lots of sudden warning lights suddenly

just now i was on my lunch break and i was sitting in my parked car, 2007 Prius, listening to the radio with the ignition on but not the engine. I mean, without my foot on the brake, i pushed the Power button twice, whatever that is called.

then, I listened to the radio and ate my lunch. then, i turned off the radio, put some music on my iphone (not connected to car audio) and played a game on the iPhone for a little while.

when i first arrived at work, several hours earlier, the battery showed full capacity, all purple bars.

I had driven the car to work and parked normally in the morning and i didn't change anything during lunch. I just listened to the radio. i also pushed the seat back several inches.

While playing the game i became aware in my peripheral vision of the MFD lighting up, i looked at and there was a warning message which i tried to write down but it went off before i finished. It said something like this:

"Caution: There is a problem wth the P transmission lock. Park your car on a level surface and fully apply the parking brake."

My car was on a pretty level surface. The parking brake was fully applied already. I took off the parking brake and then put it back on, fully.

Things looked normal again and i went back to playing the game. Soon, the same warning came on again.

I can't remember all the exact details or sequence after that, but as best i can remember here's what happened.

The red parking brake light started flashing and beeping, briefly, then it stopped. this was repeated at different times, a couple of minutes or so between episodes.

(most dramatically) the transmission gear indicator above the steering wheel, the thing that shows you which gear you're in, started lighting up so that the whole thing was lit, instead of just the one gear you are in. I was in Park. The light stayed on for a while, maybe 30 seconds, then went off, but it came on again a couple more times with pauses of a few minutes in between.

The gas tank indicator, where the pips are, showing how much gas you have left, was on empty, or one pip, and flashing, although when i arrived at work, i had 4 pips. then, while continuing to flash, it showed all pips lit up. Then it went back to one pip. When it stopped, it showed the correct number of pips, 4. It repeated this a few times, while i sat in the car, looking up things in the owner's manual.

The orange tire pressure light started flashing, all by itself, the only one that was flashing, against a dark background on the instrument panel window.

these things did not all happen simultaneously.

When i opened the drivers door from the inside, the red "Your door is open" light came on, flashing and with a loud beeping. No other lights were on at that time.

I turned the power on and it seemed to start up OK. I reversed it and backed up a few feet, then pulled forward, put on the parking brake and turned the car off. This all seemed normal and no unusual lights came on during the brief time i was doing this.

When i turned the power off, the red anti-theft light (little car icon) started flashing, even though i had not yet opened the door from the inside. It continued to flash as if it was set.

I got out of the car and locked it. The anti theft light then became constant.

I repeated this a few times to make sure of what was happening. I began to doubt myself that this was abnormal but then i read in the user manual on page 21 and 46 that normally it's not supposed to start flashing until you open the door from the inside, and then it continues flashing after you lock it from the outside.

Still, i went to find another Prius in the parking lot to see if it had solid constant light or a flashing one. It had a flashing one. I went back to my car, worried about leaving it that way, but by then, the light was flashing and looking normal.

Before leaving the car, i checked the battery indicator. It had 5 blue bars.

I would appreciate any info if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing, or any theories or knowledge about what might cause this and how serious it might be. any opinions on drivability would be welcome.

Somehow my car's brains got scrambled while sitting quietly parked in a parking lot.

 

Oh. Good. I think. it sounds like i can probably drive it home and i'll take it to the mechanic tomorrow and hopefully get it taken care of, let that extended warranty start paying for itself--or is that covered by the original warranty? or is it covered at all?

it feels better just knowing other people have seen this and lived to tell about it.

Actually, last night i went out to the car to find something i thought i had left there and i turned on the inside lights. When i came out to the car to go to work this morning, i was a little mortified to see that i had left the light on in the car all night, or both front overhead lights. The battery was down to about 3 bars. Pretty soon it came up to normal and when i arrived at work it was all purple, but then at lunch, all these weird lights. Battery still fully charged after listening to the radio for about 15 minutes.

Thanks again.

 

Jim--i'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying listening to the radio while eating lunch in my car at work for 15 or 20 minutes will discharge any 12V battery? i think that's what you said. Does that include a Honda Accord 12V battery, or does a Honda Accord not have a 12v battery? i don't know these things. For years, at lunch, i've sat in the car listening to the radio during lunch at work, in my Accord, with the ignition switch on, not the engine. On rare occasions, if it was very hot, i would sit in the car with the air conditioner on with the engine running. I only replaced the battery in the Honda once after many years. it lasted a long time and worked well.

