for the Right side. They reused it correctly on the next page.

 

If you just turn on accessory power (maybe to listen to radio), after an hour the MFD pops up a message 'turning off to conserve battery power' and switches accessory mode off.

 

Now, that one is good to know.

 

If you are rolling a window up using Retained Accessory Power (RAP) when the RAP time expires, the window will stop midway. Unfortunately, RAP isn't smart enough to allow the window to continue until the end of the action.

 

According to to the dealer, each "green car" displayed on the Fuel Consumption Screen represents 1/2 gallon of gas saved

 

According to me, your dealer is full of carp. Or something else spelled in a substantially similar way.

A gallon of gas has about 36.6 kilowatt-hours per US gallon of energy. The Prius engine is particularly efficient, I think around 30%, so it'll get about 10.98 kWh out of that gallon, so a half gallon is 5.49 kWh.

On the other hand, the fuel consumption screen shows a key for what the green car is; on the 5-minute graph, its 50 Wh (0.05 kWh), on the 1-minute graph it's 30 Wh (0.03 kWh). So it takes about 110 or 183 green cars to "save" half a gallon of gas, depending on the scale you're looking at.

Which leads me to the next point - you're not really saving any gas by making more green cars; those green cars represent gas you've already burned, which is then being recovered so you don't have to burn quite as much gas the next time you accelerate. The point being that, if you have zero green cars, that means you're not burning more gas than was needed to begin with; that's a far better method of savings. (It's like the motto "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." Recycling is nice, but it's far better to just not even produce the thing that you're about to recycle.)

 

Don't know if anyone has ever mentioned it, i cant go through 79 pages. But apparently if the car is In D and you turn it off, it Auto shifts into park. I found that to be a novel feature.

 

I am a new owner and noticed that happening. The salesman would not accept that fact until we test drove the third Prius. I have not been shifting into P , just turning the car off.

 

Indeed it is, and seems to be standard around the world as our UK version does the same. I just power the car off and it puts the car into park, but the wife always presses park then powers off!

And now for a new addition. (I think!) You can go straight to ready mode by pressing the brake as soon as you get in the car and then pressing the power button when it's illuminated green.

The dealer showed us differently, you press the button once to start into accessory mode, then press the brake and finally the power once more but the wife discovered the much faster way after a few days of owning the car!

 

Your dealer is retarded and your wife is the smart one!
Why would you do that two-step process??? :doh:
Your wife's discovery is exactly how you start any car.

 

like wise on the power windows. . . just don't open the door.

 

Here's something I discovered recently. I had left work, gone a very short distance,then stopped at a traffic light (which is a VERY long light.) A few moments later the ICE shut down, as expected. But then while I waited the ICE started-up again, which I didn't expect. My scangauge showed a coolant temp of 105F. I thought for a moment, and then realized I'd bumped-up the cabin temp a couple of degrees. As an experiment, I hit the 'Off' button for the CC, and the ICE stopped. Then when I saw the light was starting to change I hit the 'Auto' button, and the ICE started-up again. I confirmed this on another occasion, turning up the set temperature after the ICE had stopped, and sure enough it started up again.

So apparently the climate control has control over the ICE to make sure it has enough heat based on the set temp. Apparently 105F is acceptable for a set temp of 72F, but if the CC is set to 74F then it wants the coolant temp to be something higher. I was aware it would run to keep the engine warm enough for the catalytic converter, but didn't know it was also taking into account how much heat the climate control needed.

 

Here's something interesting. It was just about dusk, so I turned my headlights on. The dash lights didn't dim, but I didn't notice that until about 5 minutes later when it got a little darker, and then by themselves the lights in the dash dimmed. My point is it they didn't dim when I manually turned on the headlights - apparently they dim automatically when it gets dark enough, sort of the opposite of the headlights coming on when it gets dark. Anyone else see this?


iPad ?

 

they slow down before the top on the 2012 Prius III


iPad ?

 

I use the two trip meters, trip A for per tank or per trip mpg and trip B for per year / oil change mpg average.
Amazing that the yearly / per oil change mpg average is still above 50 mpg with everything from -30F winter driving to warm dry 80F summer running.

 

I wish my 2010 had that feature, I turn on headlights in daylight hours and the dash is too dim to read without a manual adjustment to full bright. Sounds like a great .

 

My 2012 Four does that, too. With my 2005, I was used to constantly dimming and brightening the dash lights manually. I haven't done that at all in my 2012. I really like it.

 

This is a new feature for 2012, which I first noticed entering and exiting a tunnel. My 2010 didn't do this.

 

Trip odometer resets to zero at 9999 miles.