With less than 900 miles on my 2012 Prius the yellow ! triangle came on and a message Problem with Hybrid System. :-( It is at the dealer now to be looked at tomorrow. Booooooooo!
Maybe it's the 12V aux battery? NOT! Bwah hah hah!!!! Sorry mad4sax, I just couldn't resist needling the Optima worshipers who blame every conceivable fault on that appendix of a battery. Please lettuce know what the stealership finds. It's unusual for a Toyota and especially a Prius to have an concern like this so early in its life. You'll be on the road again soon, maybe even tomorrow.
Well I guess the Toyota Experts on hybrids don't work on Saturdays. The dealership can't figure it out. So they have to wait until Monday to talk to Toyota to get it fixed. :-/
Well the verdict is in ... a loose connector on the Hybrid Battery Cable. They don't think it was pushed on all the way when built. Took 800 some miles to loosen up enough so one pin was not touching. Let's hope this was the only issue. Must have been built late on a Friday!!
I had the same problem after the Toyota dealer installed a ReInVolt replacement HV Battery in my 2004 (Gen2) Prius at 195,000 miles. The connector worked loose after 1500 miles of driving (I was 900 miles from home but luckily I was within 3 hours driving of AutoBeYours in Indiana and Steve fixed it in 30 minutes for only $40. JeffD
Phew! I am glad to hear it was something small/easy. My heart sank when I read your post because I just got my new Prius a lil' over a week ago and am petrified that something will go wrong!
Was that a high power cable or a signal cable? If it was a power cable, there is a good chance of heat damage for the pin and connector. In my line of work, I find a lot of old, abused Harting connectors with loose connections melting down due to high resistance at the loose connection.
The whole system was working it just had the error. I would hope the service guy would have made sure the connector is fine. I hope!
Hopefully the computer stopped it when it detected a voltage drop from the loose connection and it never ran high current through the partially made, loose connection. The systems we use at work are dumb. The PID will drive harder if a loose connection drops some volts. It just melts down quicker.
The connector that came loose in My 2004 Prius was a low signal level connector (sensors, communications, ...), not one of the 200v connectors. JeffD
I can just see John Belushi in "Samurai Prius Assembler" as the Line Foreman tells him "I had a call from the States. Mad4sax had a loose battery connector. We traced the car to your Monday morning shift..."
