"Check hybrid system, stop the vehicle in a safe place".

Heard back from the Toyota dealer this afternoon... surprise! It's the onboard charger. They expect to get the part in next week. Oh, and they made sure to mention to me that even though the issue was my fault because of the power outage, Toyota was still going to pay for it. The rep did say something about "...even though the onboard charger should have its own surge protector" so I have the feeling they made her present it that way and she knew it was baloney. Power outages are fairly common occurrences, so if every time someone with a plug in car experienced a power outage it broke the onboard charger, plug ins would never be out of the shop!

So from reading through the chat forums, if I understand correctly the following also had the same issue and had their onboard charger replaced:

OnePiP
TrinaF
BAAA
Danvin
MyCarIsBlue

and the following I am not entirely clear if it was the same issue or something different:

GaryD06
480Max
Plugin

Anyway, fingers crossed they fix it and no more issues after that. Oh, and they did agree to give me a loaner.

 

wow, what bs, i would love to know where that originated. kinda surprised the charger issue wasn't rectified before the '15's were manufactured. glad they figured it out anyway!

 

My loaner from Toyota lol. I keep humming "Big Yellow Taxi". But glad I got a Prius and not a gas guzzler.

 

pretty sweet! hey, you don't know what you've got til it's gone.

 

The dealer received the part and installed the new onboard charger. At least it's not taking as long to get the part as it used to. I got my car back last night; it was fully charged so have not tried charging it at home yet. Will check in after a few days to advise if the fix appears to have worked.

 

Add me to your list. I was driving my Prius plug in with about 2 miles of EV left and got the same message. Drove the car home and tried to charge it. The charge light would blink about 5 times then go out. I brought the car to the dealer in Poway and sure enough it turned out to be the onboard charger. The new part was received the next day and the car was fixed and ready for pick up later that same day. Total time at the shop was two days. It was fixed for free. The repair would have cost about $1,800. My Prius is four years old with 24,000 miles. Not sure if it was covered by the power train warranty or my extended warranty but the repair was free and with no hassel from the dealer.

 

they're covering all the chargers.

 

If this turns out to be a defective part common to many PiPs, do you think they'll be forced to extend warranties on it later on?

 

i wouldn't be surprised. we've seen 10 or so here, but it seems to happen pretty quickly, not a usage/time issue. so there may not be many/any going bad in the future.

 

Does anyone know what component on the charge controller usually fails? My car is out of warranty, so I would be stuck doing the repair myself if this ever happens to me. Knowing electronics, it's probably a part that costs less than $1, so no sense replacing the whole board if we know what component is failing.

 

Hello All,

While coming home yesterday in the 2013 PiP from shopping, my wife got the message "Check Hybrid System". She drove home and I checked all the normal things that have been posted before. I made an appointment for next week at Toyota. BUT, I could not leave well enough alone since I thought there was no real problem with the system and I did not want to spend good money for Toyota to tell me or sell me something I might not need.
Since I am pretty stubborn, I wanted to find a way to to clear the fault even though I have no equipment or know how to do it. I decided to disconnect the battery and then reconnect it. I was not hopeful BUT what do you know!! No more warning!!!!!!!!!!! Now, I do not know if it will hold but we drove to the beach and all was normal. Just the driving stats had been erased. But who cares!!! I will keep you all posted and let you know if this fixed the problem.