Lawsuit Against Toyota on Prius Inverters

Great, but you really should report this as safety issue on NHTSA: File a Vehicle Safety Complaint | Safercar.gov | NHTSA

 

My local Toyota dealer's service department repaired the inverter. Initial diagnosis took a day and I had to use their shuttle service to go home after hanging around for a couple hours. They picked me up the next day and provided a complimentary rental 2018 Corolla for the weekend where I only had to pay for tolls and gas. Today I got the Prius back. I've excerpted the information about it on the service invoice below for your reference.

LABOR
JOB DRIVEABILITY WORK HOURS 2.70
Customer states check hybrid system came on. Customer took vehicle to Toyoworks P0A94 DC/DC Converter Performance
CODE P0A94
Apply T-SB-0036-156

PARTS
Qty FP-NUMBER DESCRIPTION UNIT PRICE
1 04899-47021 TRANSISTOR KIT, POW WARRANTY
2 08887-02809 GREASE X23 7884 4 WARRANTY
1 04899-47060 PLUG KIT, INVERTER WARRANTY


I'm glad it's working OK though kind of disappointed not to get an altogether new inverter. I'll probably have to take it back in when the J0A/J1A firmware fix is finally made available.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask. I quoted my own original post below to make it easier for another member to copy and paste or print the contents in full should they need it for reference.

 

@jack black

Thanks for the prompt and link. Submitted!

Sincerely,
-felipe

 

Published October 5, 2018.

WHERE IS THE REMEDY???

WHY WERE THERE APPROXIMATELY 36,000 LEFT ON THE ROAD "THAT MAY NOT HAVE HAD THE SOFTWARE UPDATES FULLY COMPLETED UNDER E0E AND F0R"???

 

So 36,000 of us are going to die, see you in hell Bart.

 

safety recalls issued when a vehicle manufacturer determines a defect presents an "unreasonable risk to safety." (E0E, F0R, J0V)

informed audience here
not everyone informed
sign petition today
the bare minimum is not adequate
this will prevent crashes, injuries, deaths
data should be shared and recall completion rates will increase
safety recalls can only be done at dealerships

https://www.change.org/p/toyota-motor-corporation-increase-safety-recall-repair-completions

 

*** FIXED ***

https://www.change.org/p/toyota-motor-corporation-increase-safety-recall-repair-completions

 

After reading this piece I think the problem is the risk. A known component causes a specific year of prius's to lock up the wheels and quickly drag the car from what ever speed down to the maximum battery only fail-safe speed of 15mph. 70-80mph on the highway to 15 that is a big deal with the level of skill the average american driver poses. If your dead or you kid is missing an arm because they installed faulty components in the car then you have an issue.

So my question is this. HOW DO I CAUSE AN INVERTER FAILURE? Toyota is willing to replace burned out inverters free of charge, and I dont plan to die while I own this car. So if A can meet B at the time of my choosing, instead of at random when Joe truck driver monster-can-7 who is more concerned with finding the next lot lizzard, is behind me.

*dramatic effect not required* but I do enjoy it when my heart continues to pump!

Inverter handles all the charging/discharging. So goat thinking, Id say driving the car up a hill slowly only on electric motor then turning around and charge braking down the hill. Rince, repeat, hello toyota dealer?

Whos got a better idea?

 

maybe try drag racing until it finally blows?

 

Complete lower grill block w/AC on full blast?

 

Won't be what happens. Wheels won't lock. Car will coast down to limp-home power level. Still not something you want to happen, but no need to be hyperbolic about it. If E0E/F0R has not been performed, then a slight risk exists of coasting to zero power, rather than limp-home power.

ISTM your plan to make the inverter fail within the free-replacement period might be objectionable to two groups of people:

• honest people who are not participating in the lawsuit, and are honoring Toyota's offer of free repair if within the time/mile limits
• honest people who are participating in the lawsuit, and do not want their cause to be discredited by dishonest acts

 

Drag racing in a Pruis? This must be an alternative gender joke.

 

You never heard of a E/EAlt (Double E Altered)?!?

 

Are they part of the LBGT movement?

