Run away acceleration

Not having the desired speed indicated on the dashboard is dangerous, yet that's what you prefer?

Seeing what the vehicle will accelerate to when radar detects it's safe is a big improvement.

 

I'll bet your 2004 would do the same thing. I've never tried it because it never occurred to me to assume the car was accelerating as fast as the desired speed was climbing while holding up the lever or to used the cruise to run the engine beyond the ECO range.

Hold down on the lever while cruise is engaged and mine will do some pretty serious regeneration.

 

woz had a similar problem with his gen 2. pretty bright guy right? understands computers right? presses up on the stalk to accelerate, but prius is not a ferrari. so he keeps buying the stalk until the car reaches the speed he wants. but the computer remembers all those bumps, and keeps accelerating.
so he files a complaint, calls the prius dangerous, and says he too had a case of u/a.

 

From what I remember of my test drive of a Four, you're setting the distance from the car in front of you, not a set speed. If the car in front of you is doing 85, then so are you.

For models w/ regular Cruise Control, Toyota has gone through great lengths to keep inadvertent cruise control behavior under control:

* the pop-up for cruise control cannot be disabled (you can disable the cruise on/off indicator, but every time you set or adjust speed it takes over the center display for 3+ seconds)
* if you continually tap up on the stalk, it will not set a max speed higher than 4 mph above your current speed
* if you hold the stalk up, it will only increase ~1 mph/s once the car speed reaches the set speed

 

Sorry to refer you to the manual, but it tells you that, to set the desired speed press the stalk down once. Push it up once to increase that speed setting and press it down once to decrease the set speed. I know it's a long boring read, but you should find out what you need to know before you jump in and get it wrong.

 

Be nice, bisco. That post is NOT like you. (Or maybe I misunderstood?) I consider you to be the Ambassador of Prius Chat! Always the first to reply. Always a nice friendly welcome.

(My "radar cruise control" is my right foot on the gas pedal. And my right foot moving to the brake pedal. And my excellent 20-20 vision. And my quick cat-like reflexes! And NEVER doing distracted driving!
I personally, don't desire to have any radars on my car... but appreciate the technology.)

 

There has to be one exception to prove the rule.

 

I'm just joking with bisco. He's a good man. And any member with over 56,000 posts, can do and say as he pleases!

 

C.C. used to say things like that. IIRC

 

i wasn't criticizing, but technology has to be understood and used properly, or not at all.
this is the first complaint i have heard about this feature, and while i have never had it, don't recall others complaining about it.
either way, i was not attacking the o/p, it just reminded me of one of the many funny/odd woz stories.
if i was being naughty, it wouldn't have been ambiguous.

 

I didn't take it as being an attack. Just an amusing example.

 

and that's all it was. i just thought there was a small tie in to the o/p's experience.

 

I think you'll find that there isn't a car with RADAR Cruise which doesn't work similarly - different button/stalk arrangements, but the operation is similar (for almost 20 years now).

To use it, you need to (in summary oly):

• be going in excess of 45km/hr;
• press DOWN on the C/C lever - that will set DRCC to the speed you are travelling at at the time;
• if you press up briefly, it will increase speed (limiter) by 1km/hr - you can tap it up a few times for 1km/hr increments;
• if you hold it up more than about a second, it will increase it by 5km/hr (eg to 50km/hr) - continue to hold, and it will scroll 55-60-65-70-75-80-85-90 etc till you get to the 100km/hr you want to limit your speed to;
• IF - you continue to hold it - I'm not sure how far, but it'll just continue to climb UP&UP&UP&UP ... maybe to infinity;
• to decrease the SET speed, you tap or hold the lever downwards.

The PRIUS Gen4 Manual describes it very clearly.

The salesperson you were with for the test drive should have instructed you in correct operation before you went out. I'd go to a different dealer. When I took delivery of my PRIUS, the salesman gave me indepth instruction on the DRCC operation.

 

Flick up and release to go one mile an hour faster. Five miles... flick up and release five times. I was surprised by this "feature" as well. I had a car where I would hold the button until my car was going as fast as I wanted. And then I'd release. IF you can take your attention and focus on the cruise control speed, you can hold and release when IT reaches the speed you want. Note: your car will NOT be going that fast yet.

 

Better plan on keeping that 2004 for awhile. More and more vehicles are getting radar cruise or something similar (subaru eyesight) and they all operate this way.

 

I've been thinking about this and have changed some of my thoughts. That's probably what that burning smell was you were wondering about. The one mph/kph per up or down click of the stalk is nothing new. Both our '05s had it. Wife's '07 has it. My '13 has it, and my '98 Camry had it. Come to think of it, the Autocom cruise control I installed on my last motorcycle had it too.

But, what was different in the older cars from what I'm hearing about the DRCC is that, with the older cars, when you let off holding the cruise control stalk, that was the set speed, but not so with the new ones. Is that about right? If so, the dealers really should make sure the buyer understands that, but then what about when someone else drives it and you forget to tell them?

 

too, there is a difference between clicking the stalk up or down, and holding it until you get to the speed you want. if you count the clicks/taps, you know what you've added or subtracted.

 

I don't think so - on the cars I have had, including the Gen2, I seem to remember that if you increased the set speed faster than the car could accelerate it would keep accelerating after the stalk was released until it reached the set speed.

I would commonly rapidly tap it multiple times to increase the speed and the car would accelerate to the required speed - my Mazda 3 had the same behavior.

With the Gen4 we now have a display telling us what the set speed is and of course the speed may be held below the set speed by a car in front.

I'll have to experiment with the DRCC disabled (something like hold the button in for a couple of seconds when turning it on - it then reverts to conventional cruise control behaviour).

kevin

 

You may be right. I almost never drive like that. I tap it a little at a time unless I"m using the throttle to speed up. Easier to keep it in an efficient rpm range that way. I'm working from really old memories.