I'm beginning to think that my Prius is cursed Involved in an accident with a HGV (big, big truck) inside the first two weeks of taking delivery, with the subsequent insurance assessment coming in 1 point shy of being a total write-off, followed by six months of hell dealing with my insurer and three Toyota dealers in two countries. The other day, while taking my mom to the airport at 3am, I apparently drove through a lot of fresh mud in the road which needless to say went all over the car. By the time I'd returned home a few hours later, this had turned into a pretty substantial coating of caked-on muck. Later that day I went to the nearby automatic car-wash, first time in this car, and this somehow ended up breaking a piece of rubber under the rear-left wheel arch, which left it hanging. Heard a noise when re-joining the road from the car-wash driveway but assumed I'd briefly scraped the pavement due to low ground clearance and odd angle at the junction (happened all the time at my last house). Only heard the noise again a good 10 minutes later when going over a speed bump, and obviously the car-wash is saying, "prove it." Incidentally, while in the car-wash, with the car in neutral as required, a message came up on the dash demanding I reengage the engine or suffer the consequences of a fully discharged electric battery. Can't remember the exact wording but that was the gist of it. Luckily this was right at the end of the forced march through the rollers so wasn't a big deal, but makes me nervous because it could easily have been at the beginning, and there'd have been no easy solution.
Wow, Hoddie that's really been bad all round. Glad your safe from the near total, but regarding the car wash; you have to be in neutral with the car running in ready state. I was surprised when my local operator voluntarily instructed me what to do before entering the roller of doom. Can't say for the latest damage, but someone will.
Interesting - they say not to leave it in neutral when stopped - but I never considered a car-wash (my front lawn, a bucket and hose are my car-wash). Neutral is really the only option. It probably needs pre-planning, to ensure you have a reasonably full battery before you start, put it in N at the last possibly moment, and not use Climate Control, as that will deplete the Hybrid battery. Maybe other Automatic car-wash users might be able to advise what they do.
Not in the ones that haul you through by a roller conveyor behind the front wheel. Park would be a disaster in those!
Glad you're OK from the accident. I tend to think that insurers and airlines are both part of a massive social experiment to discover the human breaking point. Five reasons I don't do automatic car washes. 1. They damage the car. 2. They don't get it very clean. 3. They don't give me the opportunity for a close inspection of the body condition. 4. I get no exercise. 5. They can be risky for a Prius' battery.
That's great if you are able to do so. Unfortunately, not all are so able-bodied. Sometime I can wash mine for myself, but not always. I did lose a blanking plate from the front left in one pull-through auto wash I'd always used before I got the Prius, but now I risk the freelance hand washing guys at the supermarket and I've no complaints yet. Of course, mine's a contract rental for just 3 years: not a keeper. YMMV!
best thing in a carwash as @alanclarkeau mentions above, is to start with as full a hybrid battery as possible, and turn off all the accessories. as far as cursed goes, we need @tucatz to talk you off the ledge!
I'm just a lazy sod, being a short arse doesn't help either but just an excuse really. Always get the car hand washed when I'm in the UK but those places don't exist here in Brussels as far as I know.
