Red Triangle And Yellow Engine Light On

Disconnect the negative battery cable for 5 minutes or so and then if it comes back have it scanned for codes.

 

Mini vci (techstream) is best. It’s cheap and with it you can do basically anything that dealer can. Its only usb-obd cable and software so you need computer also. Best if it’s with windows xp.

 

Hi!

Recently I bought a second handed Prius 1.5 from 2001 (NWH11) with 140K km on it (+- 87 miles). Unfortunately, the warning lights appeared after a few days driving it as well. To be more accurate, the triangle of death, exclamation mark and after driving it a bit also the check engine light.

Since then I have read many forums about the possible cause of it, the prius drove perfectly fine the first 10 minutes but after a while the check engine (yellow) light would burn and this caused a very strange acceleration. I had to push the gas pedal completely to maintain my speed. I drove it to and independent garage directly and let them read the codes for it. P3000, P3013 and P3006 were eventually the codes of the defect. It simply meant that my hybrid battery didn't function accordingly, which is very strange after that mileage.

Thankfully, the mechanic was very generous and spend time to figure out what part of the battery caused the defect. It seemed to be limited to only 2 defect hybrid battery cells (out of the 38), in The Netherlands however it is need legally allowed to change individual cells. The voltage is too high and endangers the mechanic's life (or some bullsh*t like that). The mechanic wanted to help me out, since I am a student and it just costs me too much to either replace the hybrid battery as a whole or sell the car for half the price I paid for it.

I ended up ordering the cells from the States and the mechanic successfully changed the cells and is now working accordingly. My point of sharing this story is to inform other prius owners that most of the dealers rush to change the battery as a whole which will cost you a load of money. Let them test the results of the voltage of the individual cells and it might be that just one or two cells that are defect.

My total cost ended up to be Euro 120 for buying the two cells (inc. shipping) and Euro 300 for the costs of the mechanic. So around 500 USD, replacing the battery would cost me around 3000 USD.

Now I got a good car with low mileage and all it all for a low price. I have to say it was very frustrating and time consuming (3 weeks in total). I hope help you out with my story.

Cheers!