Toyota Recalling Prius

[stryder144]

Hybrid owners to be notified of stalling glitch on '04 and '05 models.

DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday it will notify about 160,000 Prius owners around the world about a potential software problem that may cause the popular hybrid cars to suddenly stall or shut down.

Sounds like M$ is at it again. I wonder if Toyota contracted their software development to the M$ Win95 team?

Cheers

[esmoquin]

Are these car batteries like a UPS? When one battery in the bank dies, the whole bank goes dead?

I wouldn't want to hit a bump in the road and wiggle a cable that makes the car sputter.

I know this is a silly question. What happens if you cross a river fording and the car floods. Could you get electrocuted? It happened to me in a flooded VW beetle some years ago, and the experience makes me wonder everytime I see those cars on the street.

[Compunuts]

Are these car batteries like a UPS? When one battery in the bank dies, the whole bank goes dead?

Actually, No.

I wouldn't want to hit a bump in the road and wiggle a cable that makes the car sputter.

They are not that easy to come loose either. Toyota's recall was to re-install the software which wasn't detected when made. All they did was upgrade the software and all is good. It wasn't hardware problem (such as seat belt's defect or battery defect).

I know this is a silly question. What happens if you cross a river fording and the car floods. Could you get electrocuted? It happened to me in a flooded VW beetle some years ago, and the experience makes me wonder everytime I see those cars on the street.

It probably is specific to VW, may be. It happened to a friend of mine with his Jeep and nothing happen. Even with VW, I think it's the way the bugs are made. Newer models don't have that problem (although don't quote me on that since I don't own a VW) such as Passet or Jetta.

[kurius]

It's a good point. Crashing a fully charged Prius into a lake should give off some sparks, shouldn't it?

[capybara]

a friend of mine has one, he says it regularly gets 100 mpg
(it has a digital display of mpg on the dash)
and just to see if it could be done, he got it up to 100 MPH!
When u start it , it makes a low wisper as the electric engine comes on.
At a stop light, it shuts off the electric engine completely and is silent.
It even recycles the energy from brake heat, which they call
"regenerative braking."

[shadowz]

Here are some interesting Prius links:

Wikipedia - Toyota Prius
Prius Fourms
Clarifying Prius Misconceptions

I like the idea that it stores warm coolant in a vacuum flask and quickly pumps it through the engine before startup. They say this reduces the wear and tear of putting load on a cold engine.

I drove in one of the early models once and remembered that the gas engine would constantly run if the A/C was on. Not such a great savings in a warm climate. They have fixed this with a fully electrical compresor in the new model. The old one used a belt system powered by the gas engine.

[mechdave]

When I was working in Alice Springs for the Toyota dealer up there, we were trialling the Prius. The little car gave no problems that I can recall, it just went whisper quiet!!