There is a bunch of stuff that is very suspicious about that article. I never saw any coverage that claimed that the highway patrolman bumped cars - which would be absurd at those speeds.
The writer claimed that you don’t need to take a hand off the steering wheel to shift, which is obviously untrue from the picture.
He seemed to think it odd that the guy never shifted into neutral. I have had my Prius for just over a month, and I never had. I was unaware that you have to hold the stick in neutral for a while for it to work. I am aware that the Park button does not work at high speeds, for obvious reasons.
He obviously didn’t try to pull up the accelerator with his hands - a foot, maybe. I wonder what he really said, or if he just misspoke. As for shifting, someone driving around San Diego wouldn’t ever have a reason to shift with an automatic transmission. The only time I ever do that is going to Tahoe, and there are no similar attractions there.
It might be a hoax (though one exceedingly dangerous to the hoaxer, and one involving the close attention of the police) but it is not obvious.
Well, no one can accuse the Woz of doing it for the money or the fame. it is interesting that he calls it reproducible. I have a 2010, but luckily I don’t like cruise control.
I find most stories of how people react to these situations to be pretty lame so it’s hard for me to criticize this guy more than others. I’m interested in how the Prius gear selector feels to the user. Is it a neutral feeling switch with solid detents for the selections? Is there a button to prevent it from moving from drive to reverse?
Whether it’s drive by wire or not, the fact is he didn’t even try despite multiple people pleading with him to do it. If he had actually tried, then maybe you would have something. In fact, by his own claim, he did not even try to shift it into neutral.
The Prius shifter feels more natural to me than any other shifter I have ever used (manual or auto). The positions are really obvious and easy to find.
It’s certainly different - and unusual - the first time you use it though.
Two unusual things about it:
to get it into neutral, you have to hold it there for like half a second.
Whatever position you select, it springs back to the central position as seen in this picture
I can imagine people panicking when it doesn’t go into neutral after a hasty flick and I can imagine lots of people not knowing what the N is for. The only time I ever used the N position was when I was testing it last weekend to see if it works
granted most of my performance tinkering has been with late 80’s/early 90’s fuel injection but it’s all a variation of the same theme. Sensors may change but the process is basically the same.
Your previous post mentioned mechanical throttle failure but you failed to establish a pattern with a specific car or brand and that’s what we’re talking about. There have been numerous reports of Toyota/Lexus acceleration problems. Since it’s a drive-by-wire scenario that means the computer is seeing a WOT or near-WOT and ignoring brake input.
Interesting anecdotal radio call-in today (car repair show). The caller’s wife experienced the engine acceleration and he in turn experienced it. He said it started at 10-15 mph and pulled hard but not as if it was floored. The brakes didn’t disengage it until he put it in neutral and he said the floor pedal was not stuck.
The most recent news event driving this discussion involved a top speed of 94 mph and judging from Prius forums this is a good 10 mph under the top speed. So either the car didn’t have sufficient distance to reach the top speed or the computer wasn’t seeing a “wide open throttle” signal. Given the phone conversation I’d say the car had plenty of time to reach 94 mph if it the accelerator was stuck fully depressed. This is relevant in diagnosing the problem and suggests the pedal isn’t stuck down. If it was a Lexus with a conventional transmission it would make me wonder if there is a high-idle map in the program that is designed to ignore the brake (as if it’s in park warming up). However, the Prius uses a planetary gear/electrical motor for a transmission so it’s forward motion is dependent on the electrical motor/ generator.
So there are number of possibilities here:
a pedal that sticks in the wide open throttle position (fixed using a spacer)
a pedal that sticks in any position due to floor mats (covers both a Prius and a Lexus)
a computer fault that sees a request for power AND ignores brake pedal input (totally different programing in Prius and Lexus computers unless it’s a Lexus hybrid).
