All about my Prius Four with ATP/PCP

Thought I would post my personal thoughts on my Prius Four with ATP/PCP. Hope this might be useful for someone. I've had it a week, but already been on a 17 hour road trip and several days of normal commuting.

For basis of comparison, my other cars are/have been a 2016 BMW X1, 2014 Mercedes CLA250, and 2012 Toyota Prius C. Honestly, the Prius drives supremely well and I think the steering wheel feels as nice as the BMW/Mercedes! (I have Softex, though.) I'm glad I chose this instead of the Touring: the ride is great, my tires will be cheaper to replace, my turning radius is better, and I got some extra options with the Four (except for the LED accent light and foglights, of course).

Exterior/Interior Observations

Mine is black exterior, black interior. Kept the white console area because it brightens things up and I love it.

I did not opt for the black carpet mats and instead ordered the all-weather OEM mats. They look awesome. If you get them, for the rear seats, make sure you get the left/right sides correct because they're quite similar except once side has a slight cut-out for the battery ventilation area (important!).

Surprised there were no blue accents on the vents (or anywhere else) in the interior. Every other model I had looked at had some kind of weird coloring. I have a nice, normal silver accents. Love it!

The Softex seats, I'm undecided on their comfort. Granted I did go on a super long road trip with it, starting off. I would get some pretty uncomfortable feeling in my right leg/thigh after 2 hours. Can't say I've experienced this in other cars, especially when I wasn't using my foot often to brake/gas since the radar cruise control was helping with that. But I had a really long weekend so I'll forgive the Prius for now. It's not often I go on long roadtrips, and I've read great things about the seats in other reviews.

Experiencing rattle from driver-side door (especially with any music with noticeable bass). Already saw a thread on this topic with several others reporting same thing. Mine seems to come and go. Will keep an eye on it for solutions.

The trunk opens super high. I park in a commercial garage, and the hatch comes within a quarter-inch of scraping the ceiling above me. Granted it’s a low ceiling, but the 2016 BMW X1 hatch opens much lower (and can also be programmed to open at a lower degree) which isn’t as nerve-wracking.

Tweaks

I’ve already used Carista to tweak settings to my liking.

Super happy with the blinker setting which I changed to “4 clicks” when tapping the stalk. In my other cars, it has been 3 clicks which i found adequate. But I drive the Prius more conservatively, so 4 clicks is absolutely perfect for my style. And I adjusted the blinker volume to be higher, because nothing wrong with that.

Also I turned on the feature to allow the windows/sunroof to open while pressing unlock on the keyfob. However I don’t find this very reliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it takes two or three attempts

Blind Spot Monitoring and Side Mirrors

Love the “clicking” sound the Blind Spot Monitoring system makes when the car is first booted up (it runs a self-check). At least, I think that’s what makes the clicking sound. I will miss this sound in any other car I drive.

However I am supremely disappointed that the BSM system doesn’t make a noise/ding when you enable your blinker and a car is beside you. It only flashes at you on the mirror. I’ve spent lots of time in the newer Mazda 3 and CX-5 as rental cars. They make a ding (which can be programmed on or off). Would love this to be an option.

Very disappointed the mirrors don’t tilt down when reversing. It’s a relatively simple programming trick for the engineers and doesn’t involve any hardware to enable.

HUD/Instrumentation

I have a HUD in the 2016 BMW X1 which I really, really love and use. So I thought it would be a “must” in the Prius and was a leading factor in choosing the Four over the Four Touring.

At this point, I can safely say the HUD is nothing to be excited about. I rarely look at it even though I'm keeping it turned on. The standard instrumentation and speedometer is already at eye-level and is much more attractive/informative than the HUD. So 19 out of 20 times, my eyes gravitate to the standard instrumentation. In the BMW I’m the opposite. Because the BMW instrumentation is in the traditional behind-steering-wheel location, I find the HUD more convenient.

Also you should realize the wow factor with a HUD (In any car, basically) is going to be limited to the driver. My passenger could not see it at all, even when leaning EXTREMELY far over.

And I wonder how much energy the battery expends to run the HUD. If it's supremely minimal then I guess it's OK. Anything more than that, i would like to know because I may just turn it off rather than keep it on.

The only saving grace for the HUD, in my opinion, is that it has the eco meter (for acceleration) and battery monitoring. That allows me to free up the other screens in the car for other functions, I suppose. However since the HUD is nicely packaged in with the Four, I still think it’s worth having. But if it were a completely separate standalone option, I don’t think I’d spend more then $300 on it.

But I must say I am extremely impressed with the overall instrumentation/screens. There is so much customization, and I really don’t think the salespeople know enough about that (not a surprise). I really do wish there was a way to display the Distance to Empty figure alongside the Average MPG per trip. (Right now you have to cycle through using the Trip button, because they cannot be displayed simultaneously).

I also wish the “After Start” MPG/time/miles driven calculations did not reset every time the car is turned off. It may sound counter-intuitive, but BMW and Mercedes only reset these calculations if the car is turned off for FOUR HOURS or more. So when I have a lot of quick trips in the Prius, I forget to look at the calculations with each pit stop (or when fueling up on the way somewhere), and this information becomes lost because it’s not compounded over short periods of time.

Cruise Control

Have used the full-speed radar cruise control extensively. It's awesome; I would not consider buying another car without it. However even at the "closest" distance setting, you could easily parallel park a Chevrolet Suburban between me and the preceding vehicle while at a stoplight. This does not bode well.

