Toyota says hybrid computer must be new?

What's your location; are you in the USA? Or?

 

power management control ECU needs to be replaced? | PriusChat

California requires a 10 year warranty on hybrid “emissions equipment “ which should include ECU/ECM/BCM/Battery/ Etc

I would elevate your request to Toyota corporate, even if you are outside the 10/150 (Carb) or 8/100 (fed) you should be able to get a good will coverage for part of the cost

If you are in Cali there are government agencies that can assist if you are within the coverage window (assuming the dealer is playing games)

My take is that the BCM (“hybrid computer”)
should never fail under any circumstances and should be under the 10/150 in California, I also would question that your error is just because of a bad “hybrid computer”

 

There are a couple dozen ECUs in a Gen 3 Prius; the one they are calling the "hybrid computer" is probably not the BCM (or body ECU), which lives on the other side of the dash. Chances are they mean the "power management control ECU", which was named "hybrid vehicle ECU" in earlier Prius generations. Or they could mean the "battery smart unit", which was named the "battery ECU" in earlier generations.

A good start would be getting them to specify which ECU exactly they are talking about.

Also good would be getting them to tell you the exact trouble codes they read out. Surely they have those. They can be posted here and might tell us something.

 

Could be an original failed 12 volt battery making fake problems (how old is your little 12 volt battery?)
I would try that 1st

If it is indeed the transistor kit which relates to the IPM / pump that “should “ be under recall

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2018/MC-10145758-9999.pdf

I would call corporate and also need to divert to someone more familiar with this as I don’t know if they included the PIP.

Could file a complaint with the NHTSA if you can validate the exact codes (CEL) since a real Transistor failure has caused safety issues in the past and has had recall campaigns on other models of Prius

 

For various business reasons, new car dealerships are mostly constrained to replacing failed parts only with new parts. Used parts, and other more affordable solutions, effectively require going to independent shops.

I didn't really figure this out until two household cars suffered stripped threads for the drain bolt of aluminum oil pans. Dealerships would only replace the pans with new pans having the very same weakness. For half the price, a nearby independent shop could braze a steel thread insert to the old pan, providing a much more robust solution. Neither car ever visited a dealer's shop again, though subsequent cars still do so for items where the indy shops recommend it.

 

how many miles on her? it does sound like the ipm extended warranty

 

[EDIT: Misleading info, see below]

 

That's not really the "control board for" the inverter; what you're looking at is the part we normally call the IPM, or "intelligent power module", which is really just a handful of very stout IGBTs (insulated-gate bipolar transistors), six for each of the two motors and two more that make up the "boost converter" matching the 200ish volts of the battery to the 650ish volts for the motors. It includes a transistor-to-coolant heat sink; the things that look like hose nipples at the top left and bottom right corners are hose nipples; the coolant goes right through this part to carry the heat away.

The other things you'll find inside the inverter assembly are: the DC/DC converter that makes the 12 volt supply for the car, and the MG ECU, which is the control board for the inverter.

The MG ECU mounts on a bracket above the IPM that you are looking at. The DC/DC converter mounts underneath the IPM; its top is a large metal face that meets the bottom of the IPM through heat-sink compound, so the coolant flowing through the IPM also cools the converter.

 

Ah, I think I was misled by the fairly innocuous looking PCB on the top side of the IPM (most pictures only show the top), but the IGBTs are underneath and part of the same assembly? Would certainly explain the high cost then, and it's not something a Toyota garage is going to repair, hence replacement of the whole unit.

Inverter failures are not unheard of with the Prius, though I've heard it happen more with early Gen 3s and not the Plug-in.

 

I suspect that what you can see of the IGBTs will be in those large rectangular black features toward the middle of the board and that each one contains a group of nekkid IGBTs that you could look at through a layer of clear potting goop like the stuff hobbit enjoyed playing with (though that photo was from a Gen 2 inverter).



I'm guessing the one at the top and the one midway down (each with three cylindrical components to its left) are for the two three-phase motor/generators, and the lowest one in the photo (two cylindrical components nearby) is for the boost converter, but I've never seen it any closer up than that photo.

These kinds of assemblies are called "intelligent" power modules, but as far as I know, the "intelligent" means they have some on-die sensors to detect the transistor temperature and proper operation. The real controlling intelligence is in the MG ECU that bolts on top of it.



The term "IPM" by now isn't especially unique to this application; there are off-the-shelf ones in various sizes. In this thread I wrote about the (smaller, not water-cooled) one from Mitsubishi found in an old (Prius-to-house-power) inverter I picked up.

 

I don't think there is any "programming" needed for the IPM. It's just a thing with some big transistors.

On the other hand, it involves disassembling the inverter, replacing that component (observing seven pages of details on how to apply the heat-sink compound between it and the converter; get that wrong and expect another failure...), reassembling the whole thing, filling the coolant ... I could believe 5 hours.

 

call toyota corporate and ask for goodwill warranty

 

Not unheard of and the cause of lawsuits against Toyota and a recall campaign

Inverter should last the life of the car which is not 130,000 miles / 8 years

I believe this is grounds to call corporate ask for goodwill coverage, if not provided fill out a complaint to the NHTSA and keep receipts and move on.