Failed inverter. 25 Days and counting.... Waiting for the part

Had to claim the hail damage on my insurance...

 

Same thing happened to me. 2010 with 56k. Inverter gave out towards the end of May, it's been a month now, and toyota just called to tell me it's going to be another 2-3 weeks.

 

That is the case. I'm dealing with a case where a 2014 EX CR-V was in for some bodywork and had its four wheels stolen the night it landed in the dealership. The dealer claims on his Insurance. It's not the customers problem

 

Yes, I purchased a 2014 Prius 3 in May and it had the inverter software update done when it arrived at the dealer.

 

The delays make me think perhaps Toyota is sending the failed inverters to Japan for repair/resolder?

 

Given that we now have 3-4 people all complaining about the wait: I'm betting that Toyota underestimated how many of these inverters were on the verge of failing. Remember, they told the NHTSA that they had a devil of a time figuring out what was going on in the first place. And, from all appearances, the failures take a long time to crop up. They look like a wear-out mechanism, not infant mortality. Further, where this is happening isn't some out-of-the-way place where a summer hire was asked to do the analysis: It's very likely that there were engineers up the kazoo with simulation models, metallurgists, and all that staring hard at this portion of the design. In fact, it's quite possible that all this attention early on led to delays in determining the problem in the first place, since the engineers would have been sure that this particular failure mode wouldn't have existed. Until it was finally discovered and incontrovertibly proved with actual, real samples in a pre-failure state handed to the people who would understand what they were seeing.

One of the points of the analysis, once the failure mechanism has been determined, would be to figure out the population of failing inverters, both to estimate the costs to Toyota of the replacement and the manufacture of spare parts, if required.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. In my case, my estimates turned out to be dead on. But I had a good population of failed equipment, a quantifiable failure mechanism to work with, and that mechanism wasn't a wear-out mechanism, like this inverter one. Further, the software we came up with could detect incipient failures with a high degree of confidence, before system failure, which, when run across some sample field systems, allowed for further refinement of those estimates. The techies in the field gave me a bad time when the first system they checked had no failures; but by the fifth the numbers checked out, and they were glad they were lugging all those spares around with them.

If Toyota had, say, under a hundred failures to work with out of millions of cars on the road, difficulty in getting decent estimates based upon analysis, and issues with detecting incipient failures, it's quite possible that the statistics of estimating future failures got very, very messy.

Now, I'm going to make up some silly numbers. Suppose new inverters cost $250 to build, and $50,000 to set up the product line, since you're not necessarily building these any more. You've got, what, a thousand spares distributed around the globe. Now, you're the product manager. A delegation of stressed-out engineers crosses your door. The statistics are lousy: You might need as few as 250 inverters; you might need 10,000. There is no bell curve, they don't have enough data to make one. And it might not even be a bell curve; wear-out mechanisms can be non-linear over time. The CAD simulation models aren't showing the failures, or they are, but whatever those models are doing, they're not matching up with reality to any degree of confidence. In-house Lawyers who worry about future class-action law suits have their dander up, so you have to do something. The dealerships have been throwing failed inverters away, since the cost of repairing one is more than the cost of a new one, and you have new ones, built from the last production run, lying around in warehouses. But, since the first cracked inverter showed up six months ago, the engineers have been requesting all failed inverters be returned. They have maybe six or seven more failures out of the maybe couple dozen that have come in with other problems. Assuming that dealerships got the word and aren't still tossing the old ones. And both the upper and lower limit numbers they're giving you are fuzzy.

So, do you fire up the production line and build a thousand inverters? Think carefully, my friend. There are consequences and profit problems either way. Heck, if you over produce, those inverters that don't get used have storage costs and eventually get turned into scrap. If you under produce, you get complaints on Prius Chat. (And from customers who don't know about this place, a much larger population.)

And you sweat that the software fix actually works. Bad statistics, remember?

I think Toyota underestimated. But it was likely not on purpose.

KBeck.

 

Toyota UK have reduced their hybrid system warranty from 8 years/100k miles to 5 years/100k effective April 2014.

