2007 Toyota Prius Won’t Start: No Power, Stuck in Neutral

Well your basic objective here is going to be to make sure the 12 volt battery actually has 12 volts when things are turned on and the car is trying to ready to drive the word r e a d y on the dashboard and blue green letters so right now you can't get that and your shifter won't do anything or talking about You must have some other orange or red lights on the dash when you're trying to do this driving You should make a note of those they're going to be there and you will need to probably get the codes read. There's almost no way around reading the codes You going to give you the information you need to figure this out Is the little car in the upper left of the multifunction display green or red when you're trying to ready the car?

 

Are there any warning lights on the dash? If so, it will be helpful to read the trouble codes to find out why.

 

I believe it was Hobbit who demonstrated that once a Prius was started one could detach the 12V entirely and the car would continue to run. So the 12V should only cause it to stop running if it is not just undercharged, but acting as a serious load. Like a shorted cell or some problem like that. I would suggest that rather than just blindly trying to jump start the car it would make sense to at least measure the voltage on the 12V, and better yet, attach it to one of the small electronic testers. If you find super high internal resistance or 9V or something catastrophic like that, don't jump it, replace it. Conversely, if it tests good, then that isn't the problem.

If you need to replace the 12V Walmart sells one for less than one from the Toyota dealer.

A car with symptoms like that usually throws codes. Get them read with a decent scanner and report back. Note, a really bad 12V can cause some odd codes due to the low voltages. Those go away when the battery is replaced.

It sounds like you may not have any of the right test tools. In that case, I would start with by getting a digital multimeter to at least read the 12V voltage. These are less than $10 at Harbor Freight and maybe a little bit more at a hardware or auto supply store.

When you turn the car on, does the ICE start after a few seconds?

Check the oil level and both coolant levels. Always possible to have a catastrophic leak of one or the other from a rock or a piece of road debris.

 

According to your original post, you've put 5,000 mi on the car but don't say when the previous owner did the last oil change. In any case, at best, you are due an oil change, and at worst you are seriously overdue for an oil change. If your car burns oil, you still need to change the oil every 5,000 mi regardless of how much oil you use in between otherwise you are just building up sludge and crap in your oil sump.

Unless you are tens of thousands of miles overdue I doubt now being due an oil change is going to "cause the motor to die."

Nope. It will take several hours if your battery is seriously discharged. Regarding the scan tool, see below.

See this thread that reviews several modestly priced scan tool options.

The scan tool (a good one, that is) can give you 12 V battery readings but will not test the battery, as such. For that, you can perform some rudimentary tests (search PriusChat) to gauge if the battery is good or not, or use a dedicated battery tester like this one.