what happened?

nancymargulies, where did your Prius coast to a stop? Please reply , if possible, and I will come to your rescue.
Gary

Hey, Nancy, all in jest, please try again. I've often composed an extremely intelligent post, corrected it with spell check, edited things and then checked out of PriusChat without hitting the "submit" button. :|
Gary

Gary:

I am new to chat rooms, or whatever this message system is called. Let me know if I am coming across in an inintelligable manner.
While driving my 2004 Prius I found that for no reason the accelerator no longer had any effect and the car coasted to a stop. On another occasion the car died and then when I restarted it all the warning lights came on. The next two events were the same as the first: car lost acceleration and coasted to a stop. After a few minutes it was OK again. Dealer's service department couldn't duplicate the problem and said I should "take it up with Toyota". Toyota said they would file a Lemon Law request with State (California) Att'y General's office. It seems I might need to fight for a new vehicle even though mine is not safe to drive. I live on high cliffs with no shoulders on the windy roads -- a dangerous place to be stuck.
Any help or hints you can offer would be much appreciated. - Nancy

if it qualifies as a lemon in california, they have you give you a new car or a full refund. Lemon law is three consecutive problems that make the car unsafe.. er.. i think that's it.. either way it's a three strike system for cars.

Sounds like a dangerious place to get stuck.. maybe you should take the number of a local prius owner just incase anything happens. If you lived near me i would gladly help you out.

Very strange. The dealer should be able to plug their computer scantool in and find out immediately exactly what's wrong. If the warning lights come on, the car should be storing all sorts of error codes and diagnostic readings in the memory for the dealer to check out. The Prius is exceptionally heavily computerized, and and self-diagnose almost anything wrong with itself.

They shouldn't have to duplicate the problem, they just need to read the manual and find out what's causing the errors that were stored.

I'd find another dealer if I were you... This shouldn't be a big problem to find the cause of and fix.

Dave

Second that! Try at least one more dealer for diagnosis and repair before taking the lemon law route.

Toyota offered to file a lemon law complaint on your behalf against themselves? That sounds... odd. Please update us on developments.

Hi Nancy, glad you sorted out the posting problem.... great that you can join us here and know you will find a great many who will assist in resolving Prius questions. Sorry that I have nothing to contribute to what has been posted above. Hope those links lead to success.
Gary

Once while I was driving with the cruise control set on my Rav4, the car suddenly lost acceleration. It seemed as thought the cruise control just stopped working. I turned it off and back on and still nothing... it refused to work for the rest of that drive, but the gas pedal did keep working. I only had this happen once, but you might want them to check out the cruise control part of your system. Granted I am not sure this is related.

Thanks for the insights. In my case the computer did not register the problem so service dept said they couldn't find or fix it. I am checking into the CA Lemon Laws and gathering documentation for them. Thanks for responding so quickly.

Seems VERY odd that there were no codes at all. If something nasty happened such that the computer put the car in neutral (I'm guessing here), it surely would have posted codes.

OK, BIG stretch. Especially since it happened multiple times. You didn't accidently put it in Neutral while driving did you? It seems almost impossible to do accidently as you have to push the shifter left and hold it for a couple of seconds. Even if you did, I don't know why that would cause the warning lights to come on.

My Prius is a 2004. I've had it 6 months. Thanks so much for the leads on where the problem may be -- I'll check out the links. - Nancy

Yes, the Prius is a highly computerized car, but it still runs on gasoline . . . or should I be saying; will not run on badly contaminated gasoline.

What were the time frames between failures?
Did the failures happen on: the same tank of gas, soon after fill-ups, or on nearly empty tanks?
Did the dealer check for fuel contamination?

[Edited after the fact]
Boy, now that I have read the links posted above by TonyP, my post looks really dumb . . . but I’ll leave it anyway.