Fob fell off, only key remains on keyring...NO FRICTION!

From #5 alone, it's clear to me that the 2017 Prius and 2017 Prime must have completely different key-to-fob latch mechanisms. So don't be baffled by #3, it just doesn't apply to yours, I guess.

On mine, you can push the key in (all the way from outside the fob, to latched in the fob) while not touching the latch. I can stand the fob vertically on my desk (latch/key side up) and push the key in (by pushing it vertically down), which in turn snaps the latch out and back in as the key latches into place. All on its own, just from pushing the key into the fob. And using just a normal amount of force, clearly as designed to operate.

My 2005 Gen II fob requires me to manually push the latch open before the key will go in, as yours does. And it also has very strong friction both when removing and when inserting, totally unlike the Prime. Way, way more than enough to support its weight, or to stay attached during jostling around even when unlatched and partially removed. So the Gen II basically matches more of your answers than the Prime does.

 

First of all, don't go making assumptions about what might press on buttons on the inside of my pockets.

Secondly, I only asserted that it OUGHT TO work properly for its intended purpose under normal usage, not that it actually does so, nor that I will continue expecting it to do so, now that it's become obvious that it's a defective design.

What shocks me is that Toyota knows how to do it well enough, and simply chose not to. To top it all off, apparently they put the very worst, and only clearly-inadequate version of fob on the Prime, but a better version of their already-iffy "hang onto the unimportant/cheap key, not the critical/expensive fob" design on the regular Prius.


I'm a mechanical engineer. This fob-key connection is simply not secure enough to accomplish its designed purpose reliably. To get right to the point, it is a piss-poor mechanical design, excuse my French. It is far inferior to the design on my 2005 Prius fob, which itself is a lousy design due to relying only on friction if the latch is accidentally hit, plus holding the key 1000x more securely than the fob. But at least the 2005 has enough friction to prevent the great majority of mishaps, while the Prime has so little friction that it will prevent almost no mishaps. Toyota has enough mechanical engineers that something which isn't supposed to fly apart when used as intended, OUGHT NOT TO fly apart!

Every airbag OUGHT TO not shoot metal bits into people's faces and kill them too. I guess Sam Spade would tell the survivors, and the families of victims of that horrible design, they their assertions to that effect are "NOT the case" too? They should learn to adapt to reality. Wear a face-shield helmet, buy life insurance, kiss their loved ones goodbye every morning, and pick out a grave site in recognition of what car they really own, and don't ask anyone to fix the design....just live and die with it as-is. Fortunately, there are consequences when corporations put defective products on the market. Not big enough consequences often enough.

Losing a fob may not seem like a big deal, just an inconvenience/hassle. But it can also be a safety/security issue on many levels, depending upon who loses their fob, when and where, etc. Could easily cost someone their life, just like any other type of car breakdown which could have been easily avoided by having a product which does what it's supposed to..

 

No such luck.

I'm currently still living dangerously with only one fob (in my pocket, which I'm praying doesn't get a hole in it, hahaha), and no idea where the lost fob is.

But I've bought a Chinese cable to attempt to get TechStream up and running on a laptop, to see if I can fix the problem myself with just the purchase of a genuine new fob. If I include the $259 price of the new HP Win 10 Pro laptop I bought primarily for this purpose, and the cable, and the trouble of installing an Oracle Win XP virtual machine and a genuine XP Pro license (which I'll hopefully be able to transfer from one of the 4 semi-dead 1998-era laptops I bought used from an employer in 2001) then surely it would have been cheaper to just go to a Toyota dealer.

But the learning experience, and the ability to do many interesting and money-saving things in the future via TechStream, for myself and friends, will make this approach more satisfying to me. Particularly because I'm going to be doing a brake job on my 2005 Prius soon, and TechStream will allow me to use a better, more risk-free method than without it.