Notes from a 500 mile trip : GRS PHEV, good, bad, ugly

[Nick72]

Just landed home after a 500 mile round trip. Long day.

I'm going to start with the bad and ugly combined. A new fault. 

After being diverted by Waze off the M1 which was closed or at a standstill earlier today, and I'm taking the industrial estate plus sleepy village route. Slows down to probably a few mph in the traffic and the parking sensor front nearest right is beeping. Yellow bar so not the closest proximity red bar. But there's nothing there. The car in front of me is one or two car lengths away. It's still beeping. That would be fine except, when the parking sensors beep the pan view cameras come on and take over the Infotainment screen. Not set to Auto btw. It just does this and you have no say. Unfortunately, the parking sensor can't make up it's mind and the Infotainment screen is going on off on off on off in out in our shake it all about, let's do the hokey cokey. You get the picture. And continues to do this for the next 15 minutes non stop. Needless to say I then got lost because I couldn't see the map in AA running Waze. It was black screen then camera then black screen then camera. Alternating every 2 seconds. 

Had to then park up. Switch off and on again.  Inspected the sensors expecting to find a stuck on leaf or squashed bug. Nothing. And odd because that would have resulted in a zero range (which ought to be calibrated out in the auto cal for an ultrasonic sensor) whereas I was getting a yellow bar not a red one. 

All working fine then 15 minutes later I'm doing the hokey cokey yet again. Pulls over. Off then on again. Fixed. No issue on the inbound leg. 

So it may need to be a dealer visit in the next couple of weeks if it happens again. I'm reminded of the adaptive cruise control issue I had once on the last R4P. Radar not available message pop up. Words to that effect. All of a sudden out of the blue. Could not clear the message covering up the drivers display info since if you cleared it then it would come back a few seconds later. Hokey cokey again. Never got to the bottom of that. Another case of now I need to pull over at the next services. 

Any ideas? No, I've not washed the car since I got it so no scope for blasting the sensors with the jetwash being the cause. 

 

So that was the bad and ugly.

More positive note, the seats are really comfortable. More so than my Merc. And they were very good. 

New features which I'm trying to rationalise...

1. Driver display. Red circle with speed limit, says 70. Underneath that is a smaller red circle saying 50 and a little stop watch symbol overlapping. I was on the motorway (70) but in an average 50mph speed limit. So I'm assuming this is what it was telling me? I don't know if this came from the map, Toyota cloud, or the RSA.

2. LTA dots. When going slow with adaptive cruise on often in stop start traffice the display shows the car in front and the number of distance separation bars, 1, 2, or 3. But on occasion it shows dots to the car in front to indicate the system is following the car in front. This well known. What it also does is do this at high speed. I was doing 60mph when the dots appeared. It was foggy, dark, and lane markings poor. So I assume it was saying, can't follow the lines mate, I'm following the car in front?

 

Probably need the Dicky Davis sport jingle for this...

 

As for other motorists today. The *** head league table is...

Audi 6pts (6 separate asbo aggro Audi idiots)

Rage rover 4pts (4 separate idiots)

White Van Man 2pts

Ford Failures 2pts

Pukegos (that's Peugeot) 1pts

 

The my car has broken down on the motorway league table is...

JLR (land and range rovers) 4pts (4 separate instances)

Peugeot 3pts

Audi 2pts

Ford 2pts

Seat 1pts

Hyundai 1pts

BMW 1pts

Renault 1pts

 

That felt cathartic. 😂

[Cyker]

This is what annoys me about these ADAS systems - There needs to be a big red button you can mash that just turns them off in an emergency when they go wrong.

Or just get rid of them and improve driving standards which would make most of them redundant! (Things like LTA in particular - If someone can't keep their car in the lines consistently they shouldn't be allowed to drive!)

I'm getting a bit tired of mine randomly cutting accelerator input because of some phantom potential collision it's imagined when I'm crossing a junction... It makes me miss my Mk1...!

 

[Nick72]

5 minutes ago, Cyker said:

This is what annoys me about these ADAS systems - There needs to be a big red button you can mash that just turns them off in an emergency when they go wrong.

Or just get rid of them and improve driving standards which would make most of them redundant! (Things like LTA in particular - If someone can't keep their car in the lines consistently they shouldn't be allowed to drive!)

I'm getting a bit tired of mine randomly cutting accelerator input because of some phantom potential collision it's imagined when I'm crossing a junction... It makes me miss my Mk1...!

 

I don't mind the tech so long as it works reliably. I used the LTA in most of today's trip and it worked fine. Easy driving with the adaptive cruise on. Still got to stay alert just in case it decides to go pear shaped but no issues today other than a couple of times the adaptive cruise decided to brake (slightly, not hard) when there was nothing there. Is that what you mean?

Thing which annoyed me was that I lost my Nav because of a dicky ultrasonic parking sensor. The two are independent, or should be. So now a fault in one system effectively causes issues in another. This was a daft choice of moding. I don't need to see a camera view when the parking range sensors and display are telling me how close I am. Showing me a video ain't going to make that any better. 

Feels buggy.

[Cyker]

10 minutes ago, Nick72 said:

I don't mind the tech so long as it works reliably....

Very much this!!!

Alas I think there are too many beta-quality devices on cars which is bringing down the reliability. I love my tech too but not when it randomly tries to kill me!  

I don't want to be the tester/guinea pig unless they want to may me to be one!