Occasionally my wife will ask me to set the clock in her Prius C, but the clock in the Prius C is a special kind of stupid I've never encountered before. Almost every clock I've ever set starts ticking the seconds from the moment you change the minute. For example, if the clock reads 1:58 pm and I change it to 1:59, it will change to 2:00 60 seconds later. But oh no, not the Prius C. At first I couldn't figure out what was going on. I'd set the clock and the minute would change ten seconds later. After a half-hour of testing and cussing at the car I figured out what is happening: every time you press a button to advance the minute or the hour, the clock also advances the second. This makes setting the clock accurately a difficult puzzle to solve rather than the simple task it should be. Luckily, pressing and holding the button only advances one second no matter how many hours or minutes. Imagine your clock is 10 minutes and 30 seconds slow. Pressing the button ten times to advance the minutes will also advance the seconds by ten. Now your clock is 20 seconds slow. What you have to do in that case is press the button 29 times to advance the seconds to the correct place, and then press and hold the button to advance the minutes to the correct place. The press and hold will also advance the seconds by one, which puts you at the correct time. If you accidentally over or undershoot the minutes you have to start all over again. You'd have to work at making a clock this stupid. Why would anybody do such a thing? Does anyone know who actually manufactures the clock in the Prius C?
my guess is that the vast majority of people don't care if the clock is 20 seconds slow. or anything +/- 1 to 2 minutes. so no one gets worked up about it.
I haven't observed this, but then I synchronise the clock at least about once a month anyway, but I'll do it any time I'm in the car and notice I'm nearing the top of the hour. Mine actually holds time surprisingly well. It does annoy me that you can't synchronise it to the nearest minute, with ":00" taking you to the top of the hour, but this is a common behaviour on Toyotas, so I'm used to it from my previous vehicles. I just flick over to one of the radio stations that broadcasts a time signal and zero it. It's one of the few settings the car lets you change while moving, thankfully.
What's a "watch"? Seriously - since I started carrying a cell phone I stopped wearing my watches. If I'm in the car - I have the clock. If not - I have my phone. Then again - since I retired three months ago - I often don't know what day it is...
i always keep mine +- 1 minute ahead, i don't like to be late. might be 30 seconds ahead, might be a minute and a half. as long as it's not slow, i'm good. i usually check it with the nes station beep.
I've often wondered why the clock was not designed to sync with the time signal that I presume SAT radio transmits. I've gone back to watches since I find checking my cell phone all the time is a pita. My new Casio Waveceptor/Solar was just delivered to my housein fact...or so Amazon says...
I think we've heard about every alternative except a sundial, but that would be inaccurate every time you changed direction. Do you think he will be back?
Cars and watches, go hand and hand! If you like mechanical things, watches are the next best thing to cars. The older the better! Give it try, besides everyone has a phone these days. Tick Tock
Many of us engineers have that level of OCD. Some otherwise normal people (i.e. non-engineers) do too. That works when I have a compass available, and the sky is not too overcast. The watch is what you should look at if a local thief asks you for the time. And it is what you'll need to tell time after you mistakenly pull out your cell phone in front of the thief.
It's actually much simpler. With your (correct) watch/phone in hand do the following: Set the seconds first. When your correct watch time is at 60 press the seconds button once. This will zero the seconds, but also set the time back to the beginning of the hour (e.g 9:16 will go back to 9:00). The car clock is now accurate to the second but not the minute. Set the minutes. You can hold down the button. Set to the correct time MINUS 1 (e.g. if you want 9:16 set to 9:15) That's it! When the seconds next reach 60 the minute will advance +1 as required to the correct time. Just a different way of thinking....