I just got the Prius in January and it never occurred to me that i couldn't do the same thing in the Prius. I don't have anywhere else to go during lunch if i want to be alone and have some peace. i don't need a nap. i want to listen to the radio and eat my lunch, it's my way of getting 'away' from work, in my mind, for a break. In all those years, the Accord battery never had any problem, always started up fresh and ready to go with a quick turn of the ignition key. So this confuses me.

What is OAT? I looked for it in the search engine but it said 'no matches found.'

A few months ago, there was a Prius chat thread in which i was expressing alarm that my battery indicator went down very fast when i sat in the car having lunch. Someone suggested i not turn the full ignition on but just hit the power switch once, so that everything isn't turned on and i can just play the radio, after lowering the windows with the full ignition on. i found that the battery still went down in such a short time, it bothered me, so i have been leaving the engine on while i sit there and eat because i know the engine will charge the battery if it gets too low and that is reassuring for me. But not a great solution.

So yesterday for the first time in a long time, i just turned on the ignition without the engine on (hit power 2 times without foot on brake) and that was the condition it was in when the dashboard/instrument panel lights started flashing. Oddly (to me) when i checked at the end of this episode, there were still 5 blue bars on the battery indicator.

Prior to the thread a few months ago, i used to sit in the prius with the ignition on like yesterday, for about three months, and never got all those flashing lights before.

I appreciate the information and would like to clarify it more. i'm confused because all my life i've sat in cars listening to the radio with the ignition on, going back to when i was a kid in my dad's old chevy station wagon, when i went to work with him and he drove around to clients' houses while he worked and i would wait in the car and listen to the radio, and there was never any issue with any battery, so when you say (if i understood you right) that doing this will discharge any 12V battery on any car, i am confused, given my past experience.

What purpose is defeated if the OAT gets 'too hot?'

i don't know one battery from another, 12V, traction, other (are there more kinds?)

thanks for any more info on this.

 

what is SOC? I searched for it but got 'no matches found.' I'm making a guess from your context and the next post after this--is it
state of charge? So SOC means those blue/purple/green bars?

Is the reason why i got a warning message telling me to park on a level surface and fully apply the parking brake, and other alarms and alerts, because the system goes kafflooey when the battery (the 12v?) and not because there is any problem with my parking brake or the P lock?

how many batteries are there? Two? Is the traction battery the one that charges the engine? or is that the 12v? Does the 12v run things like the radio? When i left the overhead light on overnight by accident, did that drain the 12v, not the traction?

 

"accessory mode," that's the word i was looking for. That's what i mean i was using when i was listening to the radio, not 'ignition.' i think 'ignition' means with the engine on, so that's not what i meant. I meant just pushing the power button two times with the foot NOT on the brake.

I called the Toyota service dept. yesterday and the guy considered lots of things it could be and said they might not be able to fix it on a Saturday. If it's just to replace a 12V battery, surely they could fix it today. Can't they check the charge on it and see if the battery is still good or not? How do you charge a prius battery?

My Accord battery recently died from the car not being driven often enough. AAA came out and checked it and said it needed to be left running for about 3 hours in order to fully charge it. He charged it with jumper cables but it immediately died after he left. i drove it around a little and the when i came home, it died while i was trying to park it by the curb. So the guy came back and said it needed to sit running with the engine on for 3 or 4 hours, i forget exactly how many, but i did that. And ever since, it's been fine.

I get the impression the situation is different with a Prius, i couldn't just leave it running--because the engine goes off all the time. So what does the car need if the 12v is drained? How can it be recharged fully, or can it?

The service guy said it could be a long diagnostic process. That sounds ominous.

He said the "small battery," 12V right?, is not covered by the warranty, it's just considered wear and tear. And as you say, that's awfully fast wear and tear compared to what i'm used to with my Honda and every other car i've had, batteries do not become an issue.

So, if there is a long diagnostic process related to the 12V battery, is this not covered by the warranty? It sounds expensive. He said the battery itself was about $300.

 

i read the ad you linked below about the Optima battery, it was very informative. I guess there are a lot of features of the Prius that are draining the small battery. It seems the factory battery isn't well designed for the features provided on the car.

When i was shopping for a Prius in December, AAA had to come out and replace my Honda battery. i told the guy that i was getting a Prius, he offered to buy my Accord, anyway, i asked him in his experience as a tow truck driver, what kind of problems are common with the Prius. He just mentioned the battery, that was the only thing, and he said it was pretty common.

OK, this is what i was doing before, until yesterday. and it happened to coincide with leaving the overhead interior lights in the front of the car on all night. So, this means my 12V battery is probably toast?

