Most Obscure Gen III Facts (way out there)

That's so cool - specifically for Virginia:

Qualified hybrid motor vehicles - Toyota Prius and Honda Insight model year 2007 or earlier, and the 2010 Toyota Prius. All Toyota Prius and Honda Insight models are subject to the $2 per year emissions fee when renewing the vehicle registration as required by the DEQ, Virginia Code § 46.2-1182.1.

(Per Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles)

Does that make a 2010 Prius driver an elitist?!?!?

.

 

Gerald - re-evaluating those pictures, it looks like you have a right-sided mount steering wheel. If so, the plan I was considering of buying the card holder panel and swapping it out isn't going to work, since it's molded for the right side of the car - not the left

.

 

Yes this is true for the Japanese domestic, Aus, UK and some Asian models. But you could get the European (continental) one, which is on the correct side.

 

I was messing with the sun visor one day and flipped the visor forward into a horizontal position and noticed that the light for the vanity mirror doesn't come on unless the visor is tilted in the vertical position!

Personally I would have designed the light to go on if you slid the door to expose the mirror no matter what the position of the visor was in! Props to the Toyota design/ engineering team!

 

Useful if you are new to the car, not real necessary when you have memorized all four positions, only 2 of which you use with any frequency and one which it will stay in only if you hold it there (N).

Now, how many people are going to rotate the shifter 180 degrees after deciding that pushing it forward to go backward and backward to go forward is pretty stupid? Yeah, I know, based on European manual trannys. Except that they have several forward gears so you really have no choice but to push the shifter backward to go forward in some gears so it is minimally excusable. Still another 'other cars work this way' design 'feature' that should have been 'rethunk' WAY back.

 

Which actually isn't nearly the financial pain of Nav vs no NAV in the '04, especially considering that the 2010 NAV includes the display which was already in every '04 built and you could not (and CAN not) get a OEM backup camera for the '04. I think the 'step up' in the '04 from the next package down was about $2700. There were a couple of other minor features as well but I don't recall what they were. Maybe the security system which isn't real important where I live.

 

Perhaps they figured you didn't need the light if you couldn't see in the mirror. However, (maybe not on the 2010, don't know) the map lights are hardly directional and there is no 'barrier' so if the passenger has their map light on, the driver still gets a lot of light. Maybe the visor light COULD have been used as a single seat map light.

 

Notice where geraldc lives. It is obvious that the US version doesn't have the card holder or the HUD. It looks like the display is in reverse.

 

I looked in the two fuse areas (inside left of driver's seat and right side under the hood) to see if the extra fuses from my old dearly beloved 1987 Toyota Corolla would work in the 2010 Prius (they won't). I noticed that there are three different spare fuses under the hood in that black fuse box - a 30, a 10, and a 7.5. Thoughtful!

 

I just find this odd ... according to the 2010 manual:

Hybrid battery air vent: There is an air intake vent on the side of the rear right seatback for the purpose of cooling the hybrid battery (traction battery). If the vent becomes blocked, the hybrid battery may overheat, leading to a reduction in hybrid battery output.

I'd have put it somewhere else but maybe that's why I don't design cars...

 

It's where it needs to be - right where the battery is -- the area has to accomodate the venting in proximity to the battery. Kinda like why we keep the pots and pans in the kitchen and not in the bathroom!

 

I'm with 60MPG on this one... I mean seriously, through the seatback?!? I did actually study hybrid design in college (had one on the drawing board long before the Prius was even a twinkle), so I'm not totally without experience here. If the battery needs to be vented, fine... but through the effin' seatback? Looks like an afterthought to me.

 

But does the oven really need to be vented along that wall?

I noticed that vent placement too, and it bothered me a bit. Why not along the floor like the Highlander, or in the same place on the other side, which is the side less likely to have a passenger in it or more likely to be flipped down for extra cargo area (hence less likely to be blocked by someone's body).

 

Wow, thanks for sharing that. I didn`t notice it at all, even when we tried the son`s car seat in the back for size on the test drive... We may have been totally covering it! I`ll have to note that somewhere so we don`t cover it bringing the car home from the dealer (or, well, forever - since once we put the seat in it isn`t going to be moving for a while!)

That does seem like a bit of an awkward location, even if it is the "best".

About the card holder mystery. In the Japanese version of the car, you can choose to have an ETC unit factory installed in that spot. ETC is... Electronic Toll Collection (I think that`s what it stands for) and it allows you to stick your ETC card or ETC compatible credit card into the slot and simply drive through ETC compatible toll gates without ever actually stopping the car. It`s great in Japan as pretty much all the highways are toll and all use the ETC system.
If you choose not to install the unit, instead of leaving an empty hole you get a plastic card holder type thing in the spot. (Basically a fake ETC unit.)

 

Now this makes a lot of sense.

 

So, if I have my son's carseat on the right side in the back, is it possible for me to actually damage the car? He only has the booster section and he probably doesn't cover the whole vent. Opinions?

 

I'm dropping a car seat in there as well and, while I don't think it will be an issue, it just seems like the wrong spot. I'm assuming that vent allows cool air in to the battery compartment, as opposed to letting warm air out. If I'm correct, I'd have rigged a small air intake under the car, just ahead of the battery compartment, allowing the movement of the vehicle to push air past the battery. (Water shedding, of course.)