Thanks Miles, I guess I had always assumed that I will continue to have a gas and diesel vehicle in the stable of my personal vehicles, but I have the same concerns as to if this can ever become my goto vehicle when I want to drive from Portland to Phoenix, or a similar type of extended multi-day road trip, or if it becomes the inner city vehicle which is not really what I am looking for.
The Prius had severe problems in winter driving, and we live at elevation where we have snow on the road every year. First, I will try to explain the two systems that were the challenge, and differentiate b/w TRAC (Traction Control) and VSC (Vehicle Stability Control). They are different though related, and combined make the Prius a challenge in winter driving.
Every Prius has TRAC and it is essential for the protection of the hybrid system...spinning the tires of a Prius could result in direct damage to the Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) components. It is possible to disable the TRAC (I don't remember the exact technique of the secret squirrel technique, but it was something like the following:
- Turn the car to ignition by pressing START twice WITHOUT pressing the brake.
- Push the gas pedal all the way two times
- While pressing the brake pedal put the car into NEUTRAL
- Press the gas pedal two times
- Push PARK
- Press the gas pedal two times
- Now put your foot on the BRAKE and press START.
VSC is optional and relates to slide/skid prevention in cornering. It is signalled by some beeping when it kicks in and a VSC light comes on on the dash very briefly (hard to see b/c it goes off so quickly and most people aren't looking at the dash when the car is going fast enough and sliding enough for VSC to engage). It independently controls the braking and power distribution to the wheels to recover from the slide/skid. Whereas TRAC is simply to prevent the forward wheel spin when there is loss of traction.
There are times when I felt we needed to be able to accelerate the vehicle even though traction is not 100%. The prius traction control will NOT allow you to spin the tires at all, so you can stomp on the accelerator but the vehicle will go nowhere.
The problem we had with the RX400H was an inverter failure while driving, and while Lexus (Toyota) covered the $9K bill to repair and replace the burnt fuses and inverter that had failed, it is hard to ever regain confidence in a vehicle that had total power failure, which caused the engine, steering and brakes to stop working while driving at highway speeds. Not sure what caused the inverter failure, but it seems to have been a frequent failure at a particular VIN range of the RX400H vehicles.
