Scott and I did it – we picked up our new 2012 Nautical Blue Prius with Solar Panel Moonroof on Saturday!
After much pacing and needing to get out of the condo, we took our 2009 Black Prius on it’s last journey to the store, Starbucks for lunch and then home to the dealer where we left the car.
To be clear – we loved our 2009. Admittedly, we love the 2012 just that little bit more. Believe me, the two cars are night and day when it comes to the sound system, the connectivity and the design. It’s like going from the Enterprise NCC-1701A (Kirk era) and being upgraded to the Enterprise NCC-1701D (Picard era). And surprisingly, what I thought would be an annoying feature has turned out to be a really cool one – the Vehicle Proximity Notification System!
I have to gush over the sound system. It sounds amazing relative to the 2009 and the 2012 came with an HD Radio so I can pick up HD Radio broadcasts from the US. I wonder if this will help to spur the adoption of HD Radio in Canada. Knowing what the broadcasting systems are doing these days, it would not surprise me if Canada remains on regular analogue FM. DAB (or DRB here) was being tested but has been stopped.
Seriously though, listening to WNED on the HD signal – just wow, when listening to classical. It’s getting close to feeling like you are sitting in a concert hall. Same with XM listening to 075 (Pops).
The Navigation system was a real surprise providing a 3D look and voice recognition capabilities. It’s something I’ll have to play around with more.
I am less impressed with the voice recognition, but I think that may just be a matter of getting used to. Firstly, it did not recognize my iPod Classic, but did work with my iPhone really well. I realized it had something to do with not syncing the titles from the iPod. I’m not quite sure why but I got it syncing at 2am this morning, so we’ll see what happens.
When trying to use a street address, despite giving all the details it still had me go through each to confirm one at a time. It may just because I am still getting used to giving commands.
The phone capabilities are amazing and very clear. I am surprised that it does not support multiple phones connected at the same time so someone could make an outbound call on their own phone while keeping another phone as the master phone for outbound calls by voice. My old BlueAnt S4 speaker phone supported that.
I’ve not had a chance to use the solar panel to keep the car cool – yet. It has been a relatively cool and wet period of the week so the fan isn’t going to be turned on. I did however, notice that the car can be remotely controlled from our condo while it is outside, so I could turn on the AC remotely to cool it down when we’re ready to head off. How cool is that?!
And the famous Vehicle Proximity Notification System – At low speeds the car purposely makes noises so that people know the car is around. It sounds like a car on the Jetson’s and a Light Cycle.
The sheer volume of statistics this car pumps out is also quite something. I’m sure I’ll be writing up more about that.
Such a cool car!
