Weak FM radio reception in 2010 Prius?

It looks the dealer forgot to mount the roof pole. The antenna is removed during the transport as you can see on this picture of my Prius deliverd to the dealer.
http://priuschat.com/forums/members...11-6-2009-picture3254-prius-emilfrey-0004.jpg

 

My 2010 III w Nav is my third Prius. I've lived in the same location and listened, or at least tried to listen, to the same FM stations. I've asked the local Toyota dealer's service department about the horrid FM and Sat reception in the 2010 several times. Once they made an "adjustment" that did nothing.

On a whim I went to toyota.com about two weeks ago and from the Contact Us page emailed them a fairly detailed description of the radio reception and delays in callers hearing my voice via the bluetooth phone connection.

A week after my email I received a phone call from someone in their support department. He asked a lot of detailed questions and asked if he could call me back. Two hours later he called back and asked if I could drop my car off at our dealer for a day. My local dealer's service manager then called to make an appointment. I'm dropping the car off this coming Tuesday and they are giving me a loaner. The service manager said one of Toyota's traveling senior technicians would be in town to look at my Prius and several others. He said their goal was to resolve my problems.

I suggested the service manager visit PriusChat and read these pages. Can any of you think of anything more I should provide the dealer?

 

Sounds as if Toyota might be waking up to the fact that the FM radio in the Prius is truly dreadful. I really hope that you get somewhere with them, my view is that the local dealers simply don't have the expertise to deal with the problem, which is almost certainly a design fault.

I've now replaced my radio with a cheap Chinese unit. FM reception is markedly better than the JBL system, although still not as good as in my previous Prius and nowhere near as good as the reception in the Honda I've just sold.

I'm sure the Prius is a challenging car in terms of potential radio interference sources, but Toyota really do need to come on here, read this thread and see for themselves the high level of reception problems.

Please keep us posted on what happens, particularly if Toyota actually come up with a fix!

Jeremy

 

Out of curiosity - is the FM radio reception poor(er) in the G3 with NAV or without - or is there no difference? This type of data may provide the service manager and the senior field tech some added information from which to start their investigation.

 

I'm not sure, but the data point I can add is that my UK model T4, with JBL sound system but no navigation package, is very poor.

There is evidence on other threads that the head units vary a fair bit from country to country - the EU versions have a completely different antenna connector, have RDS but don't support satellite radio. This may be relevant, as I think the problem is a combination of the car being an electrically noisy environment and the head units being relatively insensitive.

If I were to be truly cynical, I might suggest that these two issues may be linked. Maybe Toyota deliberately asked for a less sensitive FM radio from their supplier in order to mask the high RF noise level from the car.................

 

I think it's been discussed much that the issue is in the stock, JBL, and NAV radios (all G3) - though the complaints come mostly from JBL and stock G3 owners.

Probably the worst thing you can do when working with Toyota is to mention you know *anything* about PriusChat. For Toyota to recognize this as a problem means potentially swapping out as many radios as they have sold cars. That just won't happen.

 

I am either very lucky or the problem has been fixed in the basic radio. My FM reception is very good in the FM challanging Northern California Sierra Nevada foothills.

I drove some roads that I have driven many other times in cars with good radios. The FM reception was better than any of the other cars, places where all the others got noisy signals or just plin dropped out, the Priusnon-JBL el cheapo FM just kept working. The AM section OTOH, is a bit weaker than other radios but not a total flop.

Could we improve our radio reports by listing which radio we have, what month and year the car was manufactured (see the black info plate on the drivers door jamb), how we evaluated the radio (compared with know good radio, etc).?

Mine is
Date of manufactur: 05/2010
Radio: Basic non-JBL
Compared with several know good FM radios on familiar roads.
Result: FM reception is very good, better than several high end factory radios.

I don't doubt you guys are getting bad FM reception, but I'm not. I had read forum reports on the FM radios and fully expected to have to replace mine when I bought the car because I do a lot of driving in weak signal areas, but It's good.

 

Sounds like the factory may have put in a "fix" that worked at least as recently as 05/2010. Time to put the heat on to get all these crap radios recalled and fixed, I say.
My II sux, plain and simple. Multi-path distortion on nearly all stations, all the time.

 

I still have no update from Toyota Germany. I went to the dealer for some minot glue issue on the side bumpers (are they called like this?), and he also has received no information.
I will write the n-th email to Toyota Customer Service Germany, asking for an update to bug them and remember they have sold me a car with a faulty radio. Let's see if something happens.
Sure is, that if I am the only person in Germany writing them, they will never to anything...(I need you guys in the US - it feels like I am alone here in Germany!!!)

 

I have the same fm problem poor reception. Took to the dealer and he is going to switch out the radio will let you know if this helps. Its so frustrating that I turn off the radio, I live less than 30 miles from fm station and signal comes and goes. Did not have the problem on my 2006.

