faulty fuel gauge?

The answer to your question is covered in the owner's manual. You need to add more than three gallons before the addition will register.

Tom

 

It's a pretty dumb gauge, as gauges go.

 

Exceeded, perhaps, only by the dumbness of the typical driver.

Tom

 

I would rather just look for fuel when I have 2 bars on the gauge then I can keep going until I find a cheaper price station within 50km of my travels without the fear of running out.

 

Doesn't really matter to me whether the gauge is digital or analog as long as it can actually show the fuel level. A gauge that can't tell/display the difference between adding 25% of the total tank capacity is close to worthless. When did partial fills become a crime?

I mean, what numbskull said, "Hey, I've got an idea! Let's not show a level if the user only adds 3 gallons on a fill!" Hint to Toyota: send this person to the front of the unemployment line...and right behind him/her should be those who approved it.

A good gauge will display what it can detect. It won't lie to you about the level. I don't care whether it uses a "Hello Kitty" pointer as that is aesthetics, but I do expect it to show me the level.

Toyota so missed the boat on the North American fuel system.

 

I guess you are speaking for yourself. Most people I know can actually read a gauge. They also frown on gauges that intentionally lie to them and consider them defective. However, you seem to be the chief defender of the screwed up fueling system in this car.

 

Fuel system seems fine to me, it feeds just the right amount of fuel to the engine.

 

That was a generic comment. I find most drivers pretty stupid, and not just related to reading fuel gauges.

I do tend to defend the fuel system, but mostly because it's not as bad as some make out. You seem to be the chief critic, to the point of being almost obsessed. It has its problems and shortcomings, but at the end of the day it does its job. I have owned cars with faulty fuel gauges, and my Prius isn't one of them. I always know when to refuel.

One of the problems with digital gauges is that they tend to be more precise, but not necessarily more accurate. If you give someone an analog gauge with vague markings, they will happily tell you that they have a half tank, or three-quarters of a tank. If you give them 10 little pips they expect each pip to accurately represent 10% of the tank volume, even if you are supplying the information from the same inaccurate float. Give them 100 pips and they expect 1% accuracy. It's like measuring with a micrometer and cutting with an ax.

This isn't just a problem with cars. Most airplanes that I have flown have fairly primitive fuel gauges. To get a good idea of remaining fuel you have to measure what was put into the tanks and calculate from the burn rate. Boats are even worse. Many of those require the use of a dip stick to measure fuel levels, which is hard to do under way.

Now before you go and post another nasty reply, let me repeat something I have said many times on previous posts: I freely acknowledge that the refueling system and fuel gauge on the current Prius is sub-optimal. It is overly complex, fussy, and lacks repeatability. On the other hand, it generally works. Only a very small minority of Prius owners report problems with refueling, and the gas gauge works just fine for the primary task of telling you when to refill. Could it be better? Yes. Is it an unmitigated disaster? No. Given that the 2010 has moved past this design, it's probably time to let this go.

Tom

 

What he said, I couldn't have said it better without swearing.

 

Obsessed? That's what I think of your defense of an obviously fatally flawed system. No, I'm not obsessed, but I will rebut BS. I remain puzzled as to why you immediately jump to the defense of a system you occasionally acknowledge is flawed and instead seek to blame the user.

Why would anyone consider a digital gauge with 10 pips more precise? It is less precise because it only shows ten steps. An analog gauge can show a full range with few if any steps (typically only on the very ends...off scale.) And with a normal gauge the user soon learns to read the hysteresis of the gauge in various situtations. This gauge is so heavily "filtered" that it fails in its primary role of providing information to the driver. (If it instead provided a percent reading that was easy to discern in 1% or 2%, etc. increments then I would tend to agree with your precision claim.)