I took delivery of my new PiP this morning -and now the fun begins! With 676 pages of manual you would have thought that no question could possibly left unanswered but how wrong you would be. My first issue was how to lock, or more precisely know that I had locked the car. I couldn't get my mind around the Smart (proximity activated) key. How do you lock the door and how do you check you have locked it because if you get closer to the door again the fob automatically opens it again! For now I have deactivated the Smart Key but this does not seem a sensible way forward. My second issue relates to a BeepBeep noise that I got several times during the course of my journey home from work. I had also experienced this BeepBeep during my previous extended test drive. I can find no reference to this BeepBeep in the manual. Any ideas? I think I am going to like the car provided I survive the first few days during which I will be looking so intently at the various screens that I probably won't notice the cars I am about to hit!
You are going to have to learn to trust the car to lock. If it can't lock then it will beep in a way that alerts you to the fact. There are lots of beeps that the Prius can activate. You will have to be more specific and look for an indication on the screen of what the car is trying to tell you.
The fob doesn't unlock the car all by itself, it allows you to unlock it by grasping the front door handle as if to open it. Just walking by it won't unlock it. To lock the door, pinch on top and below the ridges on the front door handle, again with the fob in your pocket. Best way to check it is locked is to try and open the BACK door, which doesn't have the sensors. That beep beep - you got it coming up the A3 as it went down to 2 lanes, didn't you...? In the EU model, it's the speed camera warning - very useful! But it is true that the car will beep at you in different ways if you try and do something silly. You are, seriously almost on my way home from work. I'm totally non-technical, but I've had mine for over a year now. I'll gladly stop off on my way home and tell you everything I know (which will take about 15 minutes...)
I find I can lock the car by touching just the small ridges on the top of the door handles, or pressing the button on the hatch near the unlock button, both on the underside just below the Toyota emblem. It will respond with two beeps, but I sometimes double check by grasping the rear door handle briefly, as Astolat suggests.
From the posts by these blokes from across the pond, I infer that they have a traffic camera warning system in the Prius that we don't have. We can get that feature in aftermarket devices.
Or you can forget the door handle. One button locks the doors, the other one unlocks the doors. I know that's a lot of effort but with some practice you should be able to do it.
Correct. Because the only reference to it is in the Touch and Go manual (what we have instead of Entune) it is a bit unnerving initially.
I'm not entirely sure; I think it may just be programmed with the locations of the cameras. We don't often have police with handheld speed guns any more, but we do have thousands of fixed speed cameras, or ones to check for violations like jumping red lights.
There was quite a fuss here a while ago about speed cameras being money-raisers rather than for safety, but also about banning laser detectors. The ban never happened, and changes were made to ensure that the cameras were a visible deterrent - they have to be painted bright yellow so you can see them, and there is a database of them that most of the detectors use, combined with GPS. The idea is, supposedly, that knowing the cameras are there will keep you to near the speed limit, because there are a lot of them on our main rooads. There is also a database of speed limits; I'm not sure whether it is hardwired or a setting (never bothered to look) but even if I'm not using the SatNav I get a verbal warning if I'm more than 15mph above the limit (or if Fiona, my SatNav, thinks I am, which isn't always the same thing. Fiona has a nicer tone and voice than my last car's SatNav, who I named Olga...).
BeepBeep identified! Yes - thank you to you all for pointing me in the right direction. It is indeed the Spped Camera Warning which sounds even if the navigation system is not switched on. The clever bit is that it only sounds if you are going at a (pre-programmed) rate faster than the speed limit on the road. This is why it appears random - if you atre in a queue of traffic then it will not sound. This is amazing clever and now I know why it is happening I am happy to live with the knowledge. I am now into my third day of PiP driving and I am really impresed by the fuel efficiency even compared to my previous diesel C3 Picasso. I have to admit though that I have turned off the Smart action on the FOB. It is very clever but I prefer the more positive action of pressing the lock/unlock buttons on the Fob. I am struggling to get used to the keyless starting but I guess I will get used to it quickly. Thanks again for your help solving the Beep Beep issue - it's not specifically coverd in any of the manuals.
It's a personal preference thing, but I find it really nice not to have to ever fish my key fob out of my pocket. And my wife really likes that she does not have to rummage through her purse to find her keys. Just grab the door handle as you would anyway to open it, and touch the top of the handle to lock (the "ker-chunk" sound of the doors locking is all the feedback I need). Diesel has never caught on for personal vehicles in this side of the pond. Part of it is emission standards; apparently only recently has diesel "cleaned up its act". And low sulfer diesel fuel is is now mandated.
And, diesel fuel is more expensive than premium gasoline. Sometimes much more so. Which is weird, considering that it was cheaper than regular gasoline for decades.
