1. My Garmin 1390T now insists on turning itself on automatically in my new II. It never did that in my Tahoe. The good news is that it turns itself off automatically too. What don't I understand about either the port or the Garmin? 2. I tried charging my Verizon Chocolate phone from the console port for the first time and, while the charger light was on, it would not charge the phone. It charged fine at home and used to charge fine in the Tahoe just 10 days ago. I've started a list of things called "Duh! You're driving a Prius!" and these two things may need to be added. ;o)
The Prius (and a lot of other cars) turn the power to the cigarette lighter off when the car is turned off. Your GPS automatically turns on when the power comes back on and automatically turns off when the power is removed. That's not really a Prius specific thing, but it does work nicely with the GPS. I actually modified the lighter on one of my other cars to do the same thing so my GPS would go on and off automatically. Don't know what's up with the phone though, there shouldn't be anything about the Prius that should prevent it from charging... unless you tried to charge it with the car off... as I said above it does shut off the lighter when you turn off the car. Although if that was the case I don't know why the light would be on.
