2010 Toyota Prius: The steering wheel wants your Touch (Tracer Display)

There is one aspect of the 2010 Prius that AutoblogGreen didn't highlight in its recent info overload post on the 2010 Toyota Prius: the Touch Tracer Display. There is usually nothing in front of the speedometer in most cars; we want a clear view of how fast we're going, right? But there are also a lot of buttons on the steering wheel and constantly shifting our view from the road to the volume or temperature controls isn't exactly a safe way to drive. To combat furtive downward glances, Toyota has come up with the TTD, which goes into action when you push the circular buttons on the steering wheel. Doing so causes little orange lights to appear on a screen that looks as if it's hovering on top of the speedometer. The effect is definitely neat and kind of surprising the first time it happens. Once you learn to expect it, however, the feature is a great visual cue to go along with the wheel-mounted controls. Toyota says this is the "the first display system in the world to allow steering wheel controls to read out on the instrument panel." We doubt it'll be the last.

[Source: Toyota]