We took home our “new-to-us” 2014 Prius v Five last Monday morning. Since then I have put on 405 miles (estimated 70% street, 30% highway miles) before the first fill-up with the gas gauge reading 3 bars remaining and 79 miles of driving range remaining. The average (AVG) indicator read 48.1 MPG. I put in 8.512 gallons; that works out to 47.6 MPG. (Note: I debated whether to drive the Prius until the gas gauge read one bar, but I did not want to run out of gas and I wanted to take advantage of the cheap Costco gas on my way to work this morning.) Overall, I am generally happy with the Prius v. It handles well, stops on a “dime,” rides smooth, and is fairly quite. I love that I am getting great gas mileage per gallon; it is a welcome change from the poor gas mileage of our other cars. I like the Prius’s informative instrument panel, but I wish there were readouts of engine coolant temperature, inverter coolant temperature, voltage, etc. I bought a small OBD port reader (ScanGauge II) to put on the dash to display this information.
Had one of those (on our ‘10) for several years, no problems. Then, starting getting “CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM” warning, brake and anti-slip lights, and “odd” brake feel, extra pressure on brake pedal needed, almost felt like no brakes at first. anyway, long story short: dealership mechanic diagnosing these issues noted the ScanGauge, and that his Techstream connection (on the same OBD port) was dropping when he tapped it, proposed disconnecting the ScanGauge for a while, to see if the issues would cease. I did that, no further issues. Seems the constant weight of the ScanGauge obd connector was messing something up, causing communication errors. Lots use SG with no such ill effects, but just something to keep in mind.
Experienced the same with a "P12 Car Head Up Display OBD2 Digital OBD Gauge HUD Auto Diagnostic Tools Meter". Nice tool, but one time, mid-trip, the dash lit up like a holiday display, ABS and REGEN went flat, etc., while the P12 numbers remained in the expected ranges. Pulled the OBD2 connector, pulled over, shut down and restarted the Prius v Five and everything was back to normal. Seems as if feedback from intermittent comms make the car start to go wonky.
