Cold Weather - Oil / Oil Filter warning displayed on start-up

Welcome to PC.
Some Prius owners report there cars are using some oil at your level of miles. It would be advisable to check your oil level before you next drive the car. At only a few miles from an oil change I doubt the oil level is to low
The question has to be asked what grade of oil was put in the car. In a cold climate a 0w-20 or 0w-30 would be the best choice. Heavier oils should be avoided, and can cause engine trouble codes to be issued at low temperatures.

John (Britprius)

 

The "warnings" you are seeing are maintenance reminders. There are reminders for about 12 items and 3 user defined items. Oil and oil filter are two of them. You will see them at startup whenever any of these items exceeds its time or mileage interval until you either reset the interval or hit the "do not display this item again" button on the screen. The intervals are based on time and/or mileage and the intervals are set by the user. You access this menu by touching the "info" button on the MFD and select "maintenance", then select the item you wish to view/change. These items are in addition to the "maintenance required" light on the dash that is programmed to go off every 5000 miles or six months.

None of these items measure or track anything other than time and mileage. You still need to check your oil and fluid levels on a regular basis.

 

OP lives in Charlotte NC so 5w-30 (5w-XX) is perfect and even 10w-30 (10w-XX) would be ok. And to it being too cold to check oil I would say that it’s warm enough to do repair/maintenance work outside.

 

Ok this really is interesting. I haven't heard of this before, so I'm not certain, but I wonder if the Prius can detect when there is an unexpectedly long delay in getting oil pressure and issue an error message.

I'd check the oil while it is very cold and make sure the viscosity doesn't seem way out of spec. If the oil looks good then I'd change the filter anyway (use an OEM filter), just to rule that out.

 

I must admit I did not notice where the OP lived. I was reacting to the fact that he said it was very cold, and this is obviously subjective. In my mind I was thinking below -10C. Seeing the weather on the news in the UK for the eastern, and southern US I can understand for the affected people it must seem very cold.
The UK this year "so fare" has had a very mild winter. The lowest recorded temperature where I live has been -8C where we would normally see -16C or lower. We also have had little snow, but there is some forecast over the next two days.

John (Britprius)

 

it was mentioned before (by the critic IIRC) that if oil is too thick for ambient temp, some error code is displayed. OP should check what oil was used and if there is any oil in the first place. what's with people not checking their oils?

 

There is no error code as such for low oil pressure. There is a code for engine failed to start (P3191) and this can be caused by the oil being to viscous causing the required cranking speed not to be reached. It is not clear if it can be caused by lack of oil pressure restricting the starting process. I would imagine disconnecting the oil pressure switch would confirm this.
It would be dangerous if low oil pressure were to shut the engine down once running to protect it.

John (Britprius)

 

It still leaves one question though. Why do the reminders on your Prius only show up when the engine is cold? I've never used them, but I would have thought that if a reminder was due then it would show up every time the car was started (transitioned from off to ready), regardless of how warm or cold the engine was.

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour with reminders? It seems weird.