Shift to "reverse" but car went to "drive" instead

YES! As long as you are sure you didn't make the mistake.

 

Take to your dealer as soon as you can! Don't want any incidents.!

 

Go see Toyota. They can pull the DTC codes to diagnose this and isolate the problem. There is a very good chapter covering this in their manual. You said still under warranty so this should be covered. This is a safety issue so it will get their attention.

 

Yes get to the dealer as soon as possible,,, in reverse if you have to!

 

Are you sure you're shifting it correctly? I know lots of people that have made the mistake of "I want to go in reverse, so I'll move the shift lever backwards." In fact, moving the lever towards you is drive, and moving it forward is reverse.

Another possibility is that you're letting the lever snap back into position violently, and it's bouncing through N into D before returning to the normal position. If you can regularly get it to shift to D instead of R, I'd see if gently guiding the lever back into its rest position solves the issue. It shouldn't be bouncing into D, but it might give you an idea of where the problem lies (eg a flaky switch or a bad spring in the shift lever assembly).

 

^^^
Agreed completely w/both points. I don't think I've ever heard of the problem the OP claims to be having before.

 

That's my initial hunch. You suddenly get a new member who suffers an issue that's not been reported here before and the cynic can think 'troll'.

BUT we should also keep our eyes open. I remember reporting an issue and being told by many that I was mistaken, or that it didn't happen or I was wrong. I was none of those. The issue happened and now it is commonly reported - Rough idle on start up.

I agree that the OP should get the car to the dealers for investigation- preferably NOT driving it.

 

By positive you're shifting correctly, you are pushing up and to the left for R and down and to the left for D (as printed on the knob and on the multi-information display), correct?

On a normally functioning shift lever, the bounce back into the dot position (for the lack of a better term) shouldn't be an issue when the knob's released. It's never been a problem on my Gen 2.

I have no Gen 3 but have test driven them a bunch of times. Their shift lever mechanism feels different and flimsier (springs seem to have less tension as well). (I even noted this in 2009 at 2010 Prius Driving Impressions Thread | PriusChat, when I got to test drive a 2010 Prius months before they went on sale. We were prohibited from discussing our driving impressions, mileage observed, etc. until the media embargo was lifted on March 25, 2009.)

What macman408's suggesting is the possibility of a defective mechanism in its bounce back behavior and trying to rule it out by "gently guiding the lever back into its rest position" (which I'd interpret as back to dot) instead of just releasing it and seeing if the problem is still there.

 

It could be that there is an intermittent "short" circuit in the shifter switch.

I haven't disassembled one, but it could be a switch with one incoming wire and three others; one goes to DRIVE , a second goes to REVERSE and the third goes to the B or engine BRAKING mode.

Since the switch returns to the NEUTRAL position, it would be likely that it's make once and break signal for each position.


If this is such, those wanting the forward position to be DRIVE and the backward position to be REVERSE could easily make the modification by switching the wires. This could easily be done by disconnecting the connector block, releasing the connector from the black and reinserting them in the desired position.


In your case, it's most likely a wire or "whisker" strand that does it. I'm not sure that the Toyota technician is able to disassemble it to find out. They would probably replace the shifter.