Ok. Thanks. On another thread they were saying it was different and you explained the difference, electronic vs mechanical.
IN some ways my car is a computer, and has the same odd things. Sometimes for example i can get in the car, “turn it on”, and shift before it’s really on, and the result is to get the computer locked up in an intermediate state, where my only recourse is to hold the button down for 10 seconds to turn it off.
The most annoying thing is that you can’t go straight from the “power on” state to the “accessory on” state. So if I pull into my garage, and I’m listening to the end of a song i like on the radio, if I want to turn the car off so the engine stops, I have to power the car completely off, shutting the radio off, and then turn it back on to get to accessory power.
Don’t know if that changed for the 2010 model. The 2010 prius is remarkably different from the 2004-2009 version.
My wife’s Prius (2002) has a key, so it can be returned to accessory mode from the “ready” mode, which is the Prius name for “on” (since the engine is often NOT running in “ready” mode).