Prius shopping, nobody told you?

That's actually a very good question- Why the series of complicated operations (eg, shift up/down, brake on/off, hold this button for 5 seconds and open and close the door 6 times, sacrifice 3 goats to Cthulu, dance counterclockwise around your car naked 3 times under a full moon, except if its a Tuesday in which case you go clockwise*) vs. a nice uncomplicated menu selection?

Heck even the dealers have trouble with a common operation like programming new keys/fobs, but there's a perfectly good MFD with touch screen input available, and dealers could use the THHT- there is really no need for the complicated door opening, button pushing, pedal stomping maneuvers, so it makes you wonder what the heck these guys were smoking when the wrote the software..

If they wanted to prevent casual or accidental changes, the simple thing would have been to require a programming interlock or jumper to be installed before the programming could be changed..


* Actually, if you've looked at the procedures for emissions test mode and alarm system passive/active mode changes the procedures are not far off from this..

 

Hi Tech sometimes carries a degree of High Stress, just the way it is with the Prius is all....much like High Performance usually coincides with High Maintenence.....but, between the two comparisons, I'd take Hi Tech anyday, and learn to adapt to my changing world. It took me a couple of days to fully go through the kinks and bugs, but it's the best car I've owned once I fully understood her moods :wink:

 

high tech is high stress because we nearly almost always overcomplicate the problem.

90% of problems i see are solved by "thoroughly" checking the basics.

the other 9.7% of the problems comes from users who refuse to go back and check the basics because they think they know so much about their computer that they are qualified to eliminate the obvious but at the same time are not smart enough to figure out the problem

tech support is nothing but glorified baby sitting

 

Here is the thing. The THHT is a pretty straight forward device to use. It is hierarchial menu driven and as such requires that the tech working on the car can read the repair manual and the screen on the tester. So, programming a new fob for 04-05 Prius is basically pretty straight forward. It requires that at least one master key be around for the programming, but that is more of a security measure rather than just plain inconvenience.

The reason the touch screen doesn't interface with user options is because those options are stored in a different computer system than the MFD is connected to. On top of that, manufactures of vehicles want changes to the computer systems on their vehicles to be very deliberate. Meaning that if you want to add a new coded key or change the backup beep, you need to know what you are doing and you must want to do it. Plus, the Prius is basically an embedded system. Embedded computer systems are not designed to be easy to use, so much as they are designed to accomplish a specific task or set of tasks.