I have a 2007 Prius with 19,000 miles. I went to start the car yesterday afternoon and the dashboard lit up like a nuclear power plant control panel. Among the lights was the "famous" red exclamation mark. I also heard the fan noise coming from the rear side seat, which I understand is the battery fan. I called our local dealer (San Juan Capistrano Toyota) and they told me to drive the car in and they would diagnose. I drove the car and left with the dealer. I just received a call to notify me that my car needs a new main battery and a new computer. Has anyone else had anything like this happen with a relatively new Prius or is there anything I need to be aware of? Thanks for any and all feedback.
Pretty odd, not unheard of, but darn odd. Find out whatever you can as far as the exact codes they pulled and such. Sometimes they'll get one code and just pull the possible bad parts all at once rather than muck around trying to get an exact diagnosis.
Any chance that you had been driving with the battery vent intake (the grille to the right of the rear seat) covered or blocked? Doing so would overheat the battery system, and enough of that would damage it.
I'm surprised they told you to 'drive it in'. Would they have been on the hook for towing charges or something? My manual sounds like a broken record with the number of times it states "Turn off car, and have it towed to dealer."
At least it is covered under warranty. But please do get as much info as possible, since this an example of an extremely rare event--HV battery replacement.
I had a similar thing happen with about 18000 miles on the car. See http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-main-forum/41011-battery-cell-5-replaced.html They only replaced the battery though.
My experience was similar. They also told me to drive it in. I just had the battery replaced too though. I posted about it somewhere but it's back in my history.
I guess the dealer has no clue of what went wrong (or no skill to fix the Hybrid), and simply replace the 'obvious' culprits under warranty. This is very much like in computer ownership: Having some errors pop-up in Windows Vista, and the Support guy just ask you to put in the Windows Recovery Disc to rebuilt the OS from scratch instead. It's the best way to fix problems when they don't know how to troubleshoot it.
um. the warranty wouldn't pay for such a repair without either a set of diag codes that indicate the mentioned parts failures, and/or lots of time on the phone with tech support. believe it or not, sometimes these things fail. it sucks, but that's why we've got a warranty. it's the shots in the dark on the customer dollar we should be worried about. those do happen.
I just received the car back from the dealer with a new battery and computer - I will post error codes found and exact replacement parts tomorrow when I get back into town -
i hope your troubles will soon be over, but in the meanwhile, keep track of their attempts to fix the problem, as well as how many days your car is actually in the shop. Never know when you might have a lemon law claim.
OK - The car was in the shop for two days. The repair invoice states the following; Cause 99 190991 CODES P3000 P3013 C1259 C1310 - FAILED BATTERY - REPLACE BATTERY AND ECU 7092 W 1 G9510 - 47031 BATTERY ASSY, HV SUP 1 89890 - 47090 COMPUTER ASSY, BATTE ALL DONE FOR NO CHARGE - - I WILL BEGIN TO DRIVE TOMORROW AND LET YOU KNOW HOW THINGS GO tHANKS
Drove the car - seems to ride like new - averaged 48.6 mpg in my first 100 miles. Can anyone tell me what the codes mean that were posted in my earlier post? Thanks
P3000 = Battery Control System malfunction P3013 = Battery Block 3 becomes weak C1259 = HV Regenerative System malfunction C1310 = Malfunction in HV system
Probably a simple case of infant mortality. It's annoying, but no reason to worry about other things.
