Hello, I just tow it to dealer, be course the car didnt start after i put gas in it. it has bunch light when i try to started. what would you think the damage$$$ would be? Thanks, c
Running out of gas should not have damaged anything. The engine just needs to be primed, and then it should restart. There may be a minimal amount of damage from you leaning out the fuel mixture drastically when it cut off. That would be about it though. Just do not make it a regular habit, and you should be fine. I hope the dealer does not clobber you with a hefty bill though... How many miles did you go before it ran dry if you do not mind me asking? The farthest I have ever been tempted to push it is about 630 miles before I started getting scared.
On all new cars the fuel pumps are in the fuel tanks. They use the fuel to cool themselves, so that is part of the reason why running them low is bad for them. You most likely did not damage anything. Quite a few people on here seem to push the limits and run out of gas, so should be fine.
dealer told me the car is to clod to charge the battery. will bring in side over night to warm it up. will let me know tomorrow. also said we might have to bring toyota guy. c
To cold to charge the battery? Did you somehow mange to deplete the HV battery charge as well? I have never heard of this on a Prius. I know with the Volt below a certain temperature (-14F) the car becomes inoperalble until the battery is temp is brought up. Seems to me like they need to bring in a Toyota rep to see what else may be going on... Hopefully someone from the snowy lands will be able to comment on this.
Since totally bogus to me. What does "we might have to bring toyota guy" mean? What kind of dealer did you go to? You didn't answer my question about how much gas was added. On the 2nd gen, if you didn't add enough (I believe 3 or 4 gallons) to get it to register after running out, the car may not start. I'm unclear if this applies to the 3rd gen. Why did you run out of gas? Were there any warnings prior to running out? If so, why ignore them? Perhaps http://priuschat.com/forums/other-cars/94001-gas-gauge-says-full-but-thats-not-quite-true-npr.html would be insightful (even though it's a Ford engineer talking).
Well there is a big part of the problem - 520/46.5 is 11.2 gallons out of a best case scenario of 11.9. I know that you do not have the joy of dealing with the fuel tank bladder, but that is really pushing it. All you would need it for the gas pump to click off just a touch before completely full and for the 520ish miles to be more like 530 or 540 to run the tank completely dry. Why run it so close to empty? After the gas engine died did you continue to drive the car on battery power alone? The comment that you made about the battery leads me to think that this might be the case. Which battery are you having an issue with? It sounds like you might have just brought the car to a generic repair shop (the comment about bringing in a Toyota person leads me to this) - if so and you can not get it started up quickly I'd recommend biting the bullet and having it towed to a Toyota dealer. If you do not already have it just call up AAA and sign up for their top tier of coverage and then use it to have the car towed. Good luck and let us know what happens.
ok. Here it is. i did drive car may be for 2 miles after i saw my battery had one bar only, which i never seen before. then its just stop and i couldn't do any thing. next morning i put only 2 gallons and still nothing. so i taw it to ira toyota in Danvers ma. i just spoke with dealler. the car is allset. they charged over night and started right up, they did also added 2 more gallons of gas. total $220.00 he said they needed reset bunch of things up, basically trying make it bigger deal that it is. I JUST HOPE THE CAR WILL RUN AS IT RAN BEFORE, THEN I LL BE HAPPY. i did had law fuel warring light , of course. i just miscalculated the mileage. totally my fault, but i will never do that again. Thanks for all your feedback. C
Of course they did. That is why i dont go to dealer. I learned my lesson. It took them two hours to plug the charger cable and reset some codes, Wth. A bunch of dummies, including myself. Mary x mas everyone. c
If you drove for 2 miles on battery only after hitting 1 bar then you probably completely drained the HV battery (1 bar actually means 40%, not 0%). Doing that CAN permenantly damage the battery, doing it regularly WILL damage it. If you run out of gas again, stop safely and go get some gas in a can, like with any other car.
I wish that car could let you know that i am totally out of gas and running only on battery. That would be very good feature. i was going mostly down hill and didnt notice until its too late. c
I agree, it should start beeping or display a fault/stop light once you are actually out of fuel. But lesson learned, and hopefully no damage done.
