Low oil - Red Triangle w/ Exclamation Point

I have a 2008 prius, the same thing happened to me a couple days ago. From what I can tell when this warning appears you have around 1 quart of oil left in your engine (it took 3 quarts to bring up to full) at this point you need to get around 3 quarts of oil [5w-30] in your engine immediately. It took about 5500 miles to get to this point which believe it or not is actually pretty normal. You have to check the oil often on high mileage vehicles period, I messed up! Hopefully my engine is ok, it seems fine so far.

 

how many miles on her? how often do you change the oil?

 

Yeah, once a week or so, takes a minute, check the coolant levels too.

Are you married? If so, anytime you're both going somewhere, and your wife says she'll be right down, go check the oil. And the tire pressures. Maybe set up the valves...

 

I have a 2004 with over 200k miles & last oil change about 4k ago. Only wife drives it and she reported last week that the 'triangle of death' was turning on when she when over certain speed bumps. Of course my panic mind first went to traction battery, but the indicator made no sense. Logically fluids made more sense so I checked the oil and sure enough the dipstick didn't register any - totally dry.
Doh! So I put a quart in and I think it is now just barely touching the bottom of dipstick so another quart or more is probably in order. I had no idea an engine could 'suddenly' start burning oil. Not a drip, the driveway is spotless.

 

good diagnosis!
you might have been better off if it was the battery. all the best!

 

What kinda tweaks me is that I stopped doing the maintenance at about 100k and my wife has been taking it to the dealer for piece of mind to get ahead of these type of aging issues. They have repeatedly given her a list of thousands of dollars of recommended maintenance items (like flushing coolant, brakes, redoing suspension, etc) but never once mentioned that the oil was low when the did each change. I wonder if any oil was drained when the did the last one at 6k?

 

ugh, dealer service. it's like a box of chocolates...