Toyota Survey - What Did You Say?

I don't know if everyone who purchased a Prius Prime got sent a link to the same survey I got or if it was only for those of us who have bought multiple Priuses. For once, instead of ignoring this request, I decided to fill it out.

Most of my comments were positive. Fit & finish were great. Performance was great. I like the overall design. But I did highlight several problems with the hope that Toyota will actually read this and do something about it. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few but here are some of my major complaints:

Water easily gets into the gas filler and electrical plug areas when driving in the rain. This is particularly concerning in the electrical plug area as I have to dry the entire area before plugging it in for fear of electrocution.

The back up beeper masks any proximity warning beeps rendering them useless. I nearly backed into a post in my blind spot because I missed the warning beeps until the red screen "BRAKE!" came on.

The voice recognition system sucks, plain and simple. It converts simple voice commands into the weirdest things, like, "Call Mom, Home" coming up as "Finding Pep Boys", or "Call Dan, Mobile" as "Calling #MIN". And why do I have to confirm everything... twice? Just dial the contact already! I don't need to be asked to confirm and after I confirm, I don't need the system to confirm my confirmation!!!

The voice navigation is just as bad. For example, saying an address like "Address: 25 Main Street, Newbury, Massachusetts" usually results in "Multiple entries found for Main Street" and the list following will have something like "1 - Main St. 2 - School St. 3 - Telegraph Ave. 4 - Jasper Ave." And then after you pick number 1, it will still make you say the street number AGAIN. It's such a pain.

The nav system makes some very stupid "decisions" for us drivers. For instance, if you are leaving Boston and your destination is North on Route 95 North up past Route 1 in Danvers, it will tell you to get you to exit Route 95 onto Route 1 for about 3 miles of bumper to bumper traffic with about 10 traffic lights just to get back onto Route 95 North again. Wth? The first time it did this, I ignored it. It does it every time. Neophyte drivers will not appreciate this.

The rear view mirror is too high on the windshield, making it nearly impossible to adjust it to get a full view out the rear. Every vehicles' top is cut off by the top of the rear windshield.

The sun visors are (once again - Toyota - wake up) too short for use on the side window. This annoying "feature" always makes me wonder why they even have the clip up there. Un-clipping it and swinging it to the side is useless.

The cell phone charging plate in my Prime is only useful for straight ahead highway driving. Stops or turns that shift the phone the tiniest bit cause it to stop charging. I don't even use it anymore.

The mp3 playback from a thumb drive is much worse than in my old Toyota cars. No matter what I do, no artwork shows up. And there's no way to play the music back in filename order, which is how I was always able to play back complete albums in track order.

The passenger seat should have the same height adjustment as the driver seat. This is a problem with many car companies but I was hoping Toyota would fix this. My wife hates the passenger seat height.

I can't get a regular air pump onto the valve stem without removing the hubcap. This is extremely annoying.

I have a rattle in the back seat area that no one can seem to find. It's very annoying.

Once you put the 15 (joking) owner's manuals into the glove box, there is no room left in there for anything else. What happened to the secondary glove box of the old Priuses?

The center arm rest opens sideways, making it almost impossible for a passenger to get into it. Also, the coin tray in there is not lined with felt so if you do put loose change in there, it will make a racket. Luckily I had some felt sheets in the garage from an old craft project.

The plastic around the shifter knob should be black if I ordered a black interior. I should not have to pay $55 for a black applique to cover up your designer's mistake. Ditto the steering wheel. No applique available for that yet either.

Adjusting the clock is a pain, especially since you have to do it twice. There's one place for the clock displayed on the dash and another for the clock/calendar in the nav system. Both are somewhat buried in submenus. I would like a simple push button on the dash like my old Toyotas.

 

I assumed as much. However, I would not want to be the person to accidentally get around one of the protections. Also, the scariest thing is when you find that water got under the plug cover so that the actual car plug has water in the holes underneath. As much as I assume they've planned for this, I would still feel very uncomfortable plugging in without drying it first. The plug cover is not watertight. It's just a push on.

 

I was going to complain about the lack of a spare tire but I know that would be just a waste of time. They aren't going to add one so I'm just going to have to get used to it.

 

No, but they could make the access door a little more resistant to water ingress and they could certainly make the plug cover a little watertight.

BTW, the gas filler access door lets in a ton of water too. I don't want water in my gas tank any more than I want it on my charge port.

 

BTW, one of the other things I said is that this is probably the quietest car I've ever driven with the windows down. It's eerily quiet cruising down the road with the windows down. It must be the aerodynamic design but there is hardly any wind noise, even at highway speeds.