Common Problems with the Prius

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I LOVE my Prius except, here is a letter I wrote to Toyota:
Toyota Motor Sales USA
19001 South Western Ave.
Dept. WC11
Torrance, CA 90509

Dear Sir/ Madam

We are a 2 Prius household, and love them. Mine is a 2005 which I purchased in March of 2005.

Since that purchase, lights functioning properly has been a problem too often. Below is the record of service for light problems
02/13/2007 AIM HEADLIGHTS AIM HEADLIGHTS ~|~AIM HEADLAMPS

06/24/2008 R E A R L I G H T R E A R L I G H T ~|~LEFT REAR TAIL LIGHT INOPT ~|~ ~|~R&R BULB

08/08/2008 F R O N T L I G H T F R O N T L I G H T ~|~INSTALL SOP HEADLIGHT LEVELER SENSOR ~|~HEADLAMP WARNING LIGHT ON, CHECKED SYSTEM, SCANNED MAIN BODY ECU, CHECKED ALL COMPONENTS, LEVELER SHORTED ~|~R&R HEADLAMP LEVELER

08/08/2008 EXT. BODY ELECTRICAL EXT. BODY ELECTRICAL ~|~50/50 SPLIT W/ WARRANTY ON LIGHT LEVELER


:09/22/2009 R E A R L I G H T R E A R L I G H T ~|~PS TAILIGHT OUT ~|~ ~|~R&R TAILIGHT BULB

In addition to these fixed light problems, both of my fog lights no longer work, and now, the amber front marker lights on Left and Right no longer work.

As I stated before, I love everything else about my Prius, however, not being able to trust the integrity of the lights really bothers me. Fortunately, the cop didn’t give me a ticket when he stopped and notified me that my tail light was out. Why hasn’t Toyota been able to produce this fabulous car with lights that can be trusted?
If I have to continue to spend so much money to keep the lights working, I’ll have to rethink my loyalty to the Prius. I NEVER had such a problem with any Chrysler, Subaru or Ford (my previous loyalties until I found the Prius) that I have owned in my 54 years of owning and driving cars.




Their response was by a "trained customer service person", " Gosh, you seem to have some concerns." all said with no apparent sincerity. After speaking with 3 other "trained customer service persons", I was only told that my concerns would be noted. then, "Is there any other concerns you have?"

 

You're jerking our chains, right?

 

Sounds like you had a problem with the HID headlight leveling system, which is a known weak area. Besides that, you've had more than your share of bulbs burning out. For a five year old car, this does seem a bit unusual. Look at the bright side and be glad that you haven't had problems with the HID light bulbs, transaxle, inverter, traction battery, MFD, steering gear, etc etc. There are many more problems that your car could have had that are much more serious in terms of cost and impact.

It is possible that the voltage on the 12V bus is higher than it should be, causing the bulbs to have a shorter service life. If you want to look into that you would use a digital voltmeter to measure voltage across the 12V battery when the Prius is READY. The correct voltage is ~13.8V. If the measured voltage is much greater, then that is the reason why your bulbs have a short life. The fix would be to replace the inverter (which is covered by the hybrid system warranty, 8 yr/100K miles.)

If the voltage is OK, then I would have to assume that your car had a batch of bad bulbs installed, you leave the lights on at all times, or that you are unlucky with regard to bulb service life.

 

:welcome:. The best thing to do is to look & search around a bit, you will gain some insight (pun intended ) pretty soon. Regarding some common problems, depends on which generation you are asking. The newest gen III Prius is out for a relatively short time, so it is very much an unknown beast, but as far as the experience allows us to tell the pretty comon problem seems to be that it develops some dashboard sqeaks/rattles relatively soon. Otherwise, it seems to be reliable so far.

The gen II Priuses are very reliable cars overall; known problems include inverter coolant pump failures after some 100 000 miles (pretty simple and cheap to replace), MFD (Multi-Function Display) failures in the early versions (2004 and 2005) - might be pretty costly to fix if you do it the "official" way with the dealersip, but relatively simple and costless to fix yourself (if you are not afraid of electronic and have some experience with soldering iron).Threads on this issue are floating all around. The 2006 and later cars do not have this problem (it was fixed at the factory). The 12V battery may fail after couple of years and also the HV (traction) battery may fail after some 100 - 200 000 miles, but it is relatively rare. It is not so hard to replace and salvage batteries can be obtained relatively cheaply.

I cannot tell you much about the first generation "classic" Prius, as I never had that car nor do I know anybody who had. But you can find wealth of information in the "gen I" section of the gen II forum here on the Prius Chat.

 

Biggest problem: you are going to want to drive more.

 

Don't invest your money in a high mileage, over 10 year old Prius unless you have deep pockets for the repairs. The repairs won't come often, but when they do.....

 

have you checked the blub fluid level?
sounds like you are running them without proper lubrication

replace the bulbs with candles
cant hurt

 

Hi There, I am new in this forum. I need some advice from you about my prius 2008 with 164000km. She got red triangle warning light with "!" sign freqently. I am managing her by reseting which I learn from road side assistance. I went to toyota dealer and the told me to replace Hybrid battery which cost around AU$3400. But HV battery recharging well I mean blue to green, till top bar and she runs well to with this red triangle warning light. I am bit confused. Is it really the problem with HV? Thanks

 

difficult to say, even in the best of circumstances, but certainly possible in your climate.
would you be able to ascertain the trouble codes from the dealer?

 

have you test driven a gen 4?

 

unless you can get it for the right price?

 

Here is information from the dealer: INSPECTED AND CONFIRMED WARNING LIGHT ON DESH
FOUND HIGH VOLTAGE ISOLATION FAILURE
HV SYSTEM EARTH LEAKAGE - SHORT CIRCUIT SYSTEM

 

Here is information from the dealer: INSPECTED AND CONFIRMED WARNING LIGHT ON DESH
FOUND HIGH VOLTAGE ISOLATION FAILURE
HV SYSTEM EARTH LEAKAGE - SHORT CIRCUIT SYSTEM

 

unfortunately, that covers a lot of ground. from a corroded hybrid battery terminals to a bad air conditioning compressor. you really need the trouble codes and sub codes that were pulled from the obd2.

 

It has only one code P0AA6

 

Yep it has a bad hybrid battery. Most likely some cracked or leaking battery modules that have created a corroded path to ground. The system can measure that tiny current path to ground and throws that code ground fault.
You can reset the code by disconnecting the 12 volt battery that will allow you to continue to drive but there have been some reports of hybrid battery fires with continued driving on ground nag so there's that.