Why don't you like the large format screen in the Prime?

Auto doesn’t always cut it for me; I’m not going to drive in a misted up terrarium waiting on it. You can run Auto and override one variable, say Mode.

Point of interest: at least in our Canadian spec ‘10, if you’re in Auto with AC off, switching mode to Heat/Defog (best Toyota can do…) it’ll run stealth AC, at lower power than normal o think.

it’s quite effective at clearing windshields, but I always had two issues with it:

setting it

not going off the road while setting it

 

Even more annoying? It is literally impossible to direct the air to JUST the windshield without air conditioning. So in an electric car you HAVE to waste energy with air conditioning just to blow air over the windshield to prevent fogging. STUPID.

 

And yeah, I get that AC is more effective at defogging. It's often not needed though if you just have air blowing over the windshield. And in the PNW that is an ESSENTIAL setting.

 

My cars have been like that since mid 2000. During winter, I like to have the air shoot at the windshield in max fan and AC off in recirculate while it preheats and I'm in the house. That's not possible in Defrost mode now since AC is forced On and recirculate is unavailable. I had a work around in my 2009 Mazda 6 and 2013 Hyundai Tucson though. By leaving the car in Auto temperature control (ie not force it to Defrost), I was able to turn off AC and set to recirculate. The car would default to the windshield vents then windshield/foot for the first few minutes, which was enough to start defrosting that thin frost on the windshield and heat up the car inside.

Now with my Model 3, that's a no brainer. Turn the climate On (either through preconditioning or manually) and let the car do its thing.

The Prius will be another beast to get accommodating to.

 

Big screen disallows operation of mapping software in motion. Last I checked cars are in motion. My IQ is high enough to peripheral view YouTube w/o crashing. Can't do that either

 

You want people watching videos while driving around?

 

IIRC, Mercedes had at one time a polarizing filter on their screen where the driver would see a different view than the passenger, allowing the passenger to watch a movie which wouldn't be seen by the driver.

 

Actually it has been proven multiple times that people CAN'T do that. Any illusion of multi-tasking is just that. In reality people focus on the one thing and ignore the other. This is why people crash when texting. It's how your brain works.

 

I didn’t read all the other comments regarding the screen, so mine might be duplicates. I really wish the climate control settings were physical toggle or push buttons . . . I really dislike having to touch the correct area of the screen when driving on all the bumpy roads around here. Over half the time I push the incorrect location on the screen because I don’t want to be looking down for longer than a quick glance when the road is ahead. Perhaps it’s not as bad on smooth roads, but those don’t exist around here. It would have also been a plus if the screen were higher up on the dash. Having to look down to see the map isn’t ideal.

 

Where are the climate controls on the "big screen"? On my Model 3, the temperature climate control are at the bottom of the screen. I used to put my fingers behind the screen to stabilize my hand and use my thumb to adjust the temperature. Can you do the same? It helps a lot. I said "used to" because in a recent OTA update, I can now use the steeringwheel left scroll wheel to adjust the temperature so I don't touch the screen anymore.

 

SECOND THIS!!! This is EXACTLY why I hate touch screens. Oops, did the wrong thing AGAIN. It doesn't help that the system is sometimes laggy.

 

We got a 2019 Prime Advanced a month ago. It's my wife's car, so I rarely get to drive it but here's my take on it.

The glare from the screen kinda blasts the driver in the face when the sun's at the wrong angle.

The software is incompatible with a lot of the features of my Android phone. The Entune doesn't seem to be worth a whole lot. We sat in the car for a couple hours trying to get the functionality going and didn't get anywhere. I'm not sure that Toyota is even trying to keep it up to date. I tried plugging my phone into the USB port and all I got was a repeated cannot recognize device sort of message on the display. I'm not willing to pay a subscription fee for what I'm going to get for my money.

I updated the software in the display - that went fairly easily, but I don't know what it did for me (no release notes). It didn't seem to do that much for me.

I tried to upgrade the maps - Toyota wants stoopid money for the SD card, cheap knockoff cards are available but don't work, and the SD card slot is located where you can't see it, can't easily get the old card out, can't easily get the new card in. I don't see why this can't be something you can download from the Toyota website and program into an SD card yourself.

