The Easiest Way To Make Your Old Toyota Prius Feel New Again

For many owners of older the model Toyota Prius, the biggest drawback is the outdated entertainment system — nowadays called the infotainment system — in the car. Although it may not seem like it, the first Prius was produced all the way back in 1997, according to Global Toyota. This means that, of course, the center console cluster is going to be outdated. The initial release was before most cars had great navigation, compact discs were still the dominant form of music consumption, and overall we simply didn’t expect intuitive devices in our cars as we do now.

The easiest way to fix this is with the use of a plug-and-play device designed to modernize your old Prius. There are many great plug-and-play devices on the market for cars, but one suggestion for Prius owners specifically is a system from a company called Grom Audio. Writing for Torque News, Peter Neilson, the owner of an aging Prius, detailed his installation of Grom Audio’s VLine Infotainment Upgrade, which adds CarPlay and Android Auto, among other things, to older Prius vehicles without the hassle of replacing the original hardware.

In addition to wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Audio support, the device adds voice activation, a hardware boost that includes an extra 3GB of memory, and there are also various apps and plugins that can be used. This system also adds navigation to your car for more convenient driving, works with both Wi-Fi and mobile device hotspots, and Grom Audio claims the VLine doesn’t interfere with the car’s factory functionality.