My prius lost its power while driving this morning!

If it were me, I'd drive directly to the dealer. Very unsafe to have a car lose power, particularly on a highway. It happened to me once with a previous car, and it was no fun.

 

My Prius is at 20,000 very hard miles and hasn't done what yours has just done. I'd certainly get it round to the dealers asap and make sure they don't fob you off. It might be something simple, but it certainly needs looking at.

You do not want your car doing that again!

 

Heck I wouldn't even drive it to the dealers... call them up and tell them to pick it up and fix it.

 

Any chance something accidentally engage the shift to neutral?? Computer glitches are hard to recreate so it may difficult to find the cause.

 

If orange "check engine" light was not lit during the incident, the dealer doesn't find anything usefull. My guess is - the 'N' was engaged.

 

My fav trick is to accidentally press 'Park' instead of 'Auto' on the a/c!! So far I've been lucky and it's only put the car in Neutral.

Like other posters have said, are you sure you haven't put the car in Neutral by mistake? Or did the car lose all power, steering etc? and did any warning lights light up?

 

Just posting to subscribe to thread. I would like to hear what happened.

 

there's only 1 time i've experienced anything like this.... 12v short. it resets everything in the car and you basically have to pull over and restart.

 

This description is inconsistent. I'm not trying to nitpick or claim you are lying, but what you are saying doesn't make sense. How would losing power prevent you from pulling over as opposed to shifting to N? With a Prius drive system, losing power is effectively the same as shifting to N from the standpoint of coasting to the edge of the road. It's not like a conventional transmission when the stalled engine causes the drive wheels to drag.

Do you care to expand on your explanation to clarify this inconsistency?

Tom

 

Was someone else driving it recently?

 

Okay. Thanks for your explanation. Just so you understand, when you remove power from a Prius it will coast just like you are in Neutral. The difference would be that you will either get a lot of error lights or all of the power will go out, so the whole panel will be black.

If you accidentally shift to N you will lose all driving power, but everything else will stay powered.

Tom

 

The fully charged battery is the traction battery, I would assume. Have you checked the health of the 12 volt battery? With your V, I think you can check it with the NAV screen.

 

Hard to understand how such a major event could happen without any warning lights or error codes.

 

We had a Chevy Malibu back in the 70's that would have frozen water in the gas line...constantly stalling out. My mom got rid of it quick. Should not be the same with the Prius though because of the engine configuration......Hope the dealer can find something but I doubt it.

 

Based on my 1 unfortunate experience as long as it is under warranty I would leave the car "as is" & have Toyota pick it up. I agree that as long as there isn't a code or a light the most you'll get is "can't reproduce the problem" & "bring it in when it happens again". If your name is Toyoda then MAYBE you could find a dealer that would try to diagnose a problem.