I don't like the Toyota navigation feature as well as Google Maps. The first thing I did with the car was to use the voice features to set my destination and pointed the car towards home. I liked that part. Then, the navigation system locked in on taking city streets (my destination was 350 miles to the north, so I was really looking for the interstate going north, not the city street going north). After passing each of the navigation's city streets, the car kept directing me to make a U-turn, then finally it would redirect me to the next city street going north. At last, when I was in sight of the interstate it finally gave me the correct lane to get in to get on the highway going north.

There's a vehicle maintenance feature - where you can program in things like tire rotations, oil changes (which is not connected to the main computer's oil change schedule), .... This seems to be the same as my Gen 2 Prius Touring model had. I'm not sure how well this system works, but if it's like the one in my Gen 2 Prius, it's more of a PITA than it's worth. Here's something that really needs an Entune app. Something that runs on a PC where you can set up all the warnings, intervals, and dates. Then if the car connected to the WIFI in my house, could email me when something's coming up, that would be nice. Trying to use a touchscreen in a car, without a keyboard, for that many items is just not going to work well.

The backup camera in other Toyotas, as well as just about every other car on the road has variable lines on the backup camera. When you change the steering wheel position, the backup display shows where the car is going to go. Not on the Prius, which is disappointing. It also only appears in a small portion of that large screen, making it seem small and low resolution. In looking for this car, we test-drove a Venza hybrid, which had a birds-eye view when backing up. Maybe in a future version of the car, because that was impressive.

As to the User Interface design, the screen is already at a disadvantage being vertical, and then being mounted fairly low (it's a Prius, so there are small displays on the dash in the center too). This exacerbates how the climate and audio systems work. Instead of positioning these near the top of the display, they're at the bottom. If you want to change the radio station (or satellite, or browse for other audio. This is made even worse by the screen/subscreen menu systems you have to navigate to get at the controls), change the heater/AC mode, fumble around with destinations, change some setting, or if you actually get an Entune app that's doing something useful, you've gotta be looking at the very bottom of the display, ensuring that your eyes are far off of the road ahead as possible, for as long as possible. It's got to have caused accidents.

If it was one thing I'd change, it would be this - bring in the pop-up (radio/audio menus/submenus, phone, car settings, multimedia system settings, phone calls, entune, climate controls AT THE TOP where you might have a chance of not mowing down a bunch of innocent bystanders because you wanted to change the radio station.

 

Oh, and the buttons on the side of the display aren't lit. Good luck finding the audio and climate controls in the dark.

 

the car

I prefer the straight back up lines. I back up into spots a lot, every day about four times, and find it works very well. As the body turns so do the lines swing. No predictive artificiality. Party of one I suppose.

 

I refuse to pay for hardware and software that I can't use when the car is in motion. It gives you alerts and it locks you out from using it. Last time I checked that's what a car does. It's in motion. Not paying for something and then they can tell me I'm not smart enough to operate it. My IQ is high enough to chew gum and walk at the same time. I know others are not but it's not for those w low IQ, unable to fathom that I'm capable of doing both, to tell me what I can do and not

 

Ditto. Our Prius has straight lines and our Bolt has curved lines. The Prius lines are way more helpful, but the backup camera on the Bolt is about a thousand times sharper. I never understood why they used such a low resolution camera and screen. It's not like the picture went through a 300 baud dial up modem.

 

Purely cost.

IIRC, the Subaru shows both. I do know you can turn the curve lines off in the settings menu.

 

That probably has to do with the aspect ratio. They had to put the landscape backup camera image on the portrait format screen, squeezing it to where it takes up the whole width, but leaving the bottom 2/3's of the display blank. I don't think using a portrait format camera would do much good as it would just show a lot of useless pavement below, and sky above (probably making for problems with the sun too).

 

Kind of like the videos people record on their iPhones

 

It is a common fallacy that humans can process two informations streams at the same time. It has been proven over and over that this is not possible. Your brain doesn't work that way. As for walking and chewing gum, yes, you can do those at the same time. You can also breathe and control your heartbeat as well. But none of those items require you to actually process the information consciously. They are all automatic. So no, you can't watch the screen and drive at the same time without missing important details of both. Now if the screen is simple enough you can switch back and forth fairly quickly but the moment that you have to actually THINK about the information you shut out the other side. The annoying thing is that even the passenger can't control the navigation while you are driving.