Help! Wife stuck on side of road in '06 Prius

Just got a call from my wife, who is currently stuck on the side of the road with her 06 Prius. I don't have the manual (as it's in the car) and I don't have a clue why the car won't go.

She says "it has plenty of gas in the tank." She says the "VSC" light is flashing.

On edit: Turns out, HER definition of "plenty of gas in the tank" differs substantially from mine (and the rest of the world's) definition. HER definition is "well, when the empty light was blinking last week, I went another day and a half before I got gas..." So to HER, that meant she had plenty of gas.

When I got to her and her car, the empty light was blinking. Unfortunately, I didn't get to her before the tow truck did, so I had to pay for the tow truck too, as I finally caught up to her at the dealership where she had been towed to.

Now, back to the rest of the old (obsolete) post:

A red triangle is flashing, and the check engine light is on.

Car with an exclamation

So far, I've told her to hobble the car entirely off of the road to safety at an exit.

I then asked her to call work and tell them that she would be late (to the most important sales meeting of the new year, btw).

I then asked her to completely shut off the car, lock it, and walk away (out of the SKS range) in order to fully cycle the power/computer etc. She did, and the same problems appear.

I finally asked her to dig out the owner's manual and call me...

She's got the manual in hand and it says to take it to the nearest Toyota dealer immediately.

Should she drive it there? Or have it towed?

 

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the car to know what ICE means.

What is ICE?

We have contacted the nearest Toyota dealer, and they gave us the number to a tow company.

I've now asked her to read the manual about the proper way to tow a Prius.

Is the big shipping hook that is removed upon deliver necessary to reinstall for towing?

 

Well, now the phone in her car won't work... I can no longer reach her.

Now I have to leave work immediately (so now both of us are loosing the income we need to help pay for the Prius, and get in my reliable ExxonValdez of a GMC YukonXL that has never left me stuck on the side of the road, and go rescue her.

I'll sign off for now. Thanks for the help, and I'll keep you informed.

BTW, she was depleted in tears when we last spoke, so I don't think she will even have the energy for a tirade.

 

My fellow Prius owners:

Turns out, HER definition of "plenty of gas in the tank" differs substantially from my (and the rest of the world's) definition.

HER definition is "well, when the empty light was blinking last week, I went another day and a half before I got gas..."

So to HER, that meant she had plenty of gas.

When I got to her and her car, the empty light was blinking. :angry: Unfortunately, I didn't get to her before the tow truck did, so I had to pay for the tow truck too , as I couldn't catch up to her until after she and her car had already been deposited (via flatbed tow) at the dealership where she had been towed to.

I gathered her, her belongings, and my composure, and spirited her off to her sales meeting that by this time she was 2 hours late to, leaving the empty Prius at the dealership.

Then, I had to find a place to buy an empty jerry can for gas. That was a journey in and of itself that would choke the bandwidth of this site, so I won't go into it.

Then I had to intoxicate myself with gas fumes while carting the full gas can inside my car to the dealership. Then this new fangled so-called "spill-proof" container turned out to be anything but spill proof, saturating my hands, the side of the Prius, splashing on the ground, back onto my pants, shoes, what a mess. The "spill proof" nozzle doesn't pour without being depressed, and once depressed, it dribbles everywhere, while a small percentage of gas makes it into the tank.

The Prius Certified tech, the one who confirmed that the diagnositc trouble code that triggered the check engine light was indeed "ran out of fuel," took one look at my latest and greatest EPA approved jerry can and immediately turned around to get a funnel. He said "those new cans SU_K", and advised me to remove the nozzle altogether.

But now I had the choice to wash residual transmission fluid down into the fuel tank from his well used funnel. And on it went...

After delivering her refueled Prius to her workplace and dropping off the keys with the office staff, (deftly avoiding meeting her face to face and revealing my inner cauldron made all the more volitile by the fumes that lingered on my skin), I began calculating the cost per gallon of what was salvaged from the spill-proven can on my WALK back to the dealership to pick up my car (the shuttle driver vaporized faster than the spilt gas on the ground).

With the towing, the new can (which I just gave to the dealership), the cleaning bill, my time lost at work, her time and reputation lost at work, oh, and the gas itself, I figured I paid well over $200.00 per gallon to bring her tank with "plenty of gas" up to a level where the Prius was driveable again.

So, I post this to assure Prius owners as well as would be purchasers of the Prius that my wife was not mysteriously stranded by her new Prius.

She is mysterious though.

 

Well, in the last day I settled from still simmering in the afternoon, to silently civil by evening, and back to my lovesick syrupy self again by this morning.

That's when she wisely waited to explain to me her fueling logic, which I couldn't help but notice is strangely similar to the rest of you Prius owners from what I read here.

Some sort of OCD behavior seeps into a Prius driver, where otherwise balanced, rational, and reasonably intelligent human beings become compulisively obsessed with streching gas mileage to the nth possible degree.

I read about it here all the time... the Prius foot, how many miles per tank, will mudflaps cost me 1/100 of a mile per gallon, etc.

Well, it appears that this same disease has set into my wife's psyche. And it only took 24 days to metastisize to the epic proportion of leaving her stranded on the side of the road.

She explained it this morning to me thus:

Her minimum goal it to get 500 miles per tank, as that is what she has obtained so far (approximately 49 to 55 miles per gallon). Yesterday morning, she had only travelled 468 miles on that tank of gas, so she assumed that she should at least be able to travel another 32 miles before needing gas again.

Now that is a sickness.

When I bought the Prius, I had no idea this car infected people in this manner. I might have thought twice about surprising her with a gift that would take control of her mind. Epecially when I've been trying to control her mind for the last 20 years... without getting anywhere near the results that this Prius has managed to affect in the last 20 days.

I don't drive the car, can't really fit into it comfortably with a 30" long femur bone, so I haven't been infected yet.

But this incident certainly supports the explanation of why so many Prii have been reported to be on the side of the road... without gas.

"But I had only gone 468 miles, and I should at least be able to get 500 miles...."