Ran out of fuel AND battery!!

I get it, it's stupid because you say so.

I don't necessarily agree with the OP, but don't like seeing 20 different people talking trash on him for having his own opinion that he thinks its a flaw on Toyota's end. A bunch of Internet tough guys

 

The last time I ran out of gas was a bit over 30 years back. The cost was a walk to a gas station.

If you run the Prius dry, and take it up on it's offer to EV mode a bit further down the road, it might cost you a traction battery?

 

No one is calling his actions stupid because they disagree with his opinion.

They are calling him stupid because he watched the fuel gage get closer and closer to empty, then watched it start blinking at him while he continued to not refuel it.

When the inanimate object tells you that it needs to be refueled, and then runs out of fuel when you don't refuel, and then you blame the inanimate object for running out of fuel...
Well, I am just not sure what else you could call it.

 

His flawed car had been giving him hints.

The entire time you drive the car, it indicates how much gas you have. (My v has a count down mileage indicator until you will be out of gas. I have never ridden in a c, it may be different)
In my Gen 2 the last pip blinked when you had better not pass a pump. (7 to 50 miles, the Gen 2 has a variable sized gas tank)
In my v, the gas empty light lights up with 10 miles until reserve.
In my Gen 2 when you run out of gas, every light on the dash illuminates, there is a loud beep and you can't go over 35 MPH.
I learned my lesson with the Gen 2 and have no idea what the v actually does when you run out of gas.
In the gen 2, you need to pull over while you still have enough HV Battery to restart the car.
Once you get at least 3 gallons of gas in the Gen 2 (I have heard rumors that other Prius have lowered this to 2 gallons, YMMV) You can attempt to restart it without immobilizing it. It may take a restart, or two.

No car performs well when run out of gas.

Gasoline powered cars assume that the fuel is a liquid, once you are pumping vapors, you risk running lean and damaging the combustion chamber parts.
Air/Fuel Ratio tuning:Rich vs Lean | Turbobygarrett

Any modern fuel injected car (say newer than 1990) has the fuel pump in the tank, cooled by fuel, so running dry risk fuel pump failure.
Tank on Empty: Burned out the fuel pump

Now for some Prius (but not necessarily Prius c, I have not owned one) failures.
If the car was intent on saving the car, when you ran out of gas it would go to N instantly and turn itself off once it came to a stop, this would even emulate 'normal' car behavior. Instead, the car sacrifices itself to protect the driver.

(Pip owners may be able ignore this) Normally the EV mode is just a suggestion, any time the computers feel that too much load is put on the HV Battery, it can start the engine and fall out of EV mode. Once you have run out of gas, this protection for the battery is lost. Besides peak loads, the engine also starts when the battery gets anywhere near not being able to restart the engine. Without gas, this protection is lost.

Now, the computers worry about draining the HV Battery when you have no fuel, (Not even the dealer has a jumpstarter for the HV Battery) so if you try repeatedly (3 times?) to restart the car with no gas, it sets a code to prevent further attempts. Get gas BEFORE you attempt to restart.

So far as I am aware, those are the physical dangers to running out of gas. (social dangers like folks in a chat room dissing you or your wife bringing it up years later are outside the scope of my post)

I do not think so. If the HV Battery gets too low, it cannot restart the engine. Even the dealer has no battery charger for the HV Battery, so they have to borrow the shared one Toyota Regional has.

So I think you are 'only' out a tow to the Toyota dealer, a week wait at the dealer for the charger and a bucket of cash.

 

Not calling anyone stupid. I don't know the op and can't comment. I think they were possibly irresponsible and put themselves at risk of expensive mechanical damage and also at risk personally.

I do agree though, it wasn't a wise move but do they really deserve 4 pages of comments saying they should know better. I'm sure the lesson has been learnt and perhaps others will learn by this expensive mistake.

 

I think the tone of the first post and the follow-up posts are what have done it... and it probably comes at an unfortunate time being not long after the NY Times Tesla article (where, for those who came in late, an EV vehicle was driven until it allegedly ran out of charge and needed towing on a flat-bed, after which the manufacturer released data from the car that strongly suggests the car was - at the very least - deliberately not charged properly for the journey). I think people are just tired of this kind of thing, so it is going to get people's backs up.

 

i wouldn't mind a better warning at the last bar flashing. maybe a continuous beep at some point.

 

What it all comes down to is the OPs 1st post

Then he says the car has flaws when in fact it was his own actions that put him in the position he was in.....now I'm not saying that's he's stupid but it definitely wasn't the smartest thing to have done

 

If a beep, plus a warning bar on computer screen and a continuous flashing lights don't work, what you really need is something that slaps you upside yo head!

 

a hammer coming out o the dashboard might work for me. maybe.

 

... The "prius drivers" are defending against bad press. All this is going to do is create a situation where people will google search the Prius and see that it is flawed. This is all due to someone pushing an envelope and not understanding how his car works. He should have added more than 3 gallons after he ran out. He would have been fine. He didn't. Had he read the owners manual, he would have known that he should have not run the car past the blinking empty gas gauge... but let's say he did read it and still wanted to push it. He then would have had to ignore said blinking gas gauge for over 50 miles minimum... Does this sound intelligent to you? I'm not saying the OP is not intelligent, I'm just saying that stupid is as stupid does.

 

Why not develop a new habit of not running low on gas?

 

Give OP a break, and give him a chance to at least write here the consequence of his running out of fuel. What did the service do and what did it cost?

And one more question when the car stooped, did you leave the car on and that resulted a drained battery or did you shut it off immediately?

 

I agree with you but my comment was made based on the OP's initial comment of

"SO I'm notorious for driving my cars when the fuel gauge is in the red"​

​

I think that people here would be more than happy to give the OP a break if he hadn't blamed his car for allowing him to drive without due care

 

in conclusion...
for this situation.. the car wasn't the issue. it was the driver.

i'm pretty pretty sure everything that needed to be said was said.

 

Toyota engineers design for scenarios, or they should. Running out of gas should be remediable by simply adding gas. If in fact running out gas is going to cripple the car, resulting in (at the least) an expensive tow and charging session, that's poor planning. And trashing the OP for being negligent, while tempting, doesn't get Toyota off the hook.

They have traction control for similar reason, to prevent damaging the motors. Same thing if you accidentally shift into Park at speed: it doesn't.

 

He didn't add the aforementioned 3 gallons of gas...

Traction control doesn't save the motor... that's the rev-limiters job.

 

the car needs to see fuel in the tank before it can be "Ready".. that's its safety mechanism... to further protect the owner from even more expensive and costly repairs.

so when you run a Prius dry, have it cripple up.. and just add gas.. it takes a while for the fuel to circulate thru for the car to see fuel... so in the meantime.. yes... the car is crippled.. there's no expensive charging session.. the battery is actually fine... the car just needs to reset itself to see that there's gas in it... that's why when you just add gas and expect the car to get "ready".. it won't at first.

so.. yes.. Toyota DID PLAN for these scenarios... the idiot that ran out of gas is an idiot.. and there's no reason anyone should blame Toyota for implementing what they did. what do you mean they're not off the hook? it's all USER ERROR.

don't be an idiot. don't run out of gas... but if you do.. put gas in.. and be patient while the car calms down from having a temper tantrum the entire time it was trying to tell you to put fuel in it.

 

I can't decide whether this is the best or worst thread I've seen in my year on these fora. I'm gonna go grab some popcorn while I think about it.

 

You know if the car was designed that if there was no fuel in the tank it just stopped people would complain about that, even though it is just like every other car in the world that runs on liquid hydrocarbons.
Peace, out.