What'd happen if you press the P while you drive?

Right you are. I stand corrected. Pretty much every other button, but not the Power button.

Tom

 

Tom - you are in the 2010 Forum and I believe these are very incorrect suggestions for a 2010 Pruis. Quoting from the 2010 book, page 155 under "Cautions" - "Do NOT under any circumstances, shift the shift lever to "R", "N", or push the "P" (park) position switch while the vehicle is moving. Doing so can cause significant damage to the transmission and may result in a loss of vehicle control."

Additionally: "Do not shift the shift lever to "N" while the vehicle is moving. Doing so may cause the engine brake not to operate properly and lead to an accident.

This is totally different from Generation II Prius models where shifting the Park button would automatically put the car in Neutral. Just another mistake Toyota made with the 2010!

So, 2010 owners - if we do develop an accelerator problem, it appears our only option is to press the POWER button for the 3+ seconds and hope it turns off!

 

All the information posted is good to know just in case. Remember them, may be one or all would work in the real situation. But all tests I have seen posted have been with a properly operating Prius. No one knows for use what would happen in an actual runaway condition.
I suspect there are some hoaxes out there also for the attention or to make Toyota look bad.
BC.

 

Nonsense. Where do you get such ideas? The HSD in the Gen II and Gen III work in essentially the same fashion. My information is correct.

As for shifting to N, yes, it removes dynamic braking and power from the drivetrain. That is the purpose of Neutral. The only reason to shift into N while driving is if you want to disconnect the power, such as in a runaway situation or for cleaning the brakes.

Please don't spread false information. Many people are confused enough without it.

Tom

 

Tom - do you have a 2010 Prius owner's manual in front of you that you are reading, page 155?

Is Toyota's information on this caution page....false?

 

I accidently hit the P button several months ago as it is a big target. I was surprised when the car beeped and then lost power... Oh yea I hit the P button accidently.

Since then I've tried the N but I have counted 2 seconds with the 1001 1002 and that seems long under normal circumstances. The 3 second delay for the power button down on the side of the steering wheel while accelerating out of control at 94 mph? Wow that would be tough... Oh yea that P button is so big and works so quickly and is within easy reach...

 

Hello PasPrius,

Are you talking about the Power Button that turns the car on.....or the Park Button? Which one did you hit?

 

Toyota's manuals contain a lot of legal CYA verbiage that have little to do with the real world. Shifting to neutral while moving is never recommended for any car and is illegal in many locations. This comes from the difficulty of reengaging a conventional transmission at speed once it has been disengaged. Of course with the Prius the gears are never really disengaged - it's only a matter of field currents in the MGs.

Even with a normal transmission, it's by far better to shift into N than suffer the results of a runaway car. With the Prius it's no big deal. Try it sometime, hopefully before you need it in an emergency.

Tom

 

That may be. In the Gen II it only takes about a half second for the Park button to shift into N.

Any other Gen III drivers who have tested this?

Tom

 

I pressed "Park" button three times while moving this morning... no problems... beeps and shifts to N as I said in my previous post.
D to N takes no more than 1 second for me.

 

Tom.....the neutral button is really not our concern as we understand "neutral" and would use that if necessary. What we are trying to equate with Toyota's manual, is your statement of: "Park button - Press the park button. The Prius instantly shifts to N. All systems remain active. To resume driving, pull the shifter to D." Since many things have changed between Gen. II and Gen. III, we can't assume this is the same on the 2010 as it was on our 2005. (We do know it worked on the 2005 because we tried it.) Of course we don't have our Generation II manual anymore, and don't remember how the "cautions" were worded. Were these clearly explained in that manual or was it also written in "CIA verbiage?

 

Sorry yes the P for Park... It beeps and immediately puts it into N, a little shocking the first time when it is accidently pushed. A friend of mine that has the 06 said he hit the P while moving slowly and that IS BAD. Locks up the wheels n such. But while moving faster it just beeps like 2 times and no more forward momentum. I tried it with the accelerator to the floor and it goes to N and sends the engine to idle rather quickly. :cheer2:

 

It works with the Gen III. Several Gen III owners have tried it and report that it works exactly as it did with the Gen II.