 

I have just written a "somewhat" nasty email to Toyota Germany Customer Service.
Even though they asked the dealer to check and he confirmed what I told them in January, since then nobody of Toyota central contacted me to figure out what is wrong with my radio.
I have reminded them that they are bound to deliver a defect free car, and that my radio since 10 months is defective. Let's see what happens.
This is so very annoying. And I also don't believe that they haven't found a solution yet. As claimed 2 months ago from Toyota Customer Service Germany.
Maybe it is an expensive fix and will provide it only if one insists a lot? I like to listen to Radio but all the extra noise I hear, despite the good reception (the radio keeps the signal where my previous car would drop miserably), make it impossible - it is unnerving. I end up listening essentially only to my iPod. And it is a pity, because the loudspeaker set up is really good, considering it is a stock radio/speaker set up.

 

I agree with you and crossing my fingers for your success. I got the similar reply from local Toyota, they asked to go to the dealer for the checkproof, which was useless as delaer locality is inside the city with the goog FM coverage.
I can say the situation can be worse. I installed the chinese HU and the FM tuner is worse than OEM one, but I wanted the big screen GPS navigation and the rearview camera. Despite this, I use the FM just during my daily commute and on long trips the DVD or SD is deployed.

 

My May 2010 built date with a non-JBL El Cheapo radio works great ( see my comments a few posts back). You might try taking a test drive in a 2010 built after May with the basic radio to see if it works any better than yours. I don't know if I am extremely lucky or if they fixed the problem.

If Toyota has in fact started putting better radios in their newer production, they aren't going to advertise to owners of previous production cars.

My FM reception is great, even compared to the Monsoon radio in my German built 2005 VW Jetta (Borra in Europe IIRC) my AM reception is a bit weak.

 

Paja, i loved your country when I was there 2 years ago.:rockon:

Try this. Take a car with a good radio and find stations in a distant city that are clearly received on the car with the good radio, then show the dealer the difference between a good radio and your radio.

 

XS650, I already exchanged the radio to chinese one (see Chinese HU thread), so for this proof I have to replace it with stock, which I do not plan to do in close future. But thanks for the advise.
BTW - plan the 2nd visit to Czech - will be much more cheaper here for USD visitors then 2 years ago - because the EUR/CZK/USD exchange ratio.:usa:

 

Sure, if one does not complain it means that either he does not use FM radio (many listen a lot to iPods and the such), or he/she is happy with it.

What annoys me, is that if it is really the case that they found a fix, they should at least notify me, who complained since practically day 1 of receiving the car, after the dealer wrote them (!!) telling they have the same issue on their car, and nothing has happened!

I got a weird reply today from the Customer Service (at least they reply and quickly) telling me that they have asked the dealer to make a formal technical request or something like that. I didn't get it - will call tomorrow to know exactly what is going on. And only because I wrote again, otherwise nothing would have happened (it's already the 4th-5th time I am writing)

Next step, I am contacting Toyota Europe if I don't see a serious reaction (e.g. sending a technician to verify and probe, offering me alternatives (e.g. different radio model that *works*), etc.).

After that, it's to the Japanese directly, I'll find a way - as I am getting really annoyed of the no-reaction; if I wanted cheap and sub-class service, I could have bought a 10k cheaper Fiat or VW or anything else in the range. I bought Japanese, I want Japanese customer support. Right?

 

Over on the UK Prius Yahoo group, one person has had a response from Toyota that may indicate that they are at least working on this. His dealer has tried to fix the problem on two GIII Prius' and has reported to Toyota that replacing the head unit and aerial does not fix the problem. Apparently Toyota have responded that they know about the problem, are working on a solution and will let the dealer know as soon as it is ready.

Maybe we will see a fix from Toyota. We can but hope.............

 

Quick update. My dealer tested the radio and noticed the static on a nearby FM station. They then paired two different BT phones and both had the delay in answering. They went over the radio with Toyota's support staff and determined that a new radio/navigation package would solve the problem. The new unit has been ordered and will be installed next week.

All through this Toyota has been very polite and helpful. Frankly, I'm impressed. I'll be even more impressed if the new radio solves the problems.

 

Sounds like good news, David. I'm hearing other reports that Toyota are starting to take this seriously, here in the UK someone on the UK Prius group has reported a similar response from Toyota.

By accident, I've been able to gain a little more insight into the radio problem and I'm not wholly convinced that the radio is entirely to blame. In my experiments with changing head units, which included fitting a Chinese unit (which did perform a little better than the standard JBL system unit), I've now fitted the Kenwood DNX 5220 that I had fitted to my Honda CR-V. I know this unit well and the FM radio in it worked very well indeed in the Honda. Fitting it to the Prius has allowed me to compare radio performance between the two cars, under similar conditions and with exactly the same head unit. The interesting thing is that the Kenwood performance is very similar to the Chinese unit, better than the stock radio but still poorer by far than when it was fitted to the CR-V.

I have to conclude that its either the car, or, perhaps the aerial and cabling, that is the root cause of the problem. If this is the case, then its potentially a fairly straightforward fix for Toyota, as replacing aerials has to be cheaper than swapping head units.

That the problem is somewhere in the car, cabling or aerial would explain why changing the head unit often doesn't make a big difference. One thing I have noticed is that, although interference is there on the Kenwood, it isn't so disturbing, as the unit doesn't sort of allow the signal to completely breakup. This maybe just down to the way in which each radio reacts to interference, with the stock unit being more dramatic (and unpleasant sounding) when the signal starts to break up.

Jeremy

 

It is a good news, David. Keep us informed, pls.