2004 Prius "hung up" on starting

I had an odd problem with my 2004 Prius last night, and wondered if anyone here could give some insight.

When I tried to start the vehicle, the electronics turned on, but the power switch was lit orange.

I thought perhaps I'd tried to start it without my foot on the brake, so I pressed the power button again. It had no effect - the car stayed on, with the orange light on the power button. I was unable to shut the car off, or to start it properly. It was totally hung.

The engine was not running, and the gear wouldn't shift out of Park. I noticed that there was no speed showing on the instrument cluster. (Instead of reading zero, it was dark. )

I figured that restarting would probably fox the problem, but I couldn't find any way to power down or reset the Prius. (Based on my experience with computers, all I could think of was to do the equivalent pulling the power plug, but I wasn't sure what fuses to pull, and didn't want to mess with the main battery.)

Naturally, it was late at night in a bad part of town.

I called Toyota Roadside Assistance, who said all they could do was send a tow truck. The guy turned up forty minutes later, but this presented another challenge, since the car was parked in a cramped lot, and there seemed to be no way to move the car out to a position where the flatbed truck could get at it.

The tow truck driver (who wasn't familiar with the Prius) tried playing with the controls, and eventually hit on a combination of keys that caused a reset. (It looked like he was holding the power key down while rapidly changing gears.) Once the car restarted, everything was fine.

I'm not sure what caused the glitch. I'm in the habit of plugging in my iPod to the power supply when I start the car. (In future, I'll double check that everything has started normally before I plug in any accessories.) Is it possible this sent static to the computer at the wrong place in the power-up cycle.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has experienced similar problems?

Also, for future reference, if the car "hangs" like this, is there an "official" combination of switches that will do a "reset" on the car, or did my tow truck guy just get lucky?

Duncan McKenzie
2004 Silver "B".

 

Thanks for the input.

The situation described in the "Known Issues" section is not what I experienced. For example, that post describes changing gears to Neutral, but I wasn't able to change gears out of Park. The green Park light was on. There were no warning messages of any kind, of the sort you might get when you change gears without holding the brake pedal down.

Also, in my case, I tried the power button many times, both with and without the brake pedal pressed, and got no response at all.

Duncan

 

Yes, my car was recalled for the brake light switch. I had it fixed about a month ago. I wondered last night if maybe there was a problem with the brake pedal (preventing me from leaving IG-ON mode), but the brake lights were both lighting just fine whenever I pressed the pedal.

The power button suggestion is interesting, because the thing that eventually restarted my car did involve holding the power button down for several seconds. (I'll file that away for next time.)

Where did you come up with this, Rick? Is it something that's documented? I'd be curious to know what holding the power down does? Is it designed to reset the computer, or does it just create an error that makes the system restart?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DanMan32\";p=\"74097)</div>

Here's the difference. With the problem described in the KB, it is possible to change gears between N and P Changing the gear to P, then hitting the power button without the brake restarts the vehicle.

In my case, the vehicle was already in P. No change of gears was possible. Pressing the power button, with or without the brake, had no effect at all. The gear and power controls were frozen.

The problem is hard to replicate, but I was just comparing notes with an owner on the Canada-Prius mailing list who had experienced a similar problem. The thing we seemed to both had in common was that we were placing an extra drain on the power during the startup cycle. (In my case, I plugged in an accessory; in his case, he turned on the headlights.) His solution was to press and hold the power button until the vehicle powers off.