just bought first Prius as a fixer and need help

most likely the 12v battery is dead. How many miles on the car?

 

The fob has to be able to communicate with the car to get it to come to life.

If it is the right fob, in the slot, jumpbox connected, the car should come to life when you hit go.

Occum's razor says you have a key that is either wrong for the car or junk.

 

How much was this project at auction? You may want to sell it back before you get too involved with it. It can drain your pocketbook really fast if you are not familiar with the car.

Crawl to the back hatch area with the rear seats folded flat (so you can get back there). Remove the top cover that's covering the spare tire, get it out of the way. You will see at the center of the hatch latching area, will be a little thingy, you flick it to the left or right and it'll unlatch the hatch. I've lost the use of my vocabulary today, can't think of the proper names for the items.

 

If jump starting back can keep voltage up then problem isn’t your 12V battery. Then it’s likely that key is wrong which is very expensive problem.

 

It should be added that resetting the immobilizer might not work and you'd be into some serious diagnostic work. Or it could just be a fuse. Check your fuses (but I have a hunch your key is junk...sorry)

 

Search 12V battery replacement under Gen2, Care Maintenace, Troubleshooting, for a how to replace.

To pop the trunk, connect the 12v jumpbox to the front jumpstart terminals in the engine compartment, which you are aware of. Goto the trunk and press the hatch release button, not the small square bottom the at is visible, but the big rectangular black buton that would be just above the license plate.

 

If the key was junk the immobilizer would not allow it to do anything and OP reports he hears whirring sound so other issue than key.
Whirring sound is probably mg attempting to spool up the engine and engine not starting. Could be blown motor. If he continues trying to start car he will kill the hybrid battery too requiring the oh very expensive charger from japan and a visit to the dealer..

Op is going to struggle with this one as apparently he has no experience with this car. First thing you need to do is hook up a Hybrid Capable OBD code reader to the car and see what the car is unhappy about. May require a tow to the dealer to read the codes. Have AAA?

 

I think the whirring sound is the brake actuator pump which will run when the driver's door is opened. A working fob is not required to be anywhere near the car for this to happen.

The OP needs to disconnect the existing 12V battery after opening the hatch using the manual release. Then after connecting a good battery, see if at least the headlights will turn on. If he can't even get that to happen then he will need to check the 120A MAIN fuse in the positive battery terminal.

 

Too bad sounds haven't been standardized yet. If only a website had whirring sound 1, 2, 3, 4. One could say I have whirring #2.

OP, if it turns out that you do have a SKS/Smart Key Prius, AND the current key(s) are not for your car, be weary of buying used Prius Smart Keys off the Internet. Also, you would want to delete the missing Smart Keys that are currently assigned to your vehicle, which you don't have. This article from Art's Automotive explains Prius Keys quite well. LINK

 

I would first make sure the 12v battery is actually back in the hatch area and that it's in good working order before looking elsewhere for clues

 

That is a reasonable step. Don't be surprised when the repair bill approaches $1K.

 

Wait a minute, does the touch screen display light up? If it does, my guess is that the speedometer display (they call it the combination meter) is simply dead, and that the gear lever will work and let you drive around. Mine is intermittent, and this brings it back to life for another trip:

 

Combination meter (Spedometer, odometer, tripodometer, gear indicator), is the least of his worries, all indications point to an incorrect key.

In post #13, a 12V battery was installed, and appears to be working correctly as he now has headlights and brake lights. Lets assume that this 12V battery is of sufficient voltage as well. I will assume that the OP has inserted the auction supplied keyfob into the keyfob slot, pressed the Power Button (once or twice, w/ or w/o depressing the brake pedal), but still reported no working switched accessories (ie, power windows). I will assume he has even tried the steering wheel buttons for climate functions and radio functions. IF the supplied keyfob was correct, the MFD should have come to life (assuming it was functioning). The fact that OP still reported no working switched accessories w/ the keyfob, points to an incorrect keyfob.

Hopefully OP will report the results of a new keyfob programming.

 

The key fob cannot be programmed. With the Prius the car is programmed to the fob not the other way round, and this requires a working fob to be an easy job. Without this the dealer has to reprogram the ECU with a new seed code to enable them to program the car. As Patrick hinted this service costs $$$!

John (Britprius)

 

Ahh. Thanks for the correction: car, not key fob gets programmed.

Poor OP. Hopefully this will be the last of his unplanned expenses. Wonder if it would have been cheaper to just buy a similar model/mileage Prius from a lot or private party, after everything gets done to his current project Prius.

 

Looking forward to reading more about this drama...