I messed up. What do i do now?

Warning... don't stand between 2 Priuses!

 

No more dangerous than standing inside a human sized microwave... Toyota should sell protective farraday cage clothing to all owners to protect from the wireless charging.

Actually there is some interesting work being done with wireless power transmission in the terrahertz frequency spread that would probably allow two somewhat close vehicles to charge eachother wirelessly without danger to humans.

 

But of course Those nuts and bolts just come apart as soon as they see it

 

A series diode would do the trick to start the Prius, while providing good reverse voltage protection. Disconnect the battery negative first, so the load current will be low to start the car. Then, after car is running, and the jump cable disconnected, reconnect the ground.

 

A parallel diode and 30amp circuit breaker would give better protection and no voltage drop penalty, but if you wanted to be rely sure a series diode could be added as well. Total cost no more than £10 surly cheap insurance remembering it could be the wife getting assistance from some well meaning but not so knowledgeable member of the public or tow truck driver.

 

Yeah, $10GBP per vehicle to prevent something that if taken care of properly should never happen.

There were over a million units sold as of early 2008, and if each one had $15 extra worth of parts, that is $15,000,000.00 extra... Have to think large scale here people.

 

I was not suggesting Toyota should have fitted protection but if they had in production the cost would have been minimal possibly as low as (in American terms) 25Cents, but surely $15 would be money well spent.

 

For those sorts of currents, it wouldnt be 25cents, but probably a dollar or two in million unit quantities. Even still, that is $1million lost to prevent something that shouldn't ever happen.

While they are at, they should have fitted the car with a second spare tire in case you get a flat, put the donut on, and never get it fixed.

 

Of course accidents should never happen... that's why we don't have air bags seat belts, fuses, bumpers. It's likely less than a dollar per car to protect against several thousand so it must be very unlikely at all to not be worth it, but since it wouldn't be a selling point they kept the buck.

 

Accidents are not always controlable. A dead 12v battery or any situation that requires jump is always a preventable incident. Always. There are warning signs of a dead battery, as well as preventitive replacement. Leaving lights on or the radio on is user error. Being side swiped by another vehicle is not something you can always prevent.

I dont think any car out there has reverse polarity protection for jump starting. It is a rare event if needed, and when it is needed a little bit of thinking will prevent any problems.

 

Is the cost of crossing polarity the same in other vehicles?

If a car should never need boosting why did they put the boosting point under the hood?

I don't think it's a big deal... I can buy the cables with autosense etc (or I would if I wasn't the only one that drives the car), but there are lots of things in the car that I didn't ask for and am never going to use and they did those things. Oh well.

 

Yup! My boys helped "mom" jump the car a couple of weeks back. Still in the "trenches" chasing down "rabit trails"! Yes they were taught correctly...but they got in a hurry...you can imagine the rest...and don't think "A Modest Proposal" hasn't crossed my mind!

 

No. In older vehicles lacking electronics, the cost of reverse jumping is zero, assuming you don't hurt yourself in the process.

In modern cars there is a great risk of frying electronics; the more electronics, the greater the cost. The Prius is essentially a rolling computer game, so you have a lot of expensive electronics to fry.

Tom