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Old 09-26-2011, 04:32 PM   #1 (permalink)
Arragonis
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Unintended Acceleration ?

Mrs A complained about the number of rattles in her Prius and demanded action - actually she parked it in front of my Aygo and "suggested" I take A Junior to his cub scouts and spend some time with the Prius to remove rattles. Usually Mrs A won't let me drive the Prius, maybe in case I get better FE.

So I reset trip meter B and dropped off A junior at cub scouts and went rattle hunting. Most were simple - the boot (aka Trunk) tray not fitting properly, stuff in the tray and stuff in the door and the centre console bits and pieces. There is one under the front dash behind the steering wheel which I think will need the local Toyota dealer to investigate, but it is hard to recreate. The boot tray is a cr@p fit, so it rattles a lot.

So given that this was my first chance to "play" with our Prius I tried the Hybrid system. I worked out the method of fooling it into switching the engine off at 30-35 and then cruising at 30 on city streets. I worked out how to get the thing to cruise at 65-75 easily and even worked out a method of using EV mode to get the thing to 35 with no IC and then switch to Eco mode to hold it there.

I got an average of 76 MPG (imp) on trip B, and was happy to suggest that 80-90 would be possible with some effort.

On two occasions though the Prius did "go" when I didn't want it to.

Both times I had parked up and then just set off, pulled out of the car park and then acclerated hard to get up to 30-35 before I could ease off and get it to turn the engine off.

Except when I lifted off, the pedal stayed down and the car continued to gain speed. I pushed hard on the pedal the first time and it popped up, the car regained control. I pulled over and checked for obstructions - mats etc. but there wasn't any - we do have some on order for winter.

The car behaved until I parked again and then shortly after I set off and repeated the acceleration / lift-off operation the car continued to accelerate again. Pushing and releasing the throttle pedal freed it up again.

I checked whether the cruise was on and maybe I had set it but it was off - I turned it on and off without setting it and it didn't kick in.

Any ideas ?

Mrs A has not reported any out of control moments but TBH roads in Scotland are useless for cruise control so we don't use it much. For the next few days I have child duties - taking A Junior to school and then picking him up for after school activities, so he will be in my Aygo instead.

I'm worried about it though when he gets back in. But probably like a lot of drivers I wonder about what happened.

I do know EM has looked at the Toyota Acceleration issue the evidence seems to assumed driver error but this was definitely not. I'm not a big user of autos but I'm sure it wasn't me.

Anyone else, advice ?

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