BTW, when i first got the car, it was just 2 years old, Later that month, i took it to a car wash. Before this, the SOC indicator was always at 5 blue bars. It never went up or down. I thought that was normal. I left the car at the car wash because my office was next door. There was no one in front of me and the place was not busy that day, but after an hour, they hadn't called me, so i walked over to get my car, but when i got there, they were just bringing it out of the wash and hadn't started wiping it yet, which bothered me, they had it for such a long time, i was first in line but it wasn't done? I went back to the office, then i came back shortly to get it, in 20 minutes or so. I got in the car and started it and was shocked to see the SOC indicator down to one or two purple bars. i didn't even know it had purple bars, I was very worried and not sure i could drive it home, i live so far from the office, i called the dealer service dept just wanting some information about what i might be dealing with but the guy was very abrupt and rushed and said i just had to bring it in, they couldn't tell me anything on the phone. So then i called Toyota and a nice woman in customer service said she wasn't supposed to tell me anything over the phone but she put me on hold for a pretty long time, then she came back and said the car would probably be fine and that i should go out and drive it around for a while until the bars came back up where they should be, and then it would be ok.

Ever since then, the battery would often go down fast on the indicator. I posted about it on prius chat, but most people seemed to think this was normal. I have always thought something happened at the carwash that left my battery not as good as before. It sounds like they almost completely discharged the battery--the traction battery? and the 12V battery?

Thanks for the ad for the Optimus battery, not just because it sounds like a good alternative, but also for all the info in the ad about batteries.

If i get this Optimus battery, will the dealership install it or do i need to go to Sears or an independent mechanic? I'm not sure how to find someone independent who would be experienced with Priuses and know what they're doing.

from the ad, it sounds like there's a certain amount of labor to install a new battery. Maybe the guy meant $300 for parts and labor?

If i have a regular battery shop or independent japanese car mechanic install a new battery, does that void any warranties on the Prius?

thanks for all the info. I kind of don't know what to do now. Should i take it in and try to get it fixed at the Toyota dealer today or should i risk the battery going dead completely and leaving me stranded--i drive far and wide and often on my job--i would like to get it fixed today, but i don't want to pay twice as much for a poor battery that won't last.

thanks for all the info.

 

I was ready to replace it today. I looked around for a Japanese car mechanic but with no luck. I checked on the Optima battery website for local dealers. I called one, AutoZone. The guy did not know what a Prius was. And he didn't have any batteries for them of any kind. I called Sears where i have usually gotten batteries in the past. They don't carry any Prius batteries and advised me to go to the Toyota dealer. I looked on the web in yellow pages and on Angie's list for a local Japanese car mechanic or a Toyota mechanic, but could not find any in my area. So, i took the car to the agency and asked for a service advisor that the facility manager had recommended to me last time i was there, because the one i liked wasn't there anymore.

He said that he advised against any diagnostic service if the car was not doing what it was doing yesterday, and it wasn't. I was expressing concern about getting stranded some place, and he said they could just check out the battery, test it and see what condition it was in, and there would be no charge for that. So i left it there for a few hours, they took me home on their shuttle. Then he called me and said the battery appeared to be fine, no problems.

So i dont know what i can do. I picked up the car and nothing has been fixed.

I'm confused about what you said and Jim said about me draining my car's battery. I don't want to drain its battery. Are you saying i simply can't sit in my car for 15 to 30 minutes and eat lunch while listening to the radio? In all the other cars i've ever had, doing that would not be called "draining the car's battery." In other cars i had, that would not drain their batteries, never did. So am i misunderstanding, or is it that in the case of the Prius, it's not possible to sit in the car and listen to the radio without ruining the battery? Jim said what i was doing would drain any car's battery so Im not sure what it is i'm doing that's draining the battery because sitting it and listening to the radio wouldn't drain any other car's battery. so what is it that's draining it?

Anyway, i was willing and eager to get this problem fixed and replace the battery today but the service advisor and his mechanics insisted it wasn't needed. So, i still have the problem and am at a loss.

 

thank you for this clear to the point feedback about what is ok and what is not. I had been doing it the ok way until yesterday, having it in ready mode while eating lunch, but i wasn't sure it was the right way or that accessory mode was wrong. In the past, i've gotten advice that it would be best to have it in the mode of pushing the power button once, but that was inconvenient because if i wanted to roll the window down or up, i would have to put it in ACC mode and then shut it down and start over. Anyway, it was all pretty murky to me, but now, it's clear. i know what to do now and what not to do. Maybe leaving the interior light on all night pushed the car over the edge.