[Guest]

Hi gang!

I just read an article in the April 2002 edition of Popular Mechanics in which one of their feature columnists (Jay Leno) was making some comments about EV's (he says he has not drove a Prius).

A comment that I found interesting was that he claims many tow truck drivers will not tow any electric vehicles because they're afraid of being electricuted or the car catching fire (refering to vechicles involved in a colision).

Has anyone had any experiences with 1) towing in general, and 2) towing after an accident?

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[Guest]

And yet people don't worry about driving around with 30 gallons of gasoline in their tanks... no risk from fire there... It's things like this that scare people for no reason

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[Guest]

I had to get 'Ralph' jumped back in November (had left the map light on overnight). When I realized the battery was dead I called the Prius hotline to get someone to come and give it a boost--but Toyota had a pretty difficult time getting anyone to come.

Whenever they told a mechanic it was a Prius, the response was be 'Sorry, I don't touch those.' All the mechanics were afraid of getting electrocuted by the funky weird car.

Finally, (several hours later), they found a guy who agreed to come out. Turns out he'd never heard of a Prius before--had no idea it was a hybrid. And, for that reason alone, he was perfectly happy to jump it just like any other car. (As any mechanic should have been!) The placement of the battery in the back didn't really phase him--but he did seem a bit startled when we said 'OK, he's good to go' and he hadn't heard an engine reving ;-)

Ralph started up just fine and hasn't given us any trouble since...

 

[Guest]

Jay Leno specifically mentioned that tow truck drivers where wary of potentialyl cut or frayed high voltage wires cause by an accident might
cause electricution or a car under tow to catch fire.

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[Guest]

Jay Leno is, I'm sure, an expert in such things

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[Guest]

I wonder why there is no high volt cut off like with the fuel pumps ? Or if there is

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[Guest]

Hi voltage cutoff: There is.

In fact there are two: One automatic and one manual.

The system main relay is in the back near the battery and cuts off the high voltage under several different circumstances including turning the ignition off and airbag deployment. In addition, there is a manual "plug" that one can pull out (again near the hv battery) which cuts off the HV.

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