Need a crash course on PIP

gen 2 inverters are fine. gen 3 inverters are involved in a class action lawsuit. there's no time frame, just random.
it's not the pump, just the inverter, a module inside i think.

 

Gen 3 inverters are involved in a proposed settlement that will (if approved in late January or so) extend an existing fifteen-year, unlimited-mile coverage to twenty years. Nice to know, but not a huge change to the situation on the ground, as there aren't any Gen 3s that are even fifteen years old yet.

 

pretty sure it shuts you down, or at least i have read a few died at highway speed.

wondering if the pip inverter is the same part as non pip

 

G9200-49025 for non-pip, -49046 for pip

 

There was a (free) software update, to better protect the inverter during sudden acceleration; dealership would be able to check if it's been done.

 

and reports of failed inverters after the update

 

Part of that, of course, will come down to how old different cars were before getting the update, and how they had been driven and how much of a beating the inverter had taken during that time.

The other part is that even eliminating a fixable early-failure issue never made any car part immortal.

 

Yeah I doubt it's perfect, but still I'd think it helps. One issue, and @ChapmanF might shed more light: the software update instruction (for service departments) was confusing, might have lead to incomplete/botched updates.

We got it when the notice came out, seemed ok, and gave the slightly greater propensity to go electric-only. I noticed this, didn't say anything about it, then my wife mentioned the same thing.

 

There was one recall, E0E (I think for Prius v it was called F0R), that was supposed to change some firmware in both the MG ECU and the power management control ECU.

There was a later recall, J0V, that was mainly to fix one additional issue (let's not have a failure shut the system off completely), but there was also a lingering puzzle where some cars that had already been in for E0E or F0R were still having the same kinds of failure.

And it was turning out that those cars had the right firmware version in the power management control ECU, updated during the E0E/F0R recall, but still had the old firmware in the MG ECU! The way the E0E/F0R technician instructions were written, there was one place where that MG ECU update step was skipped. Proofreading.

There were other places in the instructions where the step wasn't skipped, and there were steps at the end to confirm both updates had been done, but you could see how certain techs, after doing a few, might have gotten into a rhythm where they were just looking at that one page in the instructions where the step was missing, and not doing it. More on the story is here.

So in the later J0V recall, they really did two things: (1) apply the new fix for not powering off, and (2) check the MG ECU firmware and make absolutely, positively, totally sure it really did get updated, either in the earlier recall, or here and now if it wasn't then.

You can tell they were embarrassed about that part. They wrote a whole new Calibration Update Wizard plugin for Techstream that would check for the update itself, and make sure it was done, and report up to a national database that it had been done. Clearly, they didn't want to hear any more stories about updates that were missed.

 

the only think i ever got was an offer for the free ipm update, and a 10 year warranty iirc

 

The two-cylinders-looking thing is the lower unit of these two:



The two units are piped together, unsurprisingly, so when internal leaks develop, the pressure in the accumulator drops and the pump is what has to run to bring the pressure back up, but that doesn't tell you which unit has the internal leaks. The upper one (brake booster, master cylinder, actuator, those are all names for it) contains the vast majority of the valves, though, and that's a strong hint on which way to bet.

That turns out to be a blessing, as access to replace the upper thing is considerably easier than for the lower.

Sometimes a mechanics' stethoscope will let you listen in both units for the leak, before you place your bet.

 

i suspect mine is going at 84k. when i open the drivers door in the morning, it runs for about 15 seconds. it has definitely deteriorated over the years.
our 2013 hycam with similar mileage only runs about 3 seconds.