The Gen II manual also contains CYA language, such as telling owners to press P, and then Power, when pressing power directly does the same thing. Toyota writes really crappy manuals.

Tom

 

Well the southern California "runaway" has taught me something I didn't know about my cars (both Gen II); while I knew that you could shut down the car by pressing the Power button for 3 seconds, and also by disconnect the power-train by shifting to neutral, I was unaware of what effect the park button had when moving. So based on some of yesterday's postings on simular threads I played around last night and this morning. Here are my observations:

When the care is at very low speed (1 mph or less) the shifter and the park button do exactly what you tell it to, immediately. So if you are like me, you back out of the driveway, slap the shifter onto drive immediately release it and go on your merry way.

However...

If your rolling with any speed (I'm still talking under 10 mph) a slap and release of the shifter into neutral does nothing. So if one's expectation is that a quick flip into neutral will disengage the drive-train they would be surprised when it doesn't happen and it could then be reported as "broken". If you hold the shifter in neutral it will disengage the drive-train.

What I discovered from the threads here on PriusChat, is that if you momentarily press the park button while rolling, (at anything other than crawl) the car will immediately shift to neutral and beep twice at you (likely to tell you that you did something unintended, or to tell you that you were a DA for trying to do such a thing). Regardless, you're in neutral, coasting, with no harm to the ICE or drive-train.

One final thing, all this focusing on power steering and brakes, you don't need them, especally power steering. Power steering helps at low speeds, at higher speeds it takes very little force to get the car to turn. If at high speeds power steering had a real effect it would be at the expense of the drivers' feel of the road and that's not a good thing.


Howard

 

I beg to differ...
Yesterday on the way home I used the shift to Neutral to test what would happen in my 2010 Prius IV.

I floored the gas pedal on a straight stretch of road and waited until the car's speed was over 70MPH. While holding down the gas pedal, I moved the shifter to N for about a second. The car shifted into neutral, the engine revs slowed and the car just was coasting at that point.
I repeated the above five different times to be sure it was working.

If I ever had a stuck pedal, I would use the shift to neutral technique.

 

Feeling a lot better about this car after reading actual reports. The manual is very poorly written in regard to the shift levers! Thanks for all the input and clarification.

 

You could change that statement to read "The manual is poorly written." It's astounding how many things we have to explain; ones that should be clearly explained in the manual but aren't.

Tom

 

That's why I find it bothersome that people are blaming someone whose car went out of control and hesitated to put it into N, saying that he should have read his manual and had it figured out beforehand. Had he read the owner's manual, he would have hesitated to put it into neutral because it may have said not to under any circumstances, as quoted above.

Thanks Tom for clarifying the Park and R functions. I honestly wouldn't feel completely confident putting the car into N in a crisis - like I said in another thread, it's not something I do by rote - but I feel confident I could hit P without a thought. Someone else was talking about "practicing" putting the car into N, which is crazy when we have the P button. Also, now I understand that if you don't quite hit the N notch and it goes up to R, it's just as good. This info makes me more comfortable with the situation, and I wish Toyota would be clearer about these options for this car. It would allay a lot of confusion and fear.

 

Further, if you turn off the car while moving you don't loose power brakes. Power steering yes, but not the brakes. You can know this to be true if you just press the brake pedal when the car is parked and off. Often the brake boost pump will burp when you do this. It's always powered and ready to keep pressure in the system.

As far as why the manual advises not to shift to inappropriate "gears" while moving, it -may- be to ensure you don't create voltage spikes in the HSD. For example, if moving backwards and you go to "D" without stopping, you will create a potential voltage spike situation due to the reversing of the electric motors (reverse is electric only, no engine power is used, other than to generate some electric power, so the motor/generator will be generating reverse power when the HSD tries to feed it forward power). I've done this a lot with Pearl with no damage (yup, I'm lazy/in a hurry too often and shift before I stop moving), though recently I decided I would reform and do it right.