After 3500 + miles on the car I just realized there is no oil pressure or engine temperature gauges. We have been getting idiot lights for oil pressure for years now, but no temp gauge? I grabbed up the owner's manual and found there is only an idiot light for temp now. It's nice they give an idiot light for too cold. But in Southern California, it is totally useless. Anybody thought of adding a temp gauge?
The classic has an idiot light for "too hot" as well - a red one so I guess the '04 is the same? Question is if that lights up - will you also get a warning on the MFD??
Why would you want an idiot light on a system that has a screen? Besides adding to the cost of the vehicle, it would be nothing but a non-information indicator. Providing a warning on the Multi-Display, perhaps along with some detail, would be dramatically more helpful. Has anyone checked if this is already available? After all, we did discover after-the-fact that the programming for "EV mode" already was.
Graham Davies' miniscanner for the 2001-2003 Prius can display several operating parameters available on the OBDII system. At present these include ICE rpm, temperatures of both coolant loops, and many others. It does not currently report oil pressure. I am now searching pdfs here to confirm that there is an oil presure sensor. Meanwhile (stalling for time) the miniscanner now displys only 2 or 4 items as numbers. To cause an "analog gauge" or "strip chart" display would require an additional gadget/programming. This is beyond my skills, but I can certainly imagine something that lets you customize a PDA display with several gauges and/or strip charts. There is no fundamental reason why such info could not appear on the Prius' display screen, but plenty of technical hurdles. For the 2004 (et seq) Prius, a different miniscanner would be required because the on board diagnostic system has a very different LAN. There is a Yahoo group now dedicated to the task of creating such a miniscanner. Anyone here who has skills in this area, they are always looking for more volunteers. I still can't confirm that there is an oil pressure sensor on the NHW11 Prius (pdf searching = slow), but there's gotta be one, right? How else would my "oil can" idiot light know when to illuminate? As this light does not come on when the ICE stops in stealth, there must be some computation going on as well. Clever, these hybrids... DAS, still searching, I'll let you know later if any surprises turn up.
At minimum, these cars must have an oil pressure switch type sensor, but who can say if they have the analog type... :-/
