New Prius won't go into gear.

So..................what was the final diagnosis? Did dealer concur with faulty brake switch?

 

I have never experienced this issue, but my wife does about half of the time when she borrows my car. I have never been able to figure out what it is that she does wrong. This is over the course of four years.

 

One is sometimes in a quandry as to what the wife may be doing. My wife cannot release the emergency brakewhile parked at a small decline. A Honda Civic. ie release, or push button on end of handbrake, pull up to release, let go forward. She somehow cannot get the order right ????

 

I am having exactly the same issue with my 2008 Prius, which has about 30k miles. It's happened 5-6 times in the past year, usually on warm afternoons when it's been parked for several hours. I can try to shift it 30 times, and maybe it will work the 30th time. Or sometimes I'll leave it for a few hours (once when I was waiting for a tow truck) and try again, and it will shift just fine.

The first time I took it to the shop, the techs couldn't reproduce the issue and were very patronizing. So when it happened again yesterday, I filmed it:

It's now in the shop again, and once again they can't figure it out. I am on the verge of trading it in and giving up on Toyota forever. I bought this car new 2 years ago, thinking it would be a reliable vehicle for years to come. Disappointing...

 

I am having exactly the same issue with my 2008 Prius, which has about 30k miles. It's happened 5-6 times in the past year, usually on warm afternoons when it's been parked for several hours. I can try to shift it 30 times, and maybe it will work the 30th time. Or sometimes I'll leave it for a few hours (once when I was waiting for a tow truck) and try again, and it will shift just fine.

The first time I took it to the shop, the techs couldn't reproduce the issue and were very patronizing. So when it happened again yesterday, I filmed it:

It's now in the shop again, and once again they can't figure it out. I am on the verge of trading it in and giving up on Toyota forever. I bought this car new 2 years ago, thinking it would be a reliable vehicle for years to come. Disappointing...

 

in the vidio i dont see the ready light.try holding the start button a little longer.it looked like you let go quicker than i do.i have found i had the same problem and held the start button longer and no more problems.food for thought.

 

Sometimes my ridiculously large fashionable heels catch and I am not pushing the brake down as far as I think I am and the car won't start. Probably not your problem but I never drive in heels or flip-flops, I take them off before moving the car at all.

 

What was that you said? I got distracted right about the point where you said something about ridiculously large fashionable heels. Darn it, now I lost track again.

Tom

 

You kept flicking it and would've been more convincing if you filmed it holding it in D for an extended period of time and it still didn't register. Are they even able to start it whereas you can't?

 

Somebody's just jealous.

No, I have to wear 'all black fashionable shoes, no flip-flops and absolutely no sneakers' to school. Which means heels. And after wearing combat boots and then mom sneakers for the last 5 years I am going through a crash course in heels since I seem to have forgotten how to walk, stand, and most importantly how to not feel like my feet are going to fall off at the end of the day.

(My point was that woman's fashion can be the root of car problems sometimes... I think...)

 

Good idea. I'll make another video when it happens again, and I know it will.

When I took the car to the dealership on Thursday, the service manager tried shifting the car several times and it kept jumping back into Neutral, just like it had for me. But the tech couldn't reproduce the problem on Friday. So they did nothing! The manager said that they wouldn't risk having to pay for the part if Toyota didn't believe there was a real problem with it. This car is under warranty and I am not paying for this.

The service manager said bring it back next week and they'll try again. But this is an intermittent issue—it only happens occasionally, usually on a warm day when the car's been sitting for several hours, and always at the most inconvenient time—so they'd have to keep the car for days for it to happen again.

LOL about the high heels. When I wear them to work, I carry a pair of flip-flops for driving home!

 

I can say without a doubt that the duration for which you hold the shifter in D has nothing to do with it. My girlfriend has a 2008 Prius and I experienced this EXACT problem. We had just drove a short distance and stopped, and when I went to start the car back up, it would not go into D or R. To be more precise, it would go into D or R, but immediately popped back into Neutral. I found that if I manually held the shifter in Drive or Reverse, the car would move. In fact I ended up driving several miles while holding the shifter in the D position and the moment I let go of the shifter, it popped back into Neutral. I even tried letting go while I was traveling about 45mph with my foot on the gas, and it once again popped into N immediately. The longest period I held the shifter in D was about 15 minutes, and it of course went back to N the second I let go.

After arriving at my destination and letting it sit for a half hour, I returned to the car and it worked fine. My girlfriend thought I was doing something wrong until the same thing happened to her a week later. It is currently at the Toyota dealer. They have had no luck reproducing the problem and they are giving us a stream of excuses in an attempt to explain it away, including "driving the car when the fuel level is below 1/4 tank can confuse the computer driven transmission". Yeah, right! For the record, I was well over a 1/4 tank when it happened to me. We are still waiting for an explanation or an acknowledgment of the problem from Toyota.

 

The next time it is stuck in neutral don't futz with it. Call Toyota & have them tow it to the dealer--as is.

 

As of the past few days our 08 Prius has been doing the same thing with not staying into gear. It left us stranded twice and one time my wife was driving down the hwy and out of nowhere it popped into neutral. Freaked her out and if she had happened to have been making a left turn this could have caused an accident. She managed to drive it home by holding the shift lever in drive with her right hand and steering with her left. Ours also does it when it is warmer and the car has been driven a while and it will NOT stay in gear and pops back into neutral when put in drive or reverse.

I took it to the dealer yesterday and they WERE able to get it to fail and tell me it needs a new shift lever assembly which I am supposed to pay for since the car has 45k on it. I am taking them to task on it. This is a a designer manufacturing flaw that is now well documented by others with the same problem on the internet. More importantly it is a serious safety concern and you would think now particularly Toyota would be very concerned about their vehicles being safe. Bottom line they need to take care of us as loyal customers. Up until now we loved the car.

 

In the future, it'd be better to post in the appropriate area for your generation. To add 2nd gen problem reports into a 3rd gen area just causes confusion. I doubt the parts are the same as the knob is different, location is different and the feel of the spring is different between the two.

 

Makes sense and I won't post here again about this issue on my vehicle. But since folks have noted shifter problems with gen 2 and 3 it could be in the interest of all as to how Toyota willl handle this.

 

I finally got the dealership to replace the shift lever assembly (part #33560-47022) on my Prius. They determined that the original was "internally deformed, causing it to stick." I'm glad they fixed it, and my car is working fine now. But the dealership really gave me a hard time—it took a few weeks of arguing with them about it—and I've lost faith in Toyota.

 

I agree, Toyota's behavior toward their once loyal customers has been abysmal. At one time if you had a problem with a dealer you could appeal to the company for help, now your just on your own. This Prius is my third new Toyota and I strongly suspect it will be my last.

 

I just had the same problem with my new (old, 2006, 36,000 mi) model Prius. Since I bought it it's been fine, but yesterday thi ssamething happened, except I remember seeing the red brake light on, even thoiugh I wasn't pressing on tehj brake at that time.

I checke dto see that the parkig brake wasn't on (it wasn;t) and I even put it on and trhen depressed it again so it was off, a couple times.

I turned th ecar off and restarted several times and the ssame thing, wouoldn;t go into gear (D or R) and the red breake light was on.

left it for a few hoiurs. came back, and ...well, it worked just fine!

time for a dealer check-up?

Other than this I'm thrilled ot be a Prius owner!