2019 Prius Gaining Traction Just Weeks From Today

Hi All:

Well, that went OT quick.

Let us get back to the final segments of the review. In this post, I will write about Toyota infotainment. If there was one area that needs an absolute 100 percent throw out the programmers and decision makers and bring in an entirely new team, this is it.

2020 Toyota Prius AWD-e Infotainment


Google Play Store rating of 1.7. I would not provide a higher rating.​

Let us start with these two screenshots as it will give you an idea as to how Toyota continues to harm itself.

Entune 3.0 is supposed to be the window to Toyota Infotainment solution. All it is today is an app that launches BT - all cars do this automatically with no user interaction nowadays anyway??? - and provides access to some very minor apps. In Oct of 2018, they removed Pandora and Spotify from the supported and included apps. Meaning, if you want to run Spotify or Pandora, you are forced to do so ON YOUR PHONE that is BT connected. No voice control and forced to manually operate your phone while driving down the road.

The apps? This is all there is.​

Android Auto is absolutely MIA and it alone would supply support for a number of apps like Pandora and Spotify, voice to text and text to voice, and full NAVI guidance and control by natural voice interaction and commands plus more. With no Spotify or Pandora the audio app control is crap.

So, what about the included SW NAVI solution? To put it bluntly, the Scout GPS is more than 10 years behind a Garmin or Google Maps via Android Auto.

Telenav - Scout GPS on screen.​

To start, Scout GPS will not start unless you have Entune 3.0 running on your phone. Ok... To see an actual map, you have to boot up the Prius, wait between 15 and 30-seconds before plugging your phone into the USB data port, and then wait for the app to display an actual map. If you do not follow this procedure, Entune is only showing a BT connection and the Scout GPS App needs a data connection to the phone via USB for the display. Otherwise, only turn by turn is displayed via BT. It is frustrating experience unless you follow this goofy procedure.

Next, the Scout GPS action. Wow is it trash. I was in a 5-mile stop and crawl across Camp Pendleton. The Garmin was displaying heavy traffic ahead about a mile with the highway path filled in red. Google Maps was showing the slowdown and the stop and crawl from the moment I was in it. Scout GPS showed the road was clear for all 25-minutes I was in it!

Trying to get to an address. Like the Embedded NAVI Toyota uses, you have to formalize your input in order to it to understand the address you want to go to and even then, it usually fails. It also knows so few business' or POIs that makes it even more frustrating to use. When I first installed Entune and Scout GPS, it took over 20-minutes while driving down the road fighting it to recognize and accept my home address and as my home. On the way to Prietive Group, the Press Fleet handlers, this morning, Scout GPS does not know what Prietive is. I had to provide an address I searched for by Google on my phone to provide the exact address to go to. 15-minutes later it was input.

Does Scout GPS display a Junction View, lane position, signage, or on-ramp/off-ramp lane guidance? Nope.

Fast interaction? Not a chance. If you hit the talk button, everything on the screen is slowed to a crawl. The Voice prompt can take up to 15-seconds from button push to listen and then it gets your input wrong about 85 percent of the time anyway.

It is a NAVI solution. Just a really bad NAVI solution.

How does the 2020 Prius AWD-e and Entune handle texts? I receive them all the time and under Android Auto, I receive the short notification, it is read back to me, I can reply via voice, it reads the reply back to verify it is what you want to send, and then sends if I allow. Under Entune, a bing and a 2-second display that a text came in from such and such a number. That is it.

You already know about the lack of Pandora and Spotify as it was removed back in late 2018. iHeart Radio and NPR. Who gives a flying ****!

A mess and there is one easy solution. Simply provide Android Auto to handle all of this since Toyota via its Entune app has absolutely no idea how to do any of it. For the 2020 MY, Toyota has included Android Auto in the Camry, Avalon, RAV4 and ES. They have even provided Android Auto via SW updates in some 2018s and newer models. The Prius and Corolla? Tough luck. At the Prius AWD-e first drive in Kohler, WI late last fall, I asked the infotainment PR folks if there was enough memory in the 4th gen Prius' head unit to accommodate Android Auto. They said there was. And here we are today with his mess of a setup.

Wayne

 

Hi All:

2020 Toyota Prius AWD-e Exterior design?

Up front, the small upper and larger lower grille do not add much curb appeal. The headlamp fixtures are a bit too tall given the thin LEDs that are going into everything else.

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From the second gens reveal in late 2003, the wing shape profile is now ubiquitous with all Prius’. The Ioniq lineup in particular and the Tesla’s CUVs also use it to some extent. I am a fan of this profile as it is modern, efficient, and practical other than taller rear seat passengers’ ingress/egress.

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The 4th gen added the floating rear roof with the black plastic insert, and the very polarizing vertical rear taillamps. Fortunately for the 2020 MY, all Prius’ including the AWD-e received horizontally laid out lamps. But, the rear hatch includes a lot of non-unifying angles with the new taillamps appearing like an afterthought.

The Prius Prime’s has a better look up front and the dual wave rear glass fits the Prius’ out there design better.

2020 Toyota Prius AWD-e Interior

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Moving inside, the XLEs SofTex synthetic leather material on the seating surfaces and wheel is soft, comfortable, and clean looking. Despite the lack of seat bottom length and the wheels telescopic reach, a SofTex equipped Prius is reasonably comfortable to sit in.

The dash has plenty of softtouch plastic on top but it has a sad droop from left to right. The vents chrome inlays are a highlight as is the gloss black plastic trim that does not leave fingerprints like you would expect. The Central display bezel however looks a bit odd as a floating display while attached to the dash with dual layers. At least the console tray is now gloss black vs the white that was there last year.

I also wanted to mention the glass from both the exterior and interior perspectives. From inside, Toyota’s glass looks so clean like it is not there. Meaning the entire glass surface from inside to out is uniform thickness. Hyundai/Kia, Honda/Acura, Nissan/Infinti and most everybody else shows the distortion at some angle. The Toyota Prius’ windscreen glass is superb.

There is also a lot of glass from the deeply raked windshield and hatch to the taller glass sections of the side windows. It creates a high interior heat load. Cleaning a body panel is as simple as wiping it off. Cleaning glass takes more work and I worked more than once to clean the glass so the pics looked better.

Polarizing, yes. Fashionable? Not anymore.

Wayne

 

Hi All:

And finally, the 4th gen Prius does something that nothing outside an Ioniq on the highway - and only on the highway - can touch. That is its efficiency. As a Commercial vehicle where function overwhelms form, there is nothing like a Prius' efficiency for low fuel costs and hatch for large cargo capacity.

2020 Toyota Prius AWD-e - Week results


68.5 mpg indicated/64.2 mpg actual over 1,096.4 miles indicated/1121.2 actual miles.​

The interior and exterior design is not as fresh as it once was, comfort is just ok but could use a few tweaks and the infotainment is a disaster in no uncertain terms. But...

If your needs include driving distances beyond the practicality of an EV, low TCO thanks to extremely low fuel consumption, and/or low CO2 output while moving from Point A to B day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year without fuss, there is literally nothing available that provides what a Prius does. Nothing.

Let us call it a wrap on this hyper efficient offering whose beauty is found within its function. Just not much beyond that.

Wayne