Diagnosing hybrid system issues

The DTC's need to be looked at but the symptoms you give are classic of HV battery failure.

John (Britprius)

 

Continuing to drive with the problems could likely get you stuck somewhere as the HV battery is also used for starting the engine. There is no normal 12 volt starter motor.
John (Britprius)

 

Have the DTC codes checked. I you get P0A80 this would confirm it.

John (Britprius)

 

If you intend repairing this yourself I suggest you buy a Mini VCI with Techstream software from Ebay or Amazon for around $25 this will give you dealer level diagnostics using an old laptop.

John (Britprius)

 

Bearing in mind I am in the UK the answer would be yes. I believe the same applies in the US, but the guarantee differs from state to state depending on if the state it was purchased in and kept in is a CARB state. The CARB states have 150,000 mile 10 year guarantee not transferable to non CARB states.

John (Britprius)

 

Continuing to drive as the OP defines?

Could get him killed.

Randomly losing power on the freeway is dangerous.

Emergency shoulder stops with a powerless vehicle?

Please safely seek remedy as soon as possible.

 

Since you live in the Bay area you should have it checked out by these folks:

Luscious Garage | Hybrid Specialists

They have been mentioned a number of times and seem reputable. If nothing else they will give you good advice.

 

If the car is still under guarantee it would make more sence to go to a dealer. Although Luscious garage has an excellent reputation I do not believe they are able to carry out work free of charge under the guarantee terms.

John (Britprius)

 

Agreed, just realized he might still be under warranty. But a second opinion would be useful.

 

Surefire way is to log onto Toyota.com/owners and join and then using your vin look up the service record on your car. Any dealer repair and or recall activity will be listed there.

You will probably see it's last dealer activity shows it was diagnosed with a bad Hybrid battery and was just out of Hybrid warranty. Car was probably traded in on the spot and you can guess where it ended up.

If no mention of it there then run to the dealer asap as you may still be under factory warranty on the Hybrid Battery. It's 8 years/100K miles in your state no matter who owns the car.

 

Does the car have a "salvage title"? If so, I believe Toyota will not honor any warranty because of the salvage title.

HV Battery Warranty:
Non-CARB state = 8 year/100k miles
CARB state = 10 year/150k miles (must have been purchased and registration maintained in a CARB state)

 

Good point and true enough but no mention of that in his post. If its a salvage title his issues are probably just beginning.

 

See what codes are being generated. Midas, Autozone, other auto parts stores might be able to connect their generic reader to see if P0A80, as Britprius stated earlier.

Sounds like you hit the HV battery lotto. Run to the dealership to cash in. Worst case scenario, you'll pay the diagnosis fee of $100 (avg price in my area). If its truly p0A80, you should owe nothing b/c its warranty.

Mini VCI cable is a crucial tool if you plan to do any maintenance on this car; cable critical to do brake flush. You will need an old laptop with Win XP 32bit OS. Unless your very tech savy to make a Win 7 32bit emulate XP.

 

You may be able to call the dealer that did service in July and get more info.
But the reality is that the symptoms certainly point towards a hybrid battery issue.

If you plan on doing the repair yourself feel free to call if you have questions.