While on the highway, even at the closest distance setting there is still too much room and I get a lot of people cutting-in. I live in a super congested area. Actually it probably doesn't even seem like cutting-in to the other drivers; I'm sure they think I am just nicely leaving them plenty of room. Wish there was a shorter distance setting. Honestly with all the people who are able to cut-in (and cause the Prius to slow down more to adjust!) it's just making my trip take longer and therefore less efficient use of energy. Not the Prius methodology! Also dislike that the distance setting resets to the longest setting each time the car is turned off/on, so I have to cycle my way to the shortest setting each time.

Curious: when setting the cruise control, the car always drives at least 1mph under the setting. Example, if I set it to 70, then the car is going to go 69 and show this on the speedometer. I've never experienced a car with this behavior before, even on other cars with digital speedometers.

Intelligent Parking Assist/Intelligent Clearance Sonar

The Prius is hit-or-miss with parallel parking assist compared to the 2016 BMW X1. On a positive note, I can get the Prius to activate and find a spot MUCH easier than the BMW. However, the Prius is lot more awkward in the way it parallel parks. Mostly I could have done a much quicker, better job than the Prius, because it sometimes requires A LOT of reversing and going forward even in a non-complicated. In the exact same parking spot, the BMW did a nearly perfect job in a more timely efficient manner than I could have.

Back-up assist is extremely finicky. I don’t like that you must be at a complete stop before it will search for a spot. That already makes the procedure take a little too long versus just doing it myself. It also doesn’t seem to know which side of the parking lot I intend to back into. But truly, the vast majority of time I get the “unavailable” message even after edging up and down the empty spot in parking lot, so I still don’t understand the trick to using it.

Regarding the ICS, I was under the impression it would help me “clear” curbs and prevent scraping when pulling into a parking spot with curbs. This does not seem to be true. The car provides absolutely no help with avoiding curbs. The system just feels a little more of an after-thoguht and less helpful than the BMW/Mercedes systems I've used.

Drive Mode

I don’t think the Drive Mode setting (eco/normal/power) is clear enough. I know I can tell by the coloration behind the speedometer (dark blue for eco, light blue for normal, and red for power… I think…) but even knowing this, I find myself wondering which mode I’m in. The previous generation Prius made it much more clear. Someone pointed out there is indeed an icon indicating if you're in Eco or Power mode, besides the coloration of the speedometer. So this case is now closed in my book

I do like that the drive-mode setting seems to affect the full-speed radar cruise control’s acceleration rate. Very nifty.

Entune/Audio

I hated Entune on my 2012 Prius C. Although this system is mostly cut from the same cloth, I am finding it very usable and quick enough. It’s no Mercedes or BMW system, and even the Mazda system is much better. But I have the feeling my system is going to be obsolete pretty soon if Toyota has any intention of keeping up with competitors. One feature which still mystifies me is the My Traffic Route setting which is supposed to monitor your pre-programmed often-traveled routes, I suppose? No idea how to actually use it. (Read the manual, I know…)

Experiencing a problem with voice commands. It can hear me just fine, but when it's responding to me for the next command, it cuts itself off after 2 seconds in the middle of word/sentence. It's not like I'm pressing the voice button to interrupt it, either. Don't know what's up with that.

Oh, my JBL speakers are extremely good. No complaints at all. Happy I upgraded.

Lighting

Only used the auto-brights a few times. I do like that the "on" setting is remembered even after the car is turned off and on. The BMW makes me remember to activate them each trip.

And the headlights are totally adequate, even quite good. I do not miss foglights whatsoever. Plus, since my exterior is black, you can barely notice where the foglights should have gone.

 

Wow, you are so correct! I don't know how I missed that. Will amend my earlier statement.

 

Well yes, and this is literally all that the manual has written about My Traffic Routes. After I program it, then what? How does it work? I have my commute programmed in (12 miles through a busy downtown including interstate, etc)..... And nothing has happened since. Is it supposed to alert me to traffic on that route even if I'm not actively using navigation? If so, it hasn't done that yet.

It will start moving again (automatically) if you've only been stopped a few seconds. Like maybe less than 3 seconds.
After that, the pop-up display will tell you to use the cruise stalk or the accelerator to resume.

 

OK, after another full week of using the full-speed cruise control, I can now readily admit it's not a perfect system.

I find sometimes I can activate it while sitting at a stoplight behind a car, and other times it doesn't want to activate. Sometimes I can activate it while going at a slow speed, sometimes I cannot. The only time I can definitely get it to activate is if I'm going at a higher speed (say 25mph+). So this inconsistency I don't understand.

Also, I know the system warns me that I should only use the radar cruise control on expressways. However I have a lot of stop-and-go traffic through city routes which I've successfully used the cruise control. BUT, I've had what I am classifying as complete failures of the cruise control to notice a stopped car in front of me.

Here's an example that has happened to me several times: I'm using radar to follow a car on a highway (45 mph speed limit, multiple lanes, some traffic lights). That car I'm following winds up going way quicker and pulls very far ahead behind sight. Then I approach a traffic light - it's red and all the cars are stopped. The Prius, coming up upon the stopped cars, sometimes does NOT notice and keeps barreling towards traffic without slowing down at all. To the point where I had to slam on the brakes. Hard. This has happened to me more than once, and I don't know why sometimes it will see traffic in front and slow to a stop accordingly, yet other times it glitches out completely. (And no, I wasn't accidentally switched into normal cruise mode.). I was watching the pop-up display which will tell you if it has detected a car in front - these times it did not ever detect a car despite their presence.

I'm still using the system a lot, but I am hyper-alert due to these several scares.