Went to lunch in the Prius & ......

I realize this is an old thread, but I didn't find anything more recent. After owning a new 2015 Prius one week, I unintentionally left it running when I left the car. I feel plenty stupid about this, but there was a lot going on when I arrived at my destination and I was a bit distracted. In 50 years of driving I have never had a car without keys to remove from the lock. I failed to push the off button apparently, after putting it in park. There may have been warning beeps, but I didn't notice them. I had trouble locking the door but finally hit the inside "lock" button and thought it was locked. It wasn't. In fact, anyone could have driven it away as it sat in a public parking lot, which we verified later once home and with the keys far away. I am really surprised that Toyota lets the car be driven without a key; it's small comfort that the thief wouldn't be able to start it again. I'm also surprised that there's no automatic turn-off feature after it has run for some time. I can't imagine anyone would want to leave a car running for hours. I haven't liked the super technology on this car that seems to defeat common sense, though I agree it's a nice car. Does anyone have any thoughts about why Toyota has so many failsafes but not this one?

 

I use my Prius as a generator (see my signature) so I'm glad it can be left running. Also there are people I've read about that use their Prius like an efficient RV which also requires leaving it on overnight.

My wife and I always just push the Power button - although she has come close a few times to just getting out with it on.

 

There is limit as to what the car can do. There are LOUD warning alert beeps when exiting a running Prius and can't lock doors from outside of a running Prius or if a Fob is left inside the vehicle.

I read a blog; driver of a Prius took his significant other to work and she exited the vehicle with Fob in her purse. He did not hear the BEEPS nor notice immediately the big rectangular box blocking the HSD display "KEY NOT LOCATED" and started to drive back and after driving a certain distance, he turned around. So the common sense or safety sense for that matter, is not to shut the vehicle while you are in traffic.

 

My wife and I picked up our car from the valet at the hotel as we were checking out. Drove to the next hotel on our trip and discovered that we had not been given the fob from the attendant (who had nicely left the car on). We called and insisted that they courier the fob to us.

 

^ Lucky they managed to locate it; they can be very expensive to replace. I attached luggage tags with email and phone numbers on ours.

I really wouldn't mind a return to a traditional key and mechanical ignition. Bullet proof, cheap to replace.

 

I have "tile" GPS devices attached to my fobs.

 

Before I owned my Prius? This is what I said all the time in nearly any discussion about problems caused by Push Button start and stop and/or Keyless entry.

And since The Prius is the first vehicle I've ever owned with a "Smart Key" system, I think I really believed it.

But I have to admit, now that I own a Prius, one aspect I like the most is the Smart Key System, and the ability to simply walk up to the vehicle, get in and push a button.

I'm afraid I've become spoiled.

I suppose I could go back to pushing a button on a fob to unlock, and grabbing an ignition key to start/stop a vehicle, but Prius has poisoned my spartan sensibilities. I'd forever be musing about the relative luxury and convenience of just having the fob on your person, and then being able to operate everything without having to remove or grab anything.

Damn Smart Key System has made me weak.

 

At some point in the winter I have to turn the system off to keep the 12V battery from going empty. That is always annoying since you get used to the system and that would also be the time when it would be very useful.

 

The constant seeking has been remedied with 3rd gen, at least.

 

Odd, never had a problem with our gen 2 even down to negative digits (-6 F this march).

 

Problem is caused by very short driving distances and cold temperature. Colder it gets slower it is to charge lead acid (including AGM) battery.

If you drive something like 15min every other day and temperature is colder than -10c or 14F little more than a week and battery can be so empty that (especially if temperature gets a lot colder) you can already have problems. Then Prius is very slow at charging the battery so unless you make something like 4 hour trip battery will stay low.

 

I never forget to turn off because several times after I bought my car I ALMOST forgot, so I programmed myself to do the following automatically before opening the car door, like a mantra --

1. Push down Mechanical Parking Brake
2. Push Parking Brake button
3. Push Power Button

Several times I DID forget to release Parking Brake when starting the car, so I did a 2nd mantra --

1. Push Power Button
2. Release Mechanical Parking Brake


Works like a charm.

 

You could skip #2, #3 does the #2 function, as well as shutting the car down. Also, the button with "P" has nothing to do with the parking brake; it's setting the transmission to "Park" condition, locking it.