Why?

Many of these inverter failures are around and coming up to 5 years. Maybe they expect further failures and are trying to protect themselves? Smells to me though. Thankfully I'm now on my second inverter and have had the recall so hopefully it'll last the car out, but how many owners out there now have a financial time bomb on their hands?

Toyota would appear to be hiding something with this inverter issue. I don't think we've heard the last of it.

Toyota Warranty | Toyota UK

 

FUD. How would a change to warranty for new cars inform us about cars from 5 years ago ?

IF there is an inverter issue with a series of Prius, Toyota will handle it well if history is any indication.

 

The only thing these delayed inverter repairs tell me is that current production has been moved to a different design.

The inverter has been such a reliable part that I wonder if Toyota did not get relatively over-confident.

 

Because they haven't solved the issue perhaps? They know the inverter is weak despite the recall which seems a quick fix in the same way on the Honda hybrid quick fixes.

The sudden reduction in warranty for new cars also occurred at the same time of the inverter recalls. Coincidence? Maybe. Or possibly there is one big design fault the effects of which they've tried to mitigate with the recall, but a fault that still remains. Otherwise why reduce a warranty?

 

That must be it. You have picked the least likely possibility of dozens, ignore the obvious that the inverter has been redesigned, and forget the stellar history Toyota has backing up its products and protecting its reputation.

Enjoy your conspiracy theory.

 

You were doing ok until you got to the stellar history part. Toyota whilst good, are not perfect. But time will tell.

And conspiracy theory? lol maybe or maybe not. Seems strange for them to be reducing warranties generally. I could also list the number of replacement and expensive parts fitted to my stellar Prius

 

And I could list the parts fitted to mine.

There. Done

3 failed inverters does not a revolution make. Or a budding cover-up. Jeez, calm down

 

What is a typical warranty for other cars in the UK?

 

I wondered about that too, but if GC had a point, it would be Toyota related to past warranties. By the way, if he had read the warranty notice carefully, he would have noticed that the inverter warranty remains unchanged. The battery warranty remains out to 10years/100k miles contingent on a free battery check (with paid for interval service) from year 5. So if the warranty changes mean anything at all, they seem to be dealership related.

I really only wished to point out that even had the warranty been decreased, a jump to a conclusion that it must be a Toyota response to a hand-full of failed inverters is silly.

 

Varies. For non hybrids it varies with 3 years unlimited miles, or 5 years 60,000 miles, or 7 years 100,000 miles or anything in between.

For hybrids then Toyota is better than Honda who have historically offered a low 5 year 90,000 mile warranty. But Toyota have been moving their warranty all over the place of late as shown in that link earlier. The gen1 got 8 years 100,000 miles, the gen2 the same, the gen3 went to 5 years 60,000 miles, then to 8 years 100,000 miles from June 2010 and now to 5 years 100,000 miles.

Generally we cover less miles than you do so the time limit is of more importance. 5 years isn't that long a time for expensive hybrid components but from a confusion point of view it just seems strange to keep increasing and lowering their warranty. Also, we have more Toyota hybrids with Li-ion batteries that you do (PIP and the Prius+) and the Yaris HSD uses the NiMh battery of the Prius but with 20% of the cells removed to save space. Perhaps that's the reason for lowering the warranty? Or maybe it's all of them or maybe none of them.

 

Update on my "failed inverter".. turns out it likely wasn't the inverter after all.

The dealership called and said my car was ready. I went in and the mechanic said, "that was a strange one... It works now, but we don't really know what was wrong. We put two new inverters in it, and replaced both computers and it still didn't work. We pulled a wiring harness off the transaxle to test and moved one of the motors in the process. When we put the harness back on, the car worked. We aren't really sure whats wrong with it.. maybe one of the motors got stuck and created noise in the communication"

So... after 26 hours of labor, 2 inverters and 2 new computers I am left wondering.

 

Just curious. Did you have to pay for all of that work?

 

Luckily no.. Toyota covered all of it including the $2600 rental car bill.

 

That's outstanding.