I had the pleasure today of having a meeting with one of InTACT's Data Center providers. As this company is not located at our premises, I was supplied with a Company Car to make the long trip to Turner... (The Sun Microsystems building.. its pretty cool).
Right from booking I should have known this would be trouble. In Pat's words, "drop by 10 minutes before you leave, and I'll show you how to use the car."
.."Use the car?", I thought to myself. It turns out the car I'd booked was the Toyota Prius; Toyota's "hybrid" car (i.e., electric / petrol). Let's just say, it's not your average car.
Anyhow, just before we (I had a Systems Engineer accompany me to the Data Centre) left, Pat told us to give her a call if we should "run into trouble"...
All went well, we made it there on time, and even found a parking spot (shock horror). It's the return trip that gets you.
Okay, "key" goes in ignition (if you can call it a key), and power button is pressed. The displays light up, yadda yadda. I try to put the car into 'Drive' (the transmission is also highly abnormal), but it just won't come out of park. I try this a couple of times, with different combinations of parking brake on/off, and normal brake depressed or not... Nothing.
So, I do what most software engineers would do in the situation: When all else fails, reboot the computer! Or the car, in this case... Let's just say, it took two reboots to get the damn thing to move.
My recommendation to anyone considering buying a Prius: Don't buy a car that requires two reboots to get anywhere. It's just not worth it! I've no idea if it's dodgy firmware, or just that the battery needed warming up or whatever, but Toyota needs to fix it!