Leaderboard

One member who had problems with their auto wipers not working correctly found that by disconnecting the sensor, they reverted to standard wipers with intermittent settings - http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/tutorials/article/37-possible-fix-for-faulty-auto-wipers/

I took delivery of my brand new Yaris Hybrid last week. Icon and I upgraded to the Nav on the Touch and Go system. This is my first hybrid although I do have experience of driving electric type cars due to the nature of my job. My first experience was the Chevrolet Volt / Opel Ampera before those cars launched in the UK and most recently, the Hyundai iX35 Hydrogen Fuel Cell. The Yaris is equally as silent when in EV mode and not that less so once the engine runs at low rpms. It is early days re economy evaluating and the time of year will play its part in preventing favourable results, however I am currently pleased with what it's doing thus far. I am using an app called 'Road trip' to track mpg and I have averaged 53.6 to date. My commute is 6 miles of rural B roads, 46 miles of M40 motorway. Leaving in the cold and dark in the morning and returning in the cold and dark at night. I'm tickling it along the rural roads ensuring to keep the gauge away from the PWR segment and maintaining a steady 60 ish on the motorway, overtaking the lorries on the downhill sections rather than accelerate past them on the inclines. The car drives beautifully, it is quiet and smooth - refined with more bearable than expected road noise at speeds. I have no regrets purchasing this car at all - a wonderful little thing! The one thing I am having difficulty with is this. Because of the nature of how it drives, one is not encouraged to drive it quickly. On the contrary - I look forward to 30mph zones!!! Lifting off to encourage EV mode has become a sport in itself in order to get the MPG's up on the display. The difficulty however is trying not to feel anti social at those speeds. I had no idea that driving to the legal speed limits would annoy so many people! I confess that prior to this car I would have been one of them I am now ashamed to admit. I am finding it hard to maintain the self discipline of sticking to said limits and not annoy those cars behind me simply itching to get past. A ridiculous concept I never envisaged experiencing before. Never been overtaken so many times before - extraordinary just how many people are in such a hurry to get somewhere maybe a minute or two quicker than me. It is not a criticism of the car, I don't have any. Actually, that is not true, the lack of storage space up front is crazy and the cup holders at the front of the centre console are too close together to fit to takeaway Costa's. So that is my first impressions of a wonderful little car. I am actually looking forward to each days commute - it feels like an event each time I press the start button. Marvelling at the seamless transitions between engine start ups and power downs. My dream for the future when I come to trade this in for a new one is that the next Yaris will be a plug in hybrid. Or maybe even a full EV with a range of 200+ miles. Thanks for reading. Will update this with fuel mpg stats as I go for any readers thinking of getting one in the future. Regards, VC

Couldn't have put it better myself! :-) The only thing I would add is that I've become a bit of an "mpg bore" in conversation so I must get out of that habit but it's a bit difficult when it does such fabulous figures most of the time! This is something I have learnt very quickly. This is one very clever little car! :-)

Probably another Marmite thing - I'm with Duffryn, don't like them, and annoyed on cars that have it to lose the variable intermittent function, which I use a lot on my T3.

Believe me, you wouldn't want auto wipers anyway - pain in the a**e IMHO! Much better off with variable intermittent function, which I dearly wish mine had.

Agreed, as soon as wipers have been used for anything other than 'mist' or 'wash/wipe' then in my opinion dipped beam headlights should be operated by the car, and remain on until the journey has ended. Would put an end to the number of vehicles in the rain without any lights or just side/position lights on.

That is a probably the worst thing you could do to get good mpg's. It's a common thing for new hybrid owners to do thinking they're doing the right thing. It will give you an immediate high 100+ mpg on the instant display but you will never achieve long term high mpg's doing this and the car will just have to work harder to top up the electrical energy you've just overused. It's a petrol car with electric assistance, not an electric car. Trying to force it to be the latter will cause an increase in mpg's. All this is meant in a good way and not a criticism to you. To get the best mpg's you should just drive the car normally and gently and the computers do all the rest for you. They also do a better job of it than the owner ever could. The Toyota system is very well programmed. If you try and 'force' the car into electric mode by backing off and on as you describe or by using EV mode at the lights etc, the car will cycle the HV battery more and cause it to go lower than it would like. The car then compensates and puts more effort into charging and thus increases fuel consumption. There are many posts on here about this and some go into a great degree of detail in the various warm up cycles the hybrid goes through to gain the best economy. Again, this is no criticism of you and it's your car to do as you wish, but to get the best mpg's out of your car, you should just let it do it's thing. My Prius is a worn out ex taxi and still gets 60/70/80 mpg on a run. If I get less than 50 mpg I've been hammering it and less than 45 is just plain abuse. :) If you have any questions about the hybrid, how it works, how best to get good economy without compromise, then ask away. There are many friendly members on here.

No trolls involved - think we were both working on posts at the same time

I'm sure they work for a lot of people, it's just that unlike many options where you're no worse off if you choose not to use them (like cruise control or automatic headlights), every car I've driven with auto wipers loses the manual control to vary the intermittent wipe feature. I couldn't fault the auto wipers ability to deal with varying rain and spray on a Micra my partner used to have. Once set to my sensitivity preference, and when they weren't operating continuously I just found myself constantly starting to think the wipers should do a sweep, and get ready to manually override them, and just as I made that decision they operated exactly as I would have done manually - they were too good! But they also failed to deal with streaks of water running off the roof, and needed it prod of the stalk. I guess it's as much a 'defect' in the way my brain works, I just know I don't like it and don't seem to be able to get used to it. Auto Headlights Auto headlights is another one I would choose not to use - on a recent Lexus NX test drive, they turned on automatically on a dull afternoon when I went under some overhanging trees, and I noticed someone waiting to turn into the road in front of me momentarily start to move because he (presumably) thought I was letting him out - fortunately, he quickly realised the headlights had been turned on (and the daytime running lights turned off) and only moved about 6 inches - if he'd carried on it would have been 'interesting'! (doing about 45 mph on damp road surface at time)

That filter is filthy and needs changing, it will be the original one for the car, they are very rarely checked on services. New filters can be got on ebay for less than £15, A hell of a lot cheaper than a air compressor to blow air through it. I change my one every couple of years now, They are so cheap it's easier just to pull it out and slide a new one in it's place. The tray is not going to catch any drips as the leak will not be a drip, it will be coming in under the carpets and soaking upwards. Craig.

I'm with you two. Had auto wipers once and never again - unless I have no choice. They're totally useless. I'm sure they work in the workshop when designing the car, but rain isn't as uniform as from a hosepipe or spray gun and thus the autowipers either work correctly (most of the time if I'm honest), work too little (when you actually need them) or work far too often (when you don't). You end up switching them off and on again to reset them more often than if you adjusted the manual intermittent type. Much easier to have a manual intermittent option where you can adjust the timing yourself. IMHO.

Just changed the Central Console and media centre Surround to body colour - what do you think?

this is often demonstrated by one of my pet hates: people who park on the 'wrong' side of the road at night and leave their headlights on (this is often seen outside takeaway establishments). Driving past them can be very unpleasant on the eyes (especially if the road is wet/shiny), and if a pedestrian stepped out from behind their vehicle, it would be easy to miss (seeing!) them. There is a specific law against using headlights on the wrong side of the road, but an awful lot of people seem to not know or care. And, of course, what few police are out there have 'more important' things to worry about.