Toyota Prius - long-term review

One of the things I like about living with a Prius is how calming it is. It soothes me. It slows me down too. Because if I go slowly, I beat my eco score personal best. I breeze past 60 miles per gallon. I stop the e-CVT not-a-gearbox mooing in pain like a bison that’s stubbed its hoof.

It’s an easy-going companion on Britain’s congested, shoddily built, punitively policed roads. And it’s seeing plenty of them – I’ve passed 4,000 miles in the last three months. But what’s not calming is staring me in the face.

The driver instrumentation. It’s far too busy. A messy humble of pixelated graphics, numerals and TMI. Oh I’m sorry, do you not know what that stands for? Why, it’s Too Much Information. Annoying when someone needlessly uses an acronym, isn’t it? Really annoying. VFA.

And boy, does Toyota love an acronym. While on my daily doomscroll through the car settings sub-menu to disable the various bongs and the drunken lane assist, I started counting up the abbreviated tech features offered in Toyota’s top-of-the-range hybrid streamliner. And as I went to find a pen and paper to write them all down, I wondered ‘how is anyone supposed to decipher this?’

PCS. RCD, PSKB. Nope, me neither. Then there’s PDA, which I thought meant Public Display of Affection? Does the car blush? Does it want to hold hands and sneak off behind the bins?

What’s odd is some of the Prius’s features are spelled out fully (so you can easily banish them). ‘Lane Departure Alert System’ is written out in words. So is ‘Parking Assist’. But then it seems the coders got lazy.

Next up there’s RCTA, RVAI, and RSA. That’s the one you need to make it stop bonging if you happen to crest 21mph in a 20mph zone – it’s the Road Sign Assist, which keeps an eye on local limits.

In yet another sub-menu I happened across LCA and FTCA. Turns out the latter is Front Cross Traffic Alert, which is supposed to be a handy aid which uses sensors to warn when cars are approaching from a perpendicular angle. Useful if you’re an entitled, inattentive driver and routinely wear racehorse blinkers to work. Not so great in the real world, because every time I stop at a T-junction, the car bongs and flashes an orange ALL-CAPS warning into my eyeline that there are in fact cars coming.

Yes, Prius. I know. That’s why I’ve stopped, my foot is on the brake, and I have my indicator on. Leave me alone.

Having cars stuffed to the brim with tech is one issue. But listing with impenetrable acronyms is even sillier. I’m lucky – I’m familiar with a lot of modern cars. What hope is there for someone who hasn’t upgraded their car for three, or five, or 10 years? Could my grandparents figure any of this out without a Toyota version of the Rosetta Stone?

Here’s an idea: spell out your sub menus in plain English. Or better yet, have a button where there are two blank spaces down by my right knee. You could label it T.O.Y.O.T.A: Turn Off Your Odious Technical Acronyms.