 

humm,

While my post was sarcastic I am not trying to troll. I read several documented articles about honest people that got both the updates and still had their car rear ended. The one lady ended up with spinal damage and several more where hospitalized after receiving the update.

While you may trust what Toyota says, I feel like my life has been honestly put in harms way by dishonest corporate greed. The Toyota dealership that has 200+/- cars sitting on their lot seem to agree. But lets not get started into the honesty of car dealers... If one chooses to bite the hand that feeds then they prob have a dam good reason because win, loose or draw, they are out of the car business.

I honestly trust that toyota make a piss poor product and drives it out the door as quicky as they can just to make a buck. This has been the automotive industry SOP since the beginning. Get it to market, sell and forget it. It does not take a graphic imagination to see the industries history in this sector.

Seems to me your honest to honest notions are based on the premise that the most dishonest people on the planet(lawyers) have your best interest in mind.

Regulatory agencies have refused to act in this matter even though toyota has clearly violated the 60 day rule through some sly legal-ease yet you propose that we just sit back and wait?

Honestly I want the thing that makes my car dangerous per the EVIDENCE out of my $32k car. I did not buy a Hyundai I bought a toyota. While the rest of the economy is doing great, the car industry is all about imported parts, so money is tight thanks to a political stunt. This is toyota, shame on them.

"They say jump and you say how high!"

 

Hmmmm.

 

Are you referring to the inverter? Because, AFAIK, it will be replaced with another one, of the same quality.

Like you, I've been trying to figure out what causes these things to burn out. My 80 year old neighbors had theirs burn out and left them stranded, and they drive pretty slowly. Despite that, I'm guessing that taking it easy on the gas pedal will reduce the risk. Putting things in perspective, the failure rate is low enough to where they aren't showing up on the CR used car reliability ratings. Every category where the inverter might be included rates as "much better than average".

 

If it’s temp related, Summers should have a higher failure rate but I want to know if there’s been any documentation regarding to that. I drive 1hr 20mins one way to work and it’s getting near summer, it’s 90 degrees today. The inverter temp was 125 F yesterday drive back from work and MG1 was 165F for all the Prius nerds like me.

 

New reports of dying Toyota hybrids appear to confirm dealer’s story of buried ‘sudden deceleration’ scandal

CONSUMER AFFAIRS - 4.23.19

They were on busy thoroughfares, returning home from work or running errands, about to turn left, pulling into traffic or passing cars in the fast lane, when they remember seeing the same vague message flashing across the dashboard.

“CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM” it said, according to over two dozen drivers who submitted complaints to federal regulators since January 2018. The clock on Toyota’s “limp-home” mode, something that Toyota itself has billed as a safety feature in the Prius, had begun to tick. Drivers had just a few moments to get off the road.

One person in Florida said they were trying to cross railroad tracks in their Prius when the car awkwardly jerked forward at the press of the gas pedal. The driver then noticed a “CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM” message on the screen.

“The car did drive on the gas engine a short distance to make it over the railroad tracks,” the driver recounted, in a report that they submitted to federal regulators in March. “This seems to be an issue that Toyota is ignoring.”

In the past five years, Toyota Prius cars have been plagued with a problem causing the vehicles to suddenly die while in motion. Toyota has twice recalled 800,000 Priuses to address the issue, mostly recently in October 2018. But mounting evidence suggests that Toyota has botched the recalls, giving credence to a Southern California dealer’s claim that Toyota is both refusing to pay for the correct repairs and is downplaying the dangers of its “limp-home” mode to save money.

“Somehow, this has been twisted where they want people to believe that that portion of it is safe,” the dealer Roger Hogan told ConsumerAffairs in an interview last year. Toyota has responded to Hogan’s claims by characterizing him as a disgruntled salesman.

Going limp vs. dying
Both Toyota and Hogan agree that the problem is linked to the hybrid system malfunctioning or overheating. Toyota’s latest recall addresses the manner in which the car responds when that happens; the car is supposed to go into something called “limp-home” mode or “fail safe” mode, Toyota says, to allow people time to safely pull off the road. The company is instructing dealers to adjust the software in affected cars to ensure that the car goes “limp” rather than immediately dying on the road.