Since Sikes himself has claimed he tried to physically lift the pedal and it would not budge we know that the only possible scenario is 1. Of course, then there is no reason not to put the car in neutral, which he didn’t even try. Why are you so deliberately ignoring the obvious possibility that he is faking it for a lawsuit settlement.
Does anybody know what sort of information the on-board computer stores about speed, fuel and braking. Will the computer tell investigators that he wasn’t pressing the break at all, or better yet, that he was pressing the break and gas intermittently, thereby demonstrating that he always was in control?
Nothing against you, you’re hardly the only one to do this, but for the love of all that is holy could you please spell the word “brake” correctly? It’s brake. Not break. It’s a small thing, but small things matter.
I wasn’t addressing his case specifically because it represents one of many. And a petal not budging can mean 2 things, the 2nd being that it is already fully retracted to idle. FWIW, Sikes could easily be faking it which means nothing he said is real.
It feels very natural to me…and for visual feedback, the selected position is clearly shown on the pseudo-heads-up dashboard (which I also like).
There is a lot of horrible design in the Prius (it’s impossible to operate the switches on the steering wheel without looking down, for example) but I like the shifter.
Thanks for the link to the knob layout. I gotta say, unless this is explained it would be very confusing. Add in bright sunlight against the display and you have a real problem knowing what “gear” your in an emergency where you have to weave in and out of traffic and don’t have a lot of time to stare at a dim display. I can’t think of a rational reason for having the knob snap back from any position. When you shift it into drive or reverse do you have to hold it there for half a second as well? When you park the car do you just leave it in the last gear it was in?
If I designed it I would have put reverse and drive on an “L” pattern with neutral in the bend and a detent at each position. Brake can be another right angle to Drive.
For park, there is a Big Blue Button with a P on it. Also, hitting the power puts it in park.
I don’t know how many kinds of shifter I have used - 10s at least. The prius shifter is the most natural that I have ever used. It’s very obvious and ergonomic. It is certainly different from what most people are used to though. It took me a good 5 seconds to figure it out the first time.
And honestly, the dashboard is very clear and bright too.
There are lots of things to hate about Priuses - and, believe me, I hate my Prius - but the shifter and the dash are very well designed.
I’m glad you didn’t design it then, because I think that would be awful for such a tiny switch.
Even with the groove at each position I think that would make it easy to knock into the wrong setting very easily, absent an annoying additional switch that needed to be pressed. The existing switch is very easy to use - left and then down movement for drive, left and then up movement for reverse. It is quick and deliberate. I would agree that there is one flaw in this design: it is not obvious that shifting into neutral requires more than a quick flip. This is easy enough if you know it, but the design doesn’t guarantee that you would know it (I personally would never go out on the roads in a car if I didn’t understand basic things about it like shifting into neutral, but I recognize it is better to design for people who are not that thorough). Perhaps there could be a completely different direction to move it to get it to neutral that did not require the delay.
I have a similar position to kevlaw (although I don’t hate my Prius). There are some things in this car that could be designed better, but the shifter is better than any more traditional one that I have used, and the display is designed in such a way that glare has never really been an issue. I also understand why they designed it such that it stays in one position: it can be treated just as an input device without state, so nothing mechanical is required to keep track of where the switch is currently set.
As a result I typically just hit the power off button when stopping, which puts it in park and shuts it off (as opposed to explicitly hitting the park button). This would be difficult to do with a switch that physically stayed at a “drive” or “reverse” position.
Sikes’ fear & refusal (at first) to shift into neutral seems to me to be a different issue from whether or not something actually went wrong (temporarily, at least) with the car.
I work on computers. I have seen intermittant faults that were hard to lock down.
While I realise that the computer(s) in a car is a bit simpler (and thus more robust) than a Windows OS, my experience has biased me into believing that a car’s computer could possibly (if rarely) “hang” or “lock up” in some state or other, but then test fine later.
Toyota’s flat assersions that nothing could be wrong with the electronics don’t fit my experience: anything Humans make breaks.
