EV Drive mode

There was time, five years ago, when the EU almost got to boot daylight saving time into the black pit of hell where it deserves to live. But Covid put that initiative on hold and the opportunity seems to have passed: it's off the news anyway. One of the petty annoyances of twice yearly hour-shifting is resetting all the devices: the cooker, the car. This is only annoying because a) the change protocol requires an idiosyncratic combo of menu, buttons, pushes and push&holds b) I've forgotten [two week event horizon] the path in the intervening 180 days.  Frustration also applies with rental cars, because car makers are forever fripping about with extra features and the different brands won't talk to each other to find common ground. It doesn't help that car-rental people have neither time nor inclination to give clients a lesson in the peculiarities of This car that you want to drive off the lot, Now.

So we bought a new-to-us Yaris in September, which was a) hybrid b) automatic c) key-free ignition and that all took a bit of getting used to. The fan, for example, to stop the windscreen fogging up in winter the driver has to cycle through options to direct air at face; face&feet; feet; screen&feet. There is no option [R] to go screen only. BUT the designers claim you can set and maintain different temperatures for driver and front-seat passenger. The written manual is trying to service several different models of Yaris Hybrid with quite different controls: some with buttons & knobs; some with touch-screen some with both [a new dimension to Hybrid]. And the index is woeful: there is no entry for Clock except under M for Multi-Information Display.

Then the effn clocks changed on us and neither I nor my two 20-something effectives could discover how to make the Yaris clock go back an hour. That's not the end of the world. But it is still legitimate to take a swipe at the designers of a) the car b) the manual. Then for the first time in my life, I saw a key battery low alert on one of the several Multi-Information Displays on the dashboard. Nothing of help in the user manual but youtube offered several ingles-not-first-language explanations about a) what this meant b) how to prise open a keyfob c) the necessity to buy a CR2032 3v lithium coin cell.

I R old, I R the Patriarchy, so I felt no compunction about dropping into the Toyota dealer to change the key battery and the clock. The chap behind the service desk was ever so slightly patronizing. He didn't call me Gramps, let alone blithering ould fule, but you could sense him s l o w i n g down to s h o w me how to change a key-fob battery. I was therefore ever so slightly gratified, when he was unable to change the clock and had to fetch one of the mechanics from the shop-floor. Of Course and, like, well obvs the clock change is mediated by an unlabelled menu button on arm of the steering wheel [R]. That menu multi-button services: ABS brakes; Bulgarian dictionary, Cam-shaft optimizer, Dashcam, Eco-Fuel monitoring device, GPS integrator . . . far too much to fit on a label smaller than the steering wheel itself.

It is engagingly peculiar that in a User Guide so telegraphic that it omits mention of clock controls and key-fob batteries, the editors [and indeed the vehicle designers] found room for an oddly specific highly focused image of social engineering. Down on the floor nigh-invisible near the hand-brake is an [EV] button. I quote: EV Drive Mode in EV drive mode, electric power is supplied by the hybrid battery and only the electric motor is used to drive the vehicle. This mode enables you to drive in residential areas early in the morning or late at night, or in indoor parking lots etc. without concern for noise or emissions.