Toyota engineers don’t advocate drinking and driving, and yet this notch fits most wine bottles perfectly.
I came across a curious coincidence that might interest Toyota Prius owners. According to several threads on Prius Chat, if you own a 2009-2015 Toyota Prius, your upper glove box has a notch that perfectly fits the head of most bottles of wine, champagne, or any beverage that comes in a 750ml bottle (it doesn’t necessarily have to be an alcoholic beverage.)
Check out a collection of Prius owners showing off this quirky little feature below.
Bottle of wine fits perfectly in Prius glove box from r/mildlyinteresting
Discovered what that oddly-shaped second compartment is for in my Prius from r/funny
The third gen Toyota Prius has a top and bottom section of the glove box. While there are no hard and fast rules what you can put in either, usually you place items you often need the most up top and heavier reference type items, like maps, manuals, spare batteries etc. in the bottom one.
The Toyota Prius manual is just as vague about what goes in either and only tells users how to open them.
The Prius does come with dedicated bottle holders on either front doors but, as per the manual, small plastic water bottles go in those. Anything larger and you risk a flying object injury in the event of an accident.
According to Japanese Twitter users, they think, since US drivers cannot have a rolling bottle of alcohol anywhere near your person when the car is in motion, this is a conveniently engineered place to put it.
But upon researching about this notch a little further, I came across a logical explanation. According to an automotive designer Toyota carved out that tiny notch to fit in and around the OEM HVAC blower motor.
According to Redditor _madison_,
All Toyota has done is give the glove box the biggest volume possible working around all the gubbins behind the dash.
In the case of the Prius platform the heater/blower is located behind the glove box hence why its very shallow and split into and upper and lower box. Normally the blower is behind the center console but I would imagine the extra computers and screens in the Prius means it has to be located somewhere else along the inside of the firewall.
The heater blower is quite large and an odd shape so the glove box volume will be designed to fit around it.
Here’s the blower motor in question.
View post on imgur.com
So there you have it, the wine bottle notch is just a happy little coincidence.
I would have to have a drink if someone made me ride in a Prius