Shrinking Gas Tank

heres one Toyota forgot to protect the 12 volt battery from running down.. there is no automatic shut off for interior lights left on after 10 mins with the car turned off, the ONLY problem I have had with the prius is the cargo light being hit and turned on while unloading something and the battery was dead in the morning..no 12 volt, car will not start..
needless to say I unplugged the light so this never happens again

 

Toyota has a lot of company, not protecting the 12 volt battery. Maybe there's downsides to doing so? But yeah, I leave our dome light switch in the fully OFF position. Same thing for the hatch area light. But that doesn't prevent our footwell, door sill and door panel lights from coming on, if a door's ajar. Leave a door ajar for 12 hours or so will come pretty close to toasting the battery. With a recharge I've revived it after such a scenario, but it's definitely taken a hit.

 

Change those bulbs to LED -- regular brightness unidirectional models, not superbright omnidirectionals -- and the battery will easily survive overnight. The current reduction can be 5X to 10X.

Didn't I see something about the 2016 having all-LED interior lights?

 

True, I've come outside in the morning and found my wife left a map light on overnight more times than I can count. But it always starts. Probably because I upgraded to the Optima deep cycle when the factory battery died.

 

Should be close to 10 times difference. When I upgraded all of the lights in my camper the original bulbs pulled 1.2 amps and the new ones were closer to 0.1.

 

My best replacements are in that category.

But some lamps I've played with save far less current, especially those that are much brighter than original, and those that emit all the way around the lamp. That is why I suggest uses lamps that emit only in the desired direction from the fixture in question, and not back into the housing. That means using some end-firing lamps, and some side-firing lamps.

 

We just bought a 2024 AWD Limited and have exactly the same issue. The short answer from Toyota is "this is correct behavior". In other words, 25% of your gas tank is inaccessible. We pushed the issue with Toyota and got obfuscation and misdirection about mileage and safety. I am not buying it.

If it were a real safety issue it would need to be legally disclosed. Can you image them saying that you cannot use 25% of the seats in the car for safety reasons? I am seeing other owners stating that they regularly go 60-90 miles past 0. I don't think I am ready to do that, but Toyota has had a long reputation of misleading advertising and is dealing with an FTC complaint now. They got busted for cheating on air bag sensors earlier in 2024 also.

My sense is that they are having real problems with the fuel system and don't want to have to recall to fix it. They then came up with a story about 25% of the tank needed for "cooling" and want to bury the issue. Please complain to Toyota, the Federal Trade Commission, BBB, and anyone else that will listen. It requires a lot of input to get an action started for correction.

 

i'm not following you. are you saying that the amount toyota reserves for safety so you won't run out of gas is inaccessible?
what does the owners manual show for tank size and reserve gallons?

 

if this is correct, you should have about 2 more gallons available. that's how all my prius have been.

2024-awd-prius-gas-tank-size-question.9383

 

Inaccessible?? Did you try to use it and your car died of fuel starvation? If your car hasn't actually quit from fuel starvation, then you cannot honestly call it "inaccessible".

As I explained when you brought this up in your first thread two weeks ago, this is common and normal. From my experience, it is a common industry practice, and for some good reasons: 2024 Prius Limited AWD Range Questions | PriusChat

This isn't just a Toyota thing. From first-hand experience, I must add Ford, Honda, Acura, Subaru, Polaris (ATVs), and John Deere (tractors) doing the very same thing, along with my 2010 and 2012 Prii and 2024 RAV4 Prime. I'm sure other drivers of other brands can expand that list.

Cheating? News links please!

December's airbag sensor recall doesn't count towards your "cheating" claim, it was an actual manufacturing defect.

If so, why leave out all the other vehicle manufacturers I listed above? They are equally "guilty".

 

Look again: some small cars that 'really' hold only 4 people, are now labeled as 5-passenger cars because they were forced by product liability tort lawyers to do so, even though typical male adults (and probably many females as well) can't use the 5th seat.

My 1984 Ford was 'correctly' described as a 4-passenger car, as the center of the rear bench was impractically tiny and narrow for ordinary adults. But some teen-age drunken partiers managed to squeeze in a tiny teenage girl in the middle, before they had a DUI crash. She was fatally launched through the windshield. Parents sued over lack of a seatbelt for that position, because their daughter managed to squeeze in there despite it not being labeled a real seat, and won. Subsequent model years for that and similar-sized cars came with a 5th seatbelt for that position, hence also a "5-passenger" label, despite the rear seat not being made even one iota inch larger.

The first Chevy Volts and Toyota Prius Plug-ins were labeled as 4-passenger, and avoided having a center rear seatbelt by placing a mechanical block in that center rear position to prevent any 5th passenger from trying to sit there.

 

Why are you tagging onto a Gen 2 thread and then discussing a (perceived) Gen 5 problem?

Start a thread (or find an existing thread to tag on to) in one of the Gen 5 forums.