Salad Is Slaughter

Toyota to sell solar panel-equipped Prius next year

Beginning in 2009:

The redesigned Prius will come equipped with solar panels on the roof, partly powering the air-conditioning system, which needs up to 5kw.

This should help a problem that I’ve seen.  In really hot weather the gas mileage reported by the system drops by a good 5 MPG which I’ve been attributing to using the air conditioner.  Believe it or not, I start to get annoyed when my mileage on a tank of gas is “only” 45 to 46 MPG when I’d been getting 50 to 51.  Of course, even the lower value is three times better than I had with the Pathfinder.

The new kitten is almost integrated in to the new family.  She has no fear of the dogs even though each of them outweighs her by a good 50 or 60 pounds.  She also plays well with Peek-a-boo.  Nala is still trying to decide if Georgia is a playmate, a toy, or a meal.

Yesterday I looked at my phone to get an accurate time.  The guy standing next to me did the same thing.  The clocks on our phones were 3 minutes different even though they’re both Verizon phones.  That’s not something I would expect.

The temperature outside on Saturday was over 100F.  I took the windshield shades from the cars and put them in to the skylight and it really made a difference in that part of the house.  I’m going to have to hit the store and find a couple of large sun shades to replace what I’ve got there now.

The Toyota dealer adjusted my XM antenna on the Prius a couple of months ago to try to fix my dropout problem.  It improved somewhat going north but now if I’m just east of south, even with no obscura I get dropouts.  I was told that the antenna lead is too short to move it to the roof.  I consider this a design flaw on Toyota’s part.  For my next servicing I’m going to bitch some more then have them move it back to where it was.

On the way back from lunch today I saw a “plug-in” Prius with information painted on the car’s body advertising the increased gas mileage (they claim 100 MPG) and contact information.

Painted on the back of the car was the phrase, “I don’t remember the last time I stopped for gas.”  Unfortunately , this “plug-in” Prius was on the back of a truck.  My first thought:  “Maybe you should look at the gas gauge every once in a while so you don’t have to get towed.”

I just got a call from the service guy at the place where we bought the Prius.  He wanted to know how I liked the XM I had installed, and so forth.  I told him I didn’t like the antenna placement, but overall I’d recommend XM to anyone.

Then he started asking about the Pathfinder I traded in because he’s thinking about buying it. Sure it’s got 90,000 miles on it, but it never gave me much trouble.  It just needs the 90,000 mile service, new tires, and new brakes.  I only sold it because the gas mileage wasn’t good for commuting.

I told him the details about the car, and said I’d be in Friday to bring in the shade for the cargo area that I forgot to include.  He thanked me, and said he’d talk to his technician about moving the satellite antenna to the roof.  He doesn’t know if it’s possible, but he’ll ask.

So, maybe I’ll get that situation improved.

On Sunday I got an XM radio installed in the Prius.  On the positive side, it’s fully integrated with the car’s audio system, so I can switch channels from the buttons on the steering wheel.  The sound is good, and the receiver is directly patched in, instead of using an FM channel like my other receiver does.  That means no interference due to a distant station.  There really aren’t any clear FM frequencies available in this (or probably most) metropolitan areas, so interference can happen.  So far, so good.

There are some things that the Toyota factory installed system could do a lot better.  For starters, the placement of the XM antenna is not ideal.  It’s on the passenger side dashboard inside the car.  That means you’re more susceptible to signal fade and dropouts because the metal surrounding the windshield and the car’s roof may block the signal.  When I had Circuit City install XM on the 4-Runner and the Pathfinder, they mounted the antenna on the vehicles’ roof.

I’ve driven my route to work in all three vehicles, and the Prius has at least 6 places where I briefly lose the signal as compared to two places in the 4-Runner and the Pathfinder.  Admittedly, Highway 85 from Almaden Valley up to Sunnyvale is frequently lower than the surrounding terrain so capturing the XM signal is more of a challenge, especially if there are sound walls above the freeway.  It should be noted that I don’t have the same drop outs when I travel south on 85.  It looks to me like the factory install goes for ease of antenna installation over optimal position.

Maybe I haven’t stumbled across it yet, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to set up/read text crawls that XM broadcasts.  On my first radio, I’ve got the crawl set up to display live hockey scores.  The factory installed appears to lack this capability.

Another thing I like about my older XM radio is that I can list a bunch of channels and see what is playing on each.  This is especially important for the sports channels because you don’t know which game is on what channel unless you look it up before you get in your car.

So while I’d always recommend getting satellite radio in the car, there is definitely room for improvement in features offered and antenna placement for the Toyota factory installed system.

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