my maintenance light came on?

[mrrobwood]

hi

i am new to posting but have lurked since owning my 2008 prius

yesterday after fueling up i noticed that the maintenance light flashed six times after starting the car.

i have never owned a car that tells me it needs maintenance, my mileage is at 4700 and i planned to change the oil at 5000

my question is how do i know if it is just telling me that i need to change my oil? or is it a evap code?

i tried searching on here but came up empty handed, inside the manual i found how to resest the maintenance light, but not how to determine what it means.

could anyone clear this up for me please? btw i am loving my new prius

[prius729]

It's telling you that your 5K maintenance is due soon. I would'nt worry about it.

[JimboK]

It will flash like that at 4500 miles past its last reset. At 5000 miles past the reset it stays on.

[walterm]

Once the oil has been changed it requires a manual procedure to reset it, so if you do your own oil changes (it's easy on the Prius!) remember to do that as your last step.

As I recall the procedure:

Make sure the odometer is not set to display either TripA or TripB, then turn the car off.

With your foot on the brake and one finger holding the ODO/Trip button press the POWER button and then hold the ODO button until you see the odometer display change from a row of dashes ------- to a row of zeros that will appear one at a time. When the odometer display stops changing release the ODO button and the maintenance light will be cleared and start counting to the next change interval.

Note that the light doesn't count time, so if your car is driven very little you might hit the 6 months before you hit 5000 miles, in which case you should change the oil based on time rather than mileage.

[doubleg2005]

my wife hates the maint light... i know i could reset it, but i'm just too lazy and currently about 7500 past the last oil change with 2500 to go