Newbie from Montreal, blue 2012 Prius v wagon

Greetings all.
Big history with econo cars and winter over the past few decades, as I stored my slowly-growing collection of black Trans Ams away from snow and salt. Was always a Honda man (for winter use) until moving to large RWD cars in the 2000s for family reasons... a couple of 2003 Mercury Marauders and then a wonderful 2006 Charger Daytona Torred edition that gave me 10 great years until I traded it in for the used blue 2012 Prius v wagon in the attached photo.

I'd been sort of eyeing a hybrid or full electric car for a few years now... as much as I enjoy my V8s, it hurts to idle in traffic with all 8 cylinders sipping away. My Daytona's 4 cylinder mode helped a bit on the highway, I would regularly achieve high 20s mpg (US) on long trips at 55-60 mph (pretty nice for a 350hp Hemi V8) but that feature is inactive at idle. So for sure the 40-45 mpg results from my Prius are quite interesting even with the occasional bad traffic. Sadly the cold temps of the last few days are putting a hurt on that number but hopefully it won't last too long. I was otherwise considering a VW Golf/Jetta TDI wagon but hey... VW. Enough said. And the 50+ mpg Volvo D4 V70 wagons I enjoyed on my trips to Sweden are sadly not sold in North America... we get stuck with the guzzling V6s and automatic trannies. The Prius V on the other hand satisfies the cargo transportation need of a bassist and occasional mobile recording studio owner.

Close to 65000 miles on my Prius now (I think it had about 63000-ish when I bought it in November). So far so good except for the occasional pulsating metal squeal for 5-10 seconds when I move off after a cold overnight (sounds like brake rotors). Also, my XM Radio reception is practically non-existent when the temperatures dip. Yesterday morning and afternoon I had a great time listening to it for once (part of the 3 months free promotion)... even though it was crazy cold (0F and below) I had the temps cooking inside the car, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky between here and Saturn. But now it's back to the same thing (hiss, followed by silence then alternating "loading"/"no signal"). Sadly, the dealership is refusing to cover it, regardless of the 30 day legal warranty and the fact I bought the extended warranty on top of it. Not a great start to my Toyota experience, I'll be honest.

Otherwise I thoroughly enjoy my 1978 Trans Am, my 1987 Trans Am GTA and my 1998 Trans Am Ram Air and have recently fallen in love with our new 2016 Charger R/T (now 370hp but that new 8 speed transmission is stellar!). Hopefully this '12 Prius will give us a few good years after which I may consider staying on in the Toyota hybrid fold.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it...

/Steve

 

Thanks for the welcome. Indeed, having been exposed to automotive online groups since the days of newsgroups (early 90s when I only had my 1987 Pontiac GTA), I've defaulted to US measurements when discussing automotive speed and fuel mileage numbers... besides lbs vs kg, I tend to be more at ease these days with metric measurements.

Speaking of mileage, this Prius is the first car where I'm forced to have the info displayed in l/100km so it's forcing me to think along that paradigm. On my 06 Daytona I had the electronic display reading US measurements so I could see my average mpg (the actual dials were unaffected beyond the trip and main odo) and my 2016 Charger R/T allows the flexibility of choosing which display is in what units. Being forced into l/100km on this Prius is not the best thing for me when dealing with these much smaller numbers... the range from 5.0 l/100km to 5.5 l/100kms spans from 43mpg US to 47mpg US.

Anyway, I've been consulting the interwebs in the past 2-3 weeks for bits of Prius wisdom and frequently ended up in some threads here so I figured I'd outright sign up. I hope it's just a passing glitch but all day I'm experiencing constant "database error" popups and sometimes complete error pages, at a very frequent clip so I hope that overall the site is a bit more robust than it is today. I didn't even realize my thread had been successfully posted earlier this morning!

 

I reported that to the dealer when I went back for the "ill fated" xm radio complaint... they came back with "yeah, there was some sign of rust on the rotor, kind of weird because the pad should polish it... we cleaned it up, let's see how it goes".

Not very confidence inspiring. I heard another story from the manager "we didn't have enough time to thoroughly inspect your car before you picked it up (editor's note: it was a full 72 hours between signing the papers and going to pick it up *shrug*) and so we gave it a good clean up" (which reminds me I need to check for the Toyota 'certification' paperwork which I think I should have been given at signing...). I was so incensed over the xm thing that I didn't pick up on this brake stuff.

Anyway, interesting about the chocks. I tend not to be the type of guy who carries wheel chocks around with me, and certainly not going to get on my knees in the slush and or ice/snow to chock up the wheels when I park. So.... (editor's note: Wth?) because I am unfamiliar with the internals of a CVT or how the Prius implements the "Park" setting to begin with, I tend to use the parking brake rather frequently on this car. I did notice that on the couple of -25C mornings we had a few days ago (see? Metric!) the ratchet on the parking brake pedal was pretty much silent. It was kind of disconcerting. LOL.

(another dealer story: after leaving my car at the service drop off garage, some dealer worker lady hopped in the car to drive it out in the lot pending its turn in the service bays... out of the corner of my eye I spot my car doing the occasional squatting dance while in place. I did a mental facepalm while I wondered how long it would take for her to release the parking brake. Didn't happen... she comes running back into the room in a tiff, and both her and the service advisor head back out to the car... I yelled out "Parking Brake!!" as they went out the door. Waited a bit... nothing... so I head over to the car and see the advisor and her frantically pushing every Ev/ECO/PWR button on the center console. I lean in the passenger side and tell the advisor about the parking brake. The lady "yeah, but WHERE IS IT????". I point to the floor. Advisor goes "oh, so it's a foot operated brake??". This is a 2012. Is the Prius V the only Toyota to have gone pedal for the parking brake? Even then... that's a 4 year old car! )

 

From what I can tell, the fuel consumption display is tied to your market. So for me it's metric. The big button on the dash only seems to affect the speed readout. No biggie.

Yeah, I think the ratcheting foot pedal seems to be the way things are going these days. My 06 Daytona had the under-dash release handle but my 2016 Charger R/T is the same ratcheting type. Recent Volvo V70 wagons I've rented in Sweden appear to have some motorized brake controlled by a two-way lever resembling the old brake releases... push to set, pull to release. Probably about as useless in an emergency situation where you'd want to modulate the parking brake. (I'm referring to the act of holding the release handle while using the parking brake pedal as a regular but rear-only brake, similar to modulating a hand brake lever with your thumb on the release button).

 

Thanks on the colour... when I half-a$$ed started to look at what was on the market, this one really stood out. Seems like white is a very popular Prius colour up here.

I'll check out the "v" subforum for sure. Overall I hope this site stabilizes, still seeing a bunch of database errors early this morning when I got up.

 

Here's the interesting thing, first thing I did after getting home when I got the car was plow through all possible menus. I did see something like what you mention. However, I don't recall it having ANY effect on anything! I think I remember deducing at the time that it was probably only affecting something like the Maps app and little more if anything. I also recall reading somewhere that the fuel mileage readout was locked to your market, at least for this vintage car. I'll have another look one of these days, but I've come to accept it.

 

For gits and shiggles I went through the menu this afternoon really quickly and found the menu item... it only presents "miles" or "kilometers" as options. It was set to miles from last time I played with it. Still no idea what it actually controls (like I said earlier, maybe the Maps app?). I changed it to "kilometers" and continued on my way, nothing seemed to change. Well, an itchy rash on my elbow seemed to dramatically improve by the time I got home, but I'm not ready to correlate the two just yet....