Gen 5 Prius and Prius Prime owners thread

When they come with a spare, I'll check back.

That's only ~2.3 seconds following distance. Check out attached spreadsheet I cobbled:



2 seconds is the bare minimum recommended. Four seconds is more leisurely, safer, better for mpg:

 

No LE for us.

 

Makes the guy you're following nervous too, lol.

 

Using my calculator, that's slightly less than one second, lol.



Can you picture a convoy of 5th gen's, all with smart cruise set to that minimum distance.

That's not in the cards, and really a moot point: US LE's don't come with spare. I'm hunkered down in fox-and-the-grapes mode, heh.

 

I think my car is speed sensitive with respect to the distance. Haven't used it off a freeway. The BSM warning seems to be though. Appears to alert for faster incoming cars as they are further away.

I learned the 2 second rule, and car length per 10 mph of speed. These work out about the same.

I only use cruise control on road trips. The traffic on my usual ones tends to be enough to make a dumb cruise tedious to use at times. DCC and LKA does reduce the stress of driving those trips.

 

I wonder if the new TSS3.0 has a lane keep assist that doesn't wiggle like the useless one on the TSS2.0 on my 2021 Prime. It is so useless and irritating I never use it.
And also DCC not really helpful for me as it starts to brake too soon, instead of beeping or something to tell you it is time to overtake the guy in front of you going slower than a Prius... I practically never use it. DCC would be nice if the car could change lanes automatically. Maybe TSS4.0...? With an electric Prius?
I often end up using the standard CC. DCC works well only if traffic is very smooth and uniform. Which is never. Too many people cutting in front of you, or doing 50 when the speed limit is 65. Because doing the speed limit is SO hard. And when there is an incline, it is even harder to press harder on the accelerator to keep the speed. Or using the CC that they don't even know they have in their car, since 1970....

 

45 years ago my job required that anyone driving a company car had to attend the company's safety training. We were taught the 2 second rule and after a while everyone got used to using it.

Even today, one of the first things I do in a new (to me) car is to check the brakes to ensure that I can stop it in that two seconds. If I can't react that quickly I decrease my speed and increase the safety buffer. That works great.

That works well when used with a buffer gap that's large enough to absorb the minor speed variations caused when someone in the convoy taps the brakes in response to real or imagined obstruction or hazard. The bigger gap eliminates the cascade effect caused by the impact of the reaction time once you notice the brake lights on the car ahead of you .

You can use google to find the most recent experiments.

 

You have • Lane Departure Alert with Steering Assist (LDA w/SA) and • Lane Tracing Assist (LTA) but it sounds like you need a "lane keep assist" that works just like TSS2.0 only different. And the DRCC that you don't use does some nice tricks, like it does not treat it as an emergency if someone decides that they just HAVE to cut in front of your Prius simply because their car needs to go faster than you are. As long as they are accelerating and are already going faster than you, the DRCC maintains the same speed and does not freak you out.

The key to getting the most out of a new car is to learn it's capabilities and the appropriate times to use it the way it was designed to be used. I have roughly 50,000 freeway miles on my 2017 prime, virtually all of that using DRCC. I really like the DRCC when I'm driving for long distances, like 4 to 10 hours in a day at 70 MPH (legally). It took a little while to learn that the DRCC is NOT for driving on curvy mountain roads nor for downtown city streets. It is nice in the carpool lanes in the LA basin. That's where traffic is very unpredictable but the DRCC has not let me down yet.

If you want a BEV, there are a couple dozen different makes and models to choose from. Some are nicely made and nicely designed. Others sure are pretty, so you have quite an assortment to choose from. Currently, the Prius Prime is still one of the most efficient EVs on the road.

 

The car with the dumb cruise control I was talking about was the Camry, and every one I owned before it.
I never used cruise control on my commute or daily trips because I don't find driving them tedious enough to warrant it.

 

This mirrors my experience. On the straighter interstate roads I like the system but in the city it always feels like I'm fighting it.

 

Got my 2023 XLE on Monday & I'm impressed. First post here but my initial thoughts are how surprised I am at the small trunk space. There's a large block of styrofoam that raises the floor up 6(?) inches and really wastes space. Hopefully there will be a new aftermarket "floor" made someday so I can reclaim all that lost space. Even then, the truck area really shrunk from earlier models.

All isn't negative though. Great features, responsiveness & fun to drive!

 

I sound like such a terrible driver now. For reference, my typical driving is rush hour traffic expressway driving, with a 55MPH speed limit and a more practical traffic speed of 20-30. Unless you weave between lanes like a loon.

I found the setting to reduce acceleration, by default is was in the middle, there was one step lower and one higher. I also increased the follow distance. This does result in me looking like the "typical Prius" driver, a rock in the middle of a stream .

Front radar was obstructed easily by a little sleet on the drive home. No way to dismiss the warning.

The black looks really nice in the sunlight, now that we have some. It's got a lot of blue sparkles.

I don't find the lane tracking to be a problem. It's stays straight when lane lines are present, it does veer a little when adjacent to a merge with no line. Going over a solid line results in a rumble of the steering wheel.

 

congrats!
please report frequently on all your impressions.
all the best!