Time Change

Oh, I thought charge schedule was based on the MID system time and date. Hummm, I've had my multimedia large Navi time setting on DST ON for the last two years and never bothered to change it. That means during winter, the timer was always 1 hour ahead. I guess, instead of finishing at 5:30am, it must have been finishing at 4:30am during fall-spring. Yeah, I would have not known the difference.

 

There's an option when using the nav system to show your "time of arrival" instead of showing how long it will take to get there. If your Nav clock is wrong, this ETA will be wrong as well.

 

Aha! That makes much more important to have the correct time set up. I don't use the Navi often enough to know that. I must have the setting for how long it takes to get to the destination. I don't remember seeing the arrival time on the screen on few times I had to use the Navi.

 

You could be right about that since it can be programmed either way. It's just so much easier to program the schedule on the big screen that I never fuss with that tiny MID screen for something that complex so I tend to forget about it.

 

When using the Nav system, just touch the area where it shows "time to arrival" and it will toggle to ETA. My wife prefers ETA, I prefer time to arrival so we toggle it often.

 

I am completely opposite. It's so much easier for me to use MID with wheel switches than use the touch screen, I have never bothered with charge scheduling on the large screen.

 

Am I being unreasonable when I say that I shouldn't have to get a manual out to change the time? I consider that a major UI failure that it isn't painfully obvious how to change the time.

Of course if you've read any of my other threads on the Prius UI you know that I am super unimpressed with whoever is in charge of Toyota UI design. They should basically all be fired and maybe hire Apple to completely redesign the entire interior.

Just saying.

 

The time setting is a setting. So I just browsed the settings. However, not having the clock in the MID and the 11.6" displays linked is totally inexcusable. There's no good reason to have more than one keeper of the time. And there are still lots of times when the manual is necessary in knowing how to interact with the car. If you need a manual to use the interface, you are totally correct that that's a design fail.

 

Progress is a debatable thing. Third Gen:

 

Been there did that. Set the clock in two places, stupid but not a huge deal. I'd not go back to my 3rd GEN for anything after driving the Prime for two years and yes, I liked my 3rd GEN.

 

Ditto!! Gen 4 & Prime have some annoyances, but so do all devices this complex. It's more than a fair trade.

 

I'm dreading fifth Gen.

 

Now there's a first world problem if ever there was one.

(Having lived 9 years in Honduras, I sometimes can't help myself. )

 

I think it is a valid point that with the new, improved version it is now much more difficult to perform a common task like updating the clock, that the design engineers have failed. I can intuitively change the clock in my 4Runner and Lexus in about 15 seconds each. I haven't had the time to break out the manual and change the time on the Prius yet. When I did it last year I was amazed that I had two separate clocks that didn't talk to each other. Oh well, the wrist watch still works.

 

I had similar issue with a first gen DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex (camera) and it's third gen successor. With the first yeah it had a menu, but it was one level, and simple enough that you could find and change what was needed. With the newer one: the menu was a Byzantine tree structure, and every time, I needed to haul out the manual.

 

Sure, the manual is needed for some things but interacting with the displays shouldn't be one of them. We just excuse mediocrity as if it is inevitable due to automation. I thought automation and computers were supposed to make the world simpler. Well major fail on that one, guys.

 

This is the first time that I even realized that there is a separate clock in the nav system. I had set the option to update time from GPS but noticed that the dashboard clock was still about 30 seconds out of sync with my atomic watch. I thought it was odd but it was never a big enough deal to figure out why it was happening.

 

Exactly! The goal of the interface engineers should be ease of use and in this regard, the vast majority are epic failures, not just in the Prius and not just in cars.