Prius automatically shuts off?

My Truck cuts off the dome light and everything after 30 mins to keep from draining battery, you can close and reopen the door and the cycle starts over. I think the same here?

 

Normal, it does that incase you forget to. It works on time I believe. More in the hand book.

 

EZW1,

Haven't seen mention of this before.

Is it a feature of the '09?

I wonder, if a door is left ajar, does it completely shut down,
including interior lights left on?

It would be worth a test just to prove/disprove.

 

If the car is left ACC-ON for an hour, then it will turn off automatically. This is a design feature.

(ACC-ON is defined as the state where the MFD is on but the instrument panel lights are off. You can play the stereo in this mode; you cannot adjust the power windows or use the ventilation fan.)

If a door is left ajar, the interior lights will remain on indefinitely - and this is why some hapless owners have had to purchase a new 12V auxiliary battery sooner vs. later.

 

Pat, Patrick,

I forgot that current/past models have the timed shut down feature.

I keep thinking that at some point Toyota will relent and put a total shut down
feature in. It would lessen one of the more frequent complaints; a dead
12V battery.

Well, the '09 is really a carry-over model to bridge to the '10s.

Maybe next year in the Gen IIIs, Toyota will get it right.

 

EZW1,

You didn't say what happened to the map light when the car turned itself off.

Did the map light turn off too?

If the answer is yes, then there has been changes to the control algorithms.

In this event, you couldn't run the 12 V battery down as now the lights are
turned off, even though the map light switch is in the on position. This would
be real advancement.

If the light didn't go out, it doesn't tell us much without further probing. The
light might be kept burning because the pressure sensors in the drivers seat
sense that it is occupied. To test if this is the case, you'd have to repeat
what you've done, but exit the car, close the door, and wait until the car
shuts down. Now if the light stays on, nothing has changed in the
algorithms. If the light goes out, Eureka! there has been a change in the
control algorithm and it would be much harder to deplete the 12 V battery.

I'm being a little dogged about this because I believe that Toyota makes
small changes to how the car works without saying anything about it. As an
example, when I disconnect the 12V battery in my '08, I don't loose the
radio presets and others settings. This is not true for earlier year models.

By doing the second test above, you could determine if Toyota has made
another sneaky little change.

No big deal, but it would be nice for '09 owners to know.