It was 37 - 39'F when I drove to work at 5:30AM this morning. I watched the MFD as much as was safe whenever the temperature drifted down to 37. It did finally scroll down an overlay at the top that simply said something like "Outside temperature 37'F". No other words like "Caution" or "Warning" and no snowflake graphic on the MFD. The message persisted for only about 1 second then scrolled up and vanished. With such a brief display and nothing in the manual (at least that I can find), I doubt that any new customer would either see it or understand what it is about. It seems like a useless vestige of the old snowflake warning indicator up on the dash. One last note. It came on sometime after the temperature reading said 37'F. Like most digital thermometers, I expect that when it says 37'F the actual temperature is somewhere between 36.50'F and 37.49'F. The "warning" in the MFD is probably triggered by a temperature of 37.00'F so on a morning like today you can probably drive around with the outside temperature indicator at 37'F and not see the MFD scroll down display. - Tom
My home state is Kansas, but now I live in Southern California. In the winter months, I want a display that tells me how cold it is in Kansas so I'll feel better about my outlandish mortgage in L.A. For the summer months, I want a "sweat" icon to indicate that they're sweltering in the heat and humidity back home, and in the springtime I want a "mosquito" light, or possibly a tornado icon. I do miss autumn in the Midwest, so in the fall I'd like an icon of a red or golden leaf so that I don't forget what they look like. Jan
What I'd like to see would be for a snowflake warning to show up in the corner of the MFD, no matter which screen, and not just an overlay, remain on rather than flash momentarily, and possibly be accompanied by a text warning. I think we have to keep in mind that the US is pretty much the only country in the world that doesn't use the metric system for general measurements. The Prius "thinks" in metric, and the MFD for the US model displays info that has been converted to US units. The snowflake really comes on at 3°C. I've never made a point of of checking the exact temp reading when it comes on and goes off to see if there is any hysteresis, but I will now.
But then they would need to make an "earthquake light" and a "tsunami light" so the people in the midwest can think of us on the west coast. /Jim
Thank you for making my point regarding the usefulness of Master Warning and Master Caution lights. You would have never known to look. Once you see and read the "snowfake" caution, you touch that area on the MFD and the Master Caution light goes out. If it is a Warning, like "out of gas," the Master Warning will stay on. It would be so simple for Toyota to remove what in many instances are useless and obnoxious icons from the driver's line of sight on the dash and move them to the MFD. Who needs to be constantly reminded at night that their headlights are on???