But Hogan says the Hybrid system itself -- or more specifically, a part powering it called the inverter -- is what needs to be replaced. Essentially, he argues that the car shouldn’t be malfunctioning or overheating at all.

In an ongoing $100 million lawsuit, he charges that Toyota has a pattern of refusing to properly address safety issues. Hogan has been outspoken about the issue for nearly two years, and the trial is scheduled for next month.


Photo via Philip Barton
Database shows repeated problems
A ConsumerAffairs search of the phrase “CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM” in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) complaint database, a voluntary system in which consumers report problems with their cars, turned up 25 reports since January 2018 describing frightening or inconvenient experiences in which Toyota vehicles suddenly died.

In several cases, consumers said that the problem was left unfixed because it was not covered by a recall or because Toyota could not properly diagnose the issue. It wasn’t just the Prius that drivers had complaints about. Two reports describe a hybrid system failure in the Highlander and two others in Lexus vehicles.

“In one instance I was almost rear ended by a semi,” the owner of a 2013 Prius wrote to regulators in August 2018, after being told by Toyota that the problem wouldn’t be covered by a recall or warranty.

Drivers and experts have difficulty distinguishing between a car going “limp,” in accordance with Toyota’s safety standards, and one that is just dying. That's largely because “limp home” mode is not something that is actually regulated by NHTSA or anyone else, Jason Levine of the Center for Auto Safety noted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper recently interviewed more than a dozen Prius owners who described their cars stalling out after they had already undergone software repairs that were supposed to fix the problem.

“I was lucky nobody was behind me because I would have been rear-ended,” one Prius owner told the newspaper. He escaped without a crash, but Toyota later told him he would have to replace the inverter on his own dime.

The consumer whose car nearly died on the railroad tracks this year, meanwhile, wrote in their complaint to NHTSA that Toyota did agree to cover the cost of a new inverter. But in that case, the driver said Toyota covered it under an extended warranty program, not a government recall.

The problem with warranties, safety advocates say, is that they are also unregulated. And unlike recalls, warranties provide little recourse for drivers should they experience a defect past a given time period. In the case of the Prius, Toyota has said that some cars may be eligible for an inverter replacement under a warranty program that lasts 15 years.

An $11,000 inverter
As the Times report notes, a similar issue appeared to afflict the Highlander Hybrid several years ago. But in that case, Toyota agreed to replace the entire intelligent power model, which holds the transistors for the inverter in place.

It’s an issue that Philip Barton knows all to too well. The Vancouver-based attorney purchased a Highlander Hybrid brand new in 2010. In the years since, the car was recalled by Toyota twice over the inverter issue. He underwent repairs as instructed, he tells ConsumerAffairs, and otherwise the car ran well. But then it unexpectedly died while his wife was driving home from work on icy roads earlier this year.

A Toyota dealership emailed him explaining that the inverter needed to be replaced entirely. And because the car was past its warranty, Barton would have to pay for it himself.

“As discussed, we cannot make a direct connection as to how or why the inverter assembly failed,” says an email that the dealership sent Barton, which he saved and forwarded to ConsumerAffairs. The email quotes Barton a total of $11,000 to replace the part.

Barton appealed to the corporate headquarters of Toyota Canada. He was mailed a letter stating that the company couldn’t help because his warranty policy had run out.

“Toyota Canada has very liberal warranty policies and a mandate to assist customers whenever possible,” the letter says. “Even with this mandate, your situation is one in which we cannot assist due to the length of time your vehicle has been in service.”

Left with the bill
Unable to sell the vehicle, Barton is now letting it gather dust while he prepares to take the automaker to small claims court. He has since purchased a new car to use for the time being.

For drivers who can’t afford an extra car, the situation is even worse. A San Diego resident told NHTSA that he got the “CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM” notice on his 2010 Prius one last time in November. The car hasn’t started since, he wrote. But the driver said that Toyota still would not pay for the inverter to be replaced.

“I currently use my vehicle for my livelihood doing independent delivery services such as Instacart, Doordash, Postmates, etc.,” the consumer said.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Toyota said that it is “committed to the safety and security of our customers.”

“We monitor the available information on this issue and would continue to investigate any new information that emerges and take any appropriate action,” the statement said.

 

What is your goal with this post?