Shifting to "P"

no, you can hit park from anywhere. you can even power down without hitting park, the car will do it for you. it's really just for sitting in the vehicle with power on.

 

You won't hurt that Prius. Unless you run it out of gas. Prius is a great car. Best car on the planet in my book.

Welcome to Prius Chat!

All the best

 

Just put yourself in the shoes of the car's designer: it'd be a debacle if something like a gear shift sequence could seriously damage the car. I believe you can even shift to reverse when at speed in Drive, the car'll beep at you, maybe shift into Neutral? It's documented on the web, you could search for it. I'd be chicken to try though.

There is a low speed threshold, where the car WILL let you do something a bit nasty, like shift from Drive to Reverse. It causes a bit of a jolt, I'd try to avoid it.

 

otoh, don't hit park at 5mph, it will engage.

 

A conventional shifter will make you depress a button and push the lever, to protect you from doing something nasty like shift from Drive to Reverse. But if you set your mind to it, I think you can do damage.

The Prius allows you to move the shifter from Drive to Reverse, or hit the Park Button, very easily, but ignores you, thankfully, when it would be really bad.

Maybe they should move that 5 mph threshold down a bit more? I know I roll out of our garage in reverse, and sometimes shift to drive before coming to a complete stop, and it feels ok, kind of like a typical automatic with buffering.

 

i won't try the experiment, but i think the parking cog would be more likely to do damage than shifting from r to d. there seems to be some slippage there to minimize damage, but i could be wrong.

 

Yup! …been there, …done that!
Me: "…Hey it clunks when I hit "P" while the car is still moving (albeit < 5 MPH)! "
CarDoc: "…Well, DON'T hit "P" until the car has stopped! "
- Wil

 

Run it out of gas and it may react by overusing the hybrid battery, toasting it. Simple solution, don't.

 

there are varying experience's for those of us who have run out of gas. best bet is to fill up at two pips or more on the gauge.

 

Running out of gas in a Prius can be better than running out of gas in normal car but it also can be much worse. In Prius you can drive short distance on electricity after gas has run out. But if you get HV-battery empty it needs to be charged with external charger and hv-battery can even get damaged from that. And if you try to start it too many times it will need to be reset by disconnecting 12V battery.

Running out of gas will also wear fuel pump so you shouldn’t do that with any car.

 

Regardless of what anyone says?

My advice is STRIVE to never run out of gas.

This holds true with your Prius (especially). And any other gas burning vehicle.

 

+1

 

Part of the problem is recognising the symptoms.

You will find innumerable 12 volt battery threads because the owners did not know what a bad battery had in symptoms if it does not run the starter.

In the same vein, if you stopped when you ran out of gas and did not keep driving or attempt to restart until you added 3 gallons of gas, no damage. Sadly, owners don't all do that.

 

Not if you immediately stop the car. The problem occurs when you try to drive the car on traction battery power alone and drain the battery to the point where the hybrid vehicle ECU decides to shut the car down. Then you will be out of luck because dealers typically cannot help you other than to suggest you spend $3K on a new battery.

If you should run out of fuel you will need to add at least 3-4 gallons for the various ECUs to recognize that fuel has been added (see below). If this recognition does not occur, the car will refuse to start unless the 12V battery is disconnected to reset the ECUs. The reason for this refusal is to prevent you from further draining the traction battery.

The rated fuel capacity is 11.9 US gallons. The actual fuel capacity is highly variable because of the flexible bladder which lines the inside of the tank. The ability of the bladder to flex depends upon ambient air temperature and the capacity may diminish a couple of gallons in cold weather.

While you are refueling, some fuel pumps will shut off sooner than others which makes the issue of refueling complex. If you should overfill the tank you run the risk of damaging the vapor emissions system.

Finally, the fuel gauge is of questionable accuracy and with justification is referred to as the "guess" gauge on this forum. As suggested earlier in this string, you would be wise to fill the fuel tank when the gauge shows two bars remaining, if you are interested in minimizing the likelihood of running out of gas.

As previously mentioned above, you typically need to add 3-4 gallons before the fuel gauge will register an increase. This results from the design of the combination meter circuitry that interprets the fuel gauge sender readings.

 

Yeah I change directly from R to D every morning when I reverse out of my garage. It's not even a physical shift in the Prius, it's pretty much just a change in voltage to motor MG2 and that's all. It's definitely isn't going to hurt anything.

 

I hit the P button all the time from D at standstill. Problem is it won't accept it, and by then I will have let go of the brake and it will have started to move again, causing a jolt when I frantically press it a second, third and fourth time and the P finally engages...

Brother in law just saw me doing that a few days ago and asked me if everything was alright, as it causes the Prius to rock back and forth a few times. It's a miracle none of my passengers have gotten seasick yet