2006 Prius Stuck in Park

Are you saying when you hit "ON" with foot on brake, car electronics wlll not come up and allow you th shift into Neutral????

When I had my only problem, multiple trouble lights and Red Triangle of DEATH popped up, but I could still shift ONLY into Neutral.

If you can not get that far, you are going to have to be dollied by a standard tow unit!!

Good luck, let us know what the out come is!!

73 de Pat KK6PD

 

you do not need to start it

put it in ignition on mode (NOT READY) by pressing the power button twice without foot on brake, then you can press the brake and put it in neutral

if it won't go into neutral then, then i do not know, heh

you might have to hold the shift lever in neutral and keep it there for a little bit to get the car to shift

 

It's quite possible that she made the "timing" error by not having the brake entirely depressed when the power button was pushed. That comes from experienced owners becoming sloppy, not paying close enough attention and rushing.

The fix is simply waiting for the system to reset. You stop touching everything. Wait. Then push on the brake, wait some more, push the power button, then press PARK.

As for the towing service, that's pretty bad if they don't offer an old-fashion front-wheel-up tow.
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Hi Dave,

Did the AAA guy try to jumpstart your wife's car? Maybe the root problem is that the 12V battery has insufficient charge to get the Prius electronics booted up? Your first post alludes to this likelihood since you say the fuel gauge was flashing.

Your wife should be able to shift into N if she can make the car IG-ON (where all instrument panel lights are on and the car is not READY.)

If not, the solution would be to remove the parking pawl assembly mounted to the transaxle - but this is going beyond what your wife or the tow truck driver could be expected to do.

 

Is it too dangerous to drag the car up onto the flatbed? I would have thought that the tires should slide well enough on the steel bed.

But yes, the first thing is to just sit and decompress for a few minutes, then try again to start it in a calm unhurried manner. If that fails, then have a Toyota dealer send someone to jump start it. And if *that* fails, then a dolly tow.

 

Could be a low 12 vdc battery. Use caution jump starting a Prius, as its pretty easy to fry the inverter if you reverse the polarity

 

hmmm....

if the 12v was weak, then wouldn't that cause parking brake to actually release??? anytime my battery is a little weak, that's the first indication that pops up, the dreaded your parking brake is abnormal, please block your wheels, and as soon as the 12v is running at normal voltage, the parking brake comes back to life

will have to wait until tuesday for the speculation to be over to find out what happened, i guess.

i still feel it would of been possible to get the car into neutral by putting it in ig-on mode