Beep Beep

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.

 

I just walk away and put my hand in my pocket and push the lock button on the fob

 

congratulations! my car never beeps while i'm driving. do you have the advanced model?

 

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.

 

is it similar to a speed radar system?

 

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.

 

it's interesting the gov let's you have a warning system.

 

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...).

 

congrats, all the best!

 

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.