Pkg 2 ?--No anti-theft? Easily stolen?

my 08 pkg 2 has an immobilizer and I beleive they all do. This is a computer car understand. A key wont make it move and you cannot just pull two wires and start it like on TV.

The smart key has a circuit in it that completes the starter sequence.

Very difficult to steal without just picking it up and carrying it off. I would be very interested in any theft reports of the Pri

 

As already posted, you still have the vehicle immobilizer. They will have to load the car on a flat-bed truck to steal it as the engine WILL NOT run (unless the thieves invest in expensive bypass devices - nothing is completely impossible). The Prius isn't worth the money to invest in theft enabling devices, -yet-.

The alarm is actually in all Prius as well, just not "activated". You can also add the glass breakage sensor. Either of these -WILL NOT- prevent a car from being stolen. If the Prius didn't have the vehicle immobilizer but did have the alarm activated all that would happen is you would hear the car being driven away, with the alarm blaring and getting quieter as the car got farther from you.

So you already have a "theft deterrent" built-in in all models, complete with a flashing red led on the dash.

 

David that reminds me of the first day my wife got her Pri. She had it parked in the dark garage and entered from the laundry room to do something. She saw the blinking red light on the dash. She looked and saw the car symbol with a key in it.

She thought it was in distress! The opened and closed the doors dozens of times and was frantic by the time I got home at night!

Once I told her what the issue was (immobilizer theft deterrent blinking) she laughed! Then cried!

I went to my office and hid a while...:bolt:


:drum:

 

yea.. the anti-theft is the keyless entry system. Your keyfob has a unique code that talks to the car. It's called RFID (Radio Frequency ID). It's pretty much the same technology that they use to chips dogs/animals these days of course its much better than that but the idea is the same. Your car constantly sends out a signal to search for the right keyfob, once your keyfob receives a signal it'll send back its unique ID, then the car will recognize it to allow entry/start up of the engine.

What kind of data is being sent as a request from the car or a reply from the keyfob is of course a Toyota proprietary information.
For a dog is pretty simple, you scan the chip on the dog, and it gives back something like 0921380129850809235. For a the Prius it's going to be something different, but as you can see... it'll be almost impossible to some how intervene with that communication protocol, unless of course you know what kind of data format that Toyota uses which i doubt everyday theive can figure out. So don't worry, your car won't be stolen that easily unless they tow it away, but in that case, no anti-theft system will be useful.

Wouldn't that be cool? if there's an anti-theft system that starts drilling itself to the ground to make the car stay in place in an event of towing happening...

 

My Pkg 2 has been stolen on several occasions--by my wife