Run out of gas.

hopefully none, what does the manual say?

 

How much gas was put in?

 

Running out of gas should not have damaged anything. The engine just needs to be primed, and then it should restart. There may be a minimal amount of damage from you leaning out the fuel mixture drastically when it cut off. That would be about it though. Just do not make it a regular habit, and you should be fine. I hope the dealer does not clobber you with a hefty bill though... How many miles did you go before it ran dry if you do not mind me asking? The farthest I have ever been tempted to push it is about 630 miles before I started getting scared.

 

Worse case probably would be the fuel pump. If so, that could cost a pretty penny (at the dealer).

 

On all new cars the fuel pumps are in the fuel tanks. They use the fuel to cool themselves, so that is part of the reason why running them low is bad for them. You most likely did not damage anything. Quite a few people on here seem to push the limits and run out of gas, so should be fine.

 

To cold to charge the battery? Did you somehow mange to deplete the HV battery charge as well? I have never heard of this on a Prius. I know with the Volt below a certain temperature (-14F) the car becomes inoperalble until the battery is temp is brought up. Seems to me like they need to bring in a Toyota rep to see what else may be going on... Hopefully someone from the snowy lands will be able to comment on this.

 

How many miles did you get on that tank?

 

Since totally bogus to me. What does "we might have to bring toyota guy" mean? What kind of dealer did you go to?

You didn't answer my question about how much gas was added. On the 2nd gen, if you didn't add enough (I believe 3 or 4 gallons) to get it to register after running out, the car may not start. I'm unclear if this applies to the 3rd gen.

Why did you run out of gas? Were there any warnings prior to running out? If so, why ignore them?

Perhaps http://priuschat.com/forums/other-cars/94001-gas-gauge-says-full-but-thats-not-quite-true-npr.html would be insightful (even though it's a Ford engineer talking).

 

Too cold down in Boston?

Wow.

 

Well there is a big part of the problem - 520/46.5 is 11.2 gallons out of a best case scenario of 11.9. I know that you do not have the joy of dealing with the fuel tank bladder, but that is really pushing it. All you would need it for the gas pump to click off just a touch before completely full and for the 520ish miles to be more like 530 or 540 to run the tank completely dry. Why run it so close to empty?

After the gas engine died did you continue to drive the car on battery power alone? The comment that you made about the battery leads me to think that this might be the case. Which battery are you having an issue with?

It sounds like you might have just brought the car to a generic repair shop (the comment about bringing in a Toyota person leads me to this) - if so and you can not get it started up quickly I'd recommend biting the bullet and having it towed to a Toyota dealer. If you do not already have it just call up AAA and sign up for their top tier of coverage and then use it to have the car towed.

Good luck and let us know what happens.

 

Expensive lesson... I think they took you for a ride.

 

If you drove for 2 miles on battery only after hitting 1 bar then you probably completely drained the HV battery (1 bar actually means 40%, not 0%). Doing that CAN permenantly damage the battery, doing it regularly WILL damage it. If you run out of gas again, stop safely and go get some gas in a can, like with any other car.

 

I agree, it should start beeping or display a fault/stop light once you are actually out of fuel.

But lesson learned, and hopefully no damage done