Toyota recalls 340,000 Priuses globally to fix parking brake issue

I agree. Dumb thing to have and nice to be fixed. But to make it dangerous, from what I understood, you would need to park on a slope, apply the parking brake, then put it in neutral, go away and wait to see if the brake disengages. One could easily come up with a list of more stupid and more dangerous things you can do to your car than this.

Out of curiosity, I thought this is all mechanical. How the cable can disengage?!

 

That's... rather scary, that there's actually been deaths relating to this. I don't mean that the problem described is scary, but rather... I mean, the car is very annoying about its warnings to get it into park, if you're in any other selection, and open the door. You'd have to be a complete idiot to not notice that warning.

(Granted, from what I've seen, Americans are bad at using parking brakes in automatics anyway, so I'm not sure how many people here would actually be affected - most people I see just use the park selection on the transmission, and let the car rock against the park pawl.)

As far as the speedometer changes... I'm sure one could retrofit the new build parts (probably the instrument cluster and maybe the head unit), but it'd be an ordeal, and it's not a failure of the car that the older models didn't have it. Automakers are not required to say that they deleted a feature on the Monroney, unless they listed it on the Monroney before, then they need to remove that. It's on you to ask the right questions, do your research, read the owner's manual (which Toyota offers for free online - it'd be another story if it were like, say, VW, where you have to buy the owner's manual to read it beforehand).

Also, note that Toyota provides two different owner's manuals for the 2016 Prius - one for post-February cars, one for earlier cars. So, your car is functioning as advertised (at least as far as the instrumentation goes - the airbag recall (which actually doesn't show up for my December 2015-build car) and the parking brake recall are another story).

Turns out that the feature was actually claimed to be present in the manual, see below.

 

It is dangerous to the 19-year-old driver from Michigan who drives over to Ontario, Canada for a night of bar hopping. The drinking age is 18 in Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec. Drunk young adults not proficient in math have a problem converting English to metric units. A speed limit of 70 kilometers per hour might result in them driving 70 miles per hour. Young adults could always text their friends while driving to ask for the speed conversion factor from miles to kilometers but, that would be dangerous.

 

Because, you know, someone with enough poor judgement to get behind the wheel drunk, is going to bother to change their speedometer to km/h. Or, if they had a conventional speedometer, they're totally going to actually look at the km/h numbers, rather than the mph numbers that they're used to looking at.

 

I asked about retrofits. Toyota said no and the company that converts cars between countries said no. Before purchasing my 2016 Prius, I did my due diligence by reading the entire owner's manual, visiting the auto show in Detroit, Michigan and more. The owner's manual provided by Toyota with my vehicle lists that feature but it doesn't work and doesn't have a clear and conspicuous disclosure that this feature was, at the time, vaporware.

Who wouldn't be displeased with Toyota selling vehicles that do not include working software features listed in their owner's manual? As I said before, the Toyota advanced technology package does not seem very advanced if my vehicle can not switch between English and metric units. If Toyota disclosed they were disabling this feature in their vehicle, I could have waited to purchase until they fixed this issue.

If I understand you correctly, Toyota has an owners manual for the Prius made in January and February for the US market and a different owner's manual for March 2016 and later. Please let me know where I would find the two different 2016 Prius owner's manuals on-line?

 

Unfortunately, the people I meet while responding to their motor vehicle accident did use bad judgement. As a firefighter/paramedic, I am unable to select the patients I meet. Like talking on a cell phone or texting while driving, converting MPH to KPH requires multitasking while driving which may increase the chances of an accident.

 

OK, I just grabbed the correct version of the manual, and yeah, it's in there.

So, yeah, you've got a case against Toyota, to make them retrofit the hardware. (I do believe it's possible, although it may end up not being cost-effective for them, and they may not have instructions that allow them to do it. Doesn't mean that Toyota's engineers can't do it.)

Your best approach may be going for the lemon law, actually, I suspect, if you want the vehicle replaced.

Interestingly, the late-build manual actually says "if equipped" for the km/h vs. MPH setting.

Edit: Manuals are at owners.toyota.com. Don't sign in, just tell it you have a 2016 Prius. But, the one for your car (same for my car) actually says it has the feature, so...

I should really get my Techstream back up and running (Win10 update reset the licensing) to see if there's an option for that, too.

 

is toyota quality going down, or are their lawyers winning the war?

 

Can you tell me what else wsha

I agree with you bhtooefr. According to the on-line manual which I reviewed before purchase, my Prius should have this feature. I wonder what other features Toyota deleted or changed after February 2016 in the 2016 Prius?

