I am presently reading Michael Crichton's State of Fear. In the book, he makes repeated reference to the Prius. In one instance, he says the character turned on the ignition. Did the Prius ever have an ignition that needed to be turned? Gen 1, possibly? Page 164 "Evans turned the ignition of his Prius and it hummed to life."
Yeah, on the Classic, you turned a key, but I believe it would just beep when the car went in Ready mode (no cranking of engine or anything, of course).
Beep in ready mode?? Where do you guys get this stuff?? Are you making it up as you go?? The Classic has a key, and a standard 2-stage+start ignition switch.. First stage is the accessory setting, and you get 12V power from the little aux battery to radio, MFD, etc. Second stage is ig-on where the main relays are closed and the converter powers the car from the main hybrid battery. Lastly, there's the start position and when you turn the key to this position and release, the engine starts, just like any regular car, but the difference is that there is no cranking of a starter motor, because the Prius doesn't have one. If the car has been running at temperature recently, the engine will shut off after about 30-seconds to a minute, otherwise, it goes through it's normal gas-wasting warm-up cycle (unlike the G2 Prius, the Classic does not have a Thermos to store hot coolant, so it has to warm the engine up from scratch every single time),
Chrichton's screed has little to do with reality, so it's a wonder if he gets any Prius details right.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Lola'05 @ Aug 25 2006, 07:28 PM) [snapback]309560[/snapback]</div> First, both the classic & the current Prius have "ignition" mode. As stated, the classic is more like a "normal" (non-Prius) car and in the current Prius II you just press the Power button twice. Next, remember this phrase: "artistic (or in this case, literary, though both words could be argued) license". It's almost as much fun reading a Patricia Cornwell novel where the character pulls back the hammer on a Glock, which has no hammer, or flicks off the safety, when the only safeties are in the trigger. There's a reason it's called fiction.
Okay, okay, I stand corrected. I was pretty sure I had read the description I gave somewhere on this board. Must have been for some other hybrid or something. Oh well...
