First Prius Complaint/Suggestion
I’ve been driving the new Prius a lot and in general I love the thing, but I have a first complaint and suggestion.
This thing needs a relatively quiet, alternate horn in addition to the normal load one it has for emergencies.
Several times now I have nearly run over pedestrians when driving around parking lots looking for a space. What happens is that said pedestrian will be walking along in a straight line, and I will come up the path behind them slowly and the Prius has invariably shut off the gas engine because it does not need it any more. What I keep failing to realize is that said pedestrian cannot hear any engine noise and does not realize I am there at all! Often the pedestrian, without looking, suddenly darts out across the traffic lane which they assume is empty, and I need to brake suddenly to avoid a squishing.
It’s not really their fault, cars have made noise their entire lives; the sudden appearance of a near silent one takes getting used to. It’s not my fault, I am going very slow in parking lots (as evidenced by the complete shutdown of the gas motor).
I used to have similar situations while riding my bicycle in parking lots, but on the bike I can simply talk out loud or give mild warnings like “coming up on your left” which alert the walker of a risk without causing them to panic (like a sudden loud horn toot). In a my car, this is less instinctive; it does not occur to me quickly to talk out loud… and I don’t want to annoy anyone with the loud horn.
Prius needs a small rattle on the grill, or a quieter horn alternate…
I suppose this will fix itself when the heat of summer kicks in and running the A/C forces the motor to stay on and make the car just a little noisier.
BTW - so far, 50.7mpg is my average and they tell me it goes up slightly once the car is broken in. Filling the tank the first time was a shock. From empty to full was only 9.549 gallons of ordinary gas, and I have not put only $28.26 into a gas tank since it was less than $1.00/gallon and I was filling a 1971 Buick Electra 225 (24.5 gallon tank)!
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 9:10 am and is filed under Cars, Cycling, Hybrid, Personal, Prius. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Related Posts
- Western Union == Epic Fail
- Storm!
- Power Outage
- Lions and Tigers and Robotic Cars, oh my!
- La Belle Public Shows in October
on May 14th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
A good friend of mine tells me that with the 2005 Prius she is not getting the anticipated 45-49 mpg. She thinks it’s more like 30. She also says that other Prius owners she knows are complaining about the same thing. Does that sound right to you?
on May 14th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Nope, in fact my mileage has gotten better. See more recent posts:
http://blog.scottnolan.org/2008/04/18/555mpg-woo-hoo/
My wife is a bit more of a lead foot, and she is getting 44-46mpg in her 2006 Prius.
I have two co-workers, one who is a real lead foot and only drives very short distances, he only gets 40mpg… which is the worst mileage I have heard of in a 2005 Prius. The other co-worker gets 44-48mpg.