 

So what I still don't understand is with this clip/boot cover or whatever, what exactly will it do to prevent this stupidity? The car is on and in gear, the driver pops out and this "clip" or "boot cover" supposed to do what?

 

Well drove by my local Toyota dealer this evening, and there were large empty areas on their front lot, looks like they have pulled all GEN IV off the lot.....this will not help the 2016 Prius sales numbers!

 

There's two different topics in this thread, I was responding to FF/Medic's issue about not being able to see KM/H on his speedo.

 

or... you know.... use that phone for a GPS or speedo app. I think the bigger danger here is that the driver is drunk, not that they can't see km/h on the dash.

But really if you're going 70mph in a 70 km/h (about 45) zone and you can't tell it's a bit fast you're either way too drunk to be driving or you're way too dumb to be driving. Do you really not think that you're grasping at straws here?

 

Just taking a guess, but I imagine it prevents you from being able to kick the cable off the linkage with your toe so that when you set the parking brake it actually does set. In your example it would do nothing because you forgot to set the parking brake, like I'd guess 82% of the rest of the US population.

 

I see. It is always helpful to include the quote. In terms of the speed, I recently read all 800 pages, and played with every possible setting and there is no switch between miles and km. My 3(T) was built in July. I my old Gen 2 it was, but since it was just a button on the dash board I got confused a few times after pressing it accidently.

 

So car is on and in gear...rolling at 80mph and the driver opens the door and step out....recall.... hahaha

 

I think if some governments said "yes" they would change their tune.

By comparison, in Gen 3: a dedicated kmh/mph button on the dash. One push, done.

I once had a coworker remark, regarding the project we were on: "We're moving backwards". I got to thinking about that, heady stuff.

 

Late to this thread, I had a Prius 2003 and have a 2010 that I'd like to share:

• Kill the creep - it is dangerous and serves no purpose but to replicate a defect of older, hydromechanical transmissions. When the car is stopped and nothing applied on the accelerator, there should be no motive power to the wheels. In fact, the car should automatically be in 'hill hold mode' so it won't roll forward and backwards. Having done Prius 2003, dingy towing, the only way it works is to leave the car in READY and "D". But this potentially means the space between the tow vehicle and the Prius becomes a serious, safety hazard zone. Creep provides no useful service unless one attaches reins to the steering wheel and a 3d strap to the brake and insists on operating the car as if it were a mule or water buffalo.
• Automatic "parking paw" - when the car is stopped, driver seat belt off, no driver seat weight, in anything but "N", and driver side door open, set the parking paw. Every one of these conditions is detectable to the control laws. Setting the parking paw is software controllable. DO THE RIGHT THING!

Now based upon my BMW i3-REx driving experience, the Prius should use maximum regen when moving in "D" and the accelerator is lifted. It regens today but not maximum. I've had the pleasure of 'one pedal driving' in the BMW i3-REx and it really is a better way to control the car; easily mastered, and; simpler than today's orchestrated controls. KISS.

Understand I still like the Prius but when exposed to something better, adapt or die.

Bob Wilson

ps. As for idiots, making a car idiot proof leads to a better class of idiots who are even more entertaining.

 

It depends on the definition of 'better'. All those features come with a price tag. And if you take cost/benefit ratio, there is no bang for the buck. In $50,000 car maybe. But I would rather pay $25,000 and press 'Park' button each time I stop. You cannot make a car completely idiot proof. One could always drive off the road and hit a telegraph post. And if you override this with software, one could still hit his car with a hammer.

Einstein once said: two things are infinite - The Universe and human stupidity

 

I kind of think the ongoing debate over whether this flaw is Dangerous, Deadly, or just Stupid, a waste of time.

Evidently there exists a condition that can result in the parking brake not working.
To NOT panic owners, and perhaps limit liability, Toyota is presenting the criteria for failure as being pretty benign. That is a situation where the owner/operator would have to be complicit in the failure of the system by making some choices that very few if any of us would ever make purposely.

But they ARE recalling a huge number of the newly designed Prius. This is bad publicity and costly, they wouldn't be doing it, if it wasn't needed. Whether fair or not, no automaker wants the words "Potentially Dangerous" and "Brake Failure" tied to their vehicle.
And personally? Whether it would take a Rube Goldberg machine like series of actions for any negative outcome to result IMO is really not the important thing about the issue. The issue is the parking brake cable can evidently fail. This is not good and should be fixed.

Credit Toyota....well, they don't have too much choice, but credit Toyota for fixing it, and if your vehicle is involved in this recall...get it fixed.