Any car I have owned I have always hand washed in my driveway. Then one year in Georgia we had a drought and weren't allowed to use water outdoors. Car washes were allowed to operate however because apparently many of them recycle their water ???? which sounds alarming but apparently they have filtering systems (although the quality varies) and also apparently most use the recycled water only for the first rinse and detergent phase but use fresh water for the final rinse. Now the claim is that car washes use no more than about 30 gallons of fresh water per car but driveway washing uses about 100 gallons. Well there's no way I use 100 gallons, that must be someone who leaves the hose running the whole time. I have a spray nozzle and just do an initial rinse, then a few quick rinses during, and a few minutes of rinsing at the end. Buy you can't fight City Hall so during the drought I went to local car washes a couple of times, and hated it. Didn't like spending the money, didn't like the quality of the wash, didn't like all of these giant scrubbing machines attacking my car. Then I noticed one of those coin operated DIY car washes, which I have never used before, but I tried it and liked it much better. At home I put two gallons of hot water in a five gallon plastic bucket (it has volume markings which makes it easy) then I add the car wash liquid, and throw my car wash mitt into the bucket and place it on the floor of the passenger seat. The bucket is tall so it has virtually no chance of spilling even in a hard stop. Drive over to the DIY wash, pull the bucket out and set it to the side, turn the dial to "rinse" and put in $1.75 in quarters which gives me four minutes of rinsing. Don't really need four minutes but I paid for it and by golly I'm going to use it! Then I wash the car, only drawback is you can't rinse as you go along, which I had to get used to, but what I do is work bottom up, so that as I wash the upper sections the water flows down onto previously washed sections to help keep them from drying out. But I found even if it does dry out it's no big deal. When I'm done, I put in another $1.75 for four minutes of rinsing, and now I do need all four minutes. The spray wand is attached to a rotating fixture directly above your car, so it makes it easy to walk around the car in any direction. The wand puts out a pretty decent spray of water, and if you squeeze the trigger it puts out a high pressure spray. I start out the rinse standing several feet away from the car and use the high pressure spray, at that distance it won't damage the paint but it puts out a large volume of water which gets most of the soap off. Then I release the trigger to switch to low pressure and get closer and rinse all of the nooks and crannies. Four minutes is plenty of time. Ironically these type of car washes don't recycle their water, at least mine doesn't.
Our dealership has an automatic car wash, where the car rolls in and stops, then all the sprays and brushes pass along the car on a large frame. With a pain-in-the-@ss car like the Prius, that's the only way to go. We're in a house with a driveway, outside hose bib, all the amenities for DIY washing, so I never use automatic car washes, largely for all the reasons @jerrymildred lists. But I appreciate not all owners have the wherewithal to DIY. I would say at the least, try to do a DIY wash occasionally, and make it thorough, get in all the corners.
No it's not. This is an AUTOMATIC car wash. You need neutral for the wheels to turn as it is pulled through. The KEY is to not enter the car wash with your Hybrid Battery Low. You need significant enough charge as to not get the low charge warning message. I used an automatic car wash quite a lot with my Prius (Probably too much). And I think I got the warning message ONCE when I got in a long line for the wash, and it was a hot day, and I stupidly kept the air conditioning blasting so by the time I reached the Car Wash the battery was on the low side. But, if you enter the car wash with your Hybrid Battery on the positive side of being more fully charged than depleted, you should be fine. There have been some posts of people that got into the an automatic car wash and got in trouble. But on a conveyor belt with a pulley system, you don't want to be in Park.
You just have to make sure you have at least 3 bars before entering. Turn off the A/C because that's a huge battery user. Then go in the car wash in neutral. I go to the Costco car wash and it usually does a great job at cleaning and drying. The bad thing is that there is always a line of cars and I use the A/C so that's where my battery discharges. In my gen 2, I always got the battery message that said "Battery dangerously low" or something like that. Then the dash lights turn on, which is scary. I haven't had a problem message pop up in the gen 4 yet.
@Since2002, I like you idea for using the diy car wash we have a couple nearby. I've never been happy with the quality I got after spending about $5 on it. A hybrid machine/hand car wash only makes sense for a Prius. I think that's the choice I would make if I wasn't able to wash my own. Especially if you can watch without undue risk of getting soaked.
Just a FYI: a decent (electric does fine) leaf blower gets the car pretty much, quite fast. Just mostly need to wipe inside doors and hatch. And...: Toyota makes a car wash liquid concentrate. Nothing unique, but hey: it's Toyota.
Does the Prius manage its batteries in such a way that "running out of juice" after a few minutes in a line at the car wash is a common occurrence? And if it does, will it not start the engine to charge it up? (or maybe that requires the car be in Park?)
Like a dinner rush at the restaurant you can be sure that bad luck in going to come in waves. Wait for the third event... Every time I wash my car I'm afraid to park it at work. When I come out end of the day the flying rats (seagulls) have cr**ped all over it. The windows, the side mirrors, and door handles. Makes me want to scream!
