As I admitted in my last post, I've acquired a Toyota Prius and garaged the Mini to preserve its charming ways for posterity. The Prius is an interesting car because of its hybrid energy system as well as other features like the smart key, which I posted about on our firm site. But I'm beginning to have wishful, fond memories of my Mini because the Prius treats me like an idiot.
When I get in the car and turn it on, it immediately begins beeping to make me put on my seatbelt, not even giving me a few second to put it on before starting with the beep. Bad enough, but then the beeping accelerates and becomes more insistent if I don't buckle my seatbelt, regardless of whether I start driving. And if I release the seatbelt before turning the car off, it starts up again. In other words, you cannot be in this car without having your seatbelt buckled, regardless of whether you are moving! Sort of feels like Toyota telling me that they are going to make damn certain that I don't do the wrong thing, since I'm such a dodo.
Same treatment for my briefcase, which must be heavier than whatever weight Toyota programmed into the passenger seat as the minimum. So I can't put my briefcase on the passenger seat. In order to put it in the backseat, I must open the front door and then release the lock on the back door before opening the back door. (I could, of course, open the car from the passenger side, which unlocks all the doors, but then the briefcase would be on the other side of the car.)
When you put the car in reverse, it has what sounds like an industrial strength beeping sound to remind you that you are in reverse. My model has a sort-of cool video camera that also comes on when you put it in reverse, although the parallax effect on this camera is so severe that you can't really use it for precision reversing. But no matter because the car beeps at you (not at people behind you, which was the point of putting beepers on commercial and industrial vehicles) madly, distracting you from the video anyway.
The thought crossed my mind that perhaps the Prius is a newer model and therefore hasn't gone through Toyota's famous quality and user testing, but the first models were introduced more than four years ago and I have a 2006 model. Toyota did a basic redesign on the vehicle in 2004 (which is why people say to avoid that model year). Indeed, it was with some surprise that I discovered (when I finally read the manual to figure out if I had to manually lock the car, even though it magically unlocks itself) that the manual is written in Japlish: English written by Japanese speakers and never reviewed by native English speakers.
No, the car is old enough and Toyota has made enough of them and had enough time to figure out how fix dumb design decisions in the original versions. I think that perhaps I should avoid buying Toyotas in the future, since the company seems to have the attitude that its customers are too stupid to protect themselves. Is that true? Are all Toyota cars as controlling as the Prius? Or does that just come with the smug attitude of designers who have made a car that is supposedly more earth-friendly? (Actually, on that last point, I'm beginning to realize that you don't get such good mileage in a Prius if you don't religiously try to optimize its energy system. If I drive it like I drive other cars -- fast and aggressive, I don't get much better mileage than I get in my Mini!)
Hey Stewart,
Easy to turn the beeper off:
http://www.evnut.com/prius_beeper_disable.htm
could have also found info at
http://www.retrevo.com/search?q=turn+off+prius+beeper&sub=Search
Better for gadget info but can also use it for lots of things
Enjoy your Prius! I enjoy mine.
Posted by: Andrew Eisner | March 04, 2007 at 09:42 PM