The Toyota Prius - a great little car but soooooo annoying...

2007-06-29T19:43:55+02:00

It occurred to me today while driving to work that the Prius really is a great little car but it's spoiled to some extent by some very strange decisions made by Toyota.

You get into the car, push the keycard into a slot, press a button and you're away. It's quiet, never fails to start up, sips petrol like a diesel and leaves hardly any emissions behind it. Can cruise at over 100mph if needed or potter about quietly on electic power only. So what's the problem?

My 2006 Prius has an amazingly annoying feature, it beeps incessantly

1) Stick it into reverse gear - it beeps constantly with no way to disable it on the European versions. So every time I have to park it - beep beep beep beep....

2) Open the door for any reason with the card in the slot - beep beep beep beep....

3) Open the door with the lights on - beep beep beep beep....

2 and 3 I can live with, they are useful and can prevent you leaving lights on or getting out of the car with the card in the slot. 1 is just ridiculous, I don't need an incessant beep to tell me I'm in reverse gear - I know, I put it there. If it beeped once it would be ok, if it could be disabled it would be ok. As it is, it's just a damned annoyance and I cannot understand why Toyota decided we needed it.

The car has the most aggressive traction control I have ever come across

Driving to work this morning on wet roads I was amazed at just how aggressive the traction control is. It doesn't just reduce power when a wheel loses traction, it feels like it kills it completely for a second. Far from being safer, it's actually dangerous. It can leave you stranded halfway across the road with no power for what feels like an eternity.

Again, no way to turn it off, you're stuck with this unneccesary 'feature'. I don't need traction control. I've tried cars with traction control that can be turned off. It's invariably easier, quicker and safer to move off without traction control interfering when its set up this way. For the few people who treat the accelerator pedal like an on/off switch it might be useful. For the rest of us, a means to turn the traction control off is required...please.

The car thinks it knows best - all the time

The Prius strives to be a zero emissions vehicle, even using fuel to get the catalytic convertor warmed up. That's fine unless you just need to move the car a few feet for some reason. There's an electric mode button which the car completely ignores unless it's warmed up. So it uses petrol and causes unneccesary pollution to get the cat warmed up while you move the car a few feet and shut it down again. There may be some technical reason for this or it may just be that the Toyota engineers decided they knew better than the driver what was required at any moment.

While using the elctric mode button on the move, it stays in electric mode until you reach 31 mph. Coincidence that that's 1 mph above the limit for built up areas or are Toyota engaging in social engineering???

Switching the front demister off automatically turns the aircon on....ARRRGH! Why?

The car has interlocks on EVERYTHING.
You can't start it up properly unless your foot is on the brake pedal (since the thing cannot actually start in gear, what's the point of this interlock?).
You can't put it in reverse or forward gear without your foot on the brake.
You can't use the selection screen of the sat nav system when the car's moving, why do Toyota not trust their customers to be able to use common sense?

Life with the car

Don't get me wrong, I really do like this car but it still amazes me how Toyota managed to make it so annoying to drive and live with....

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The Toyota Prius - a great little car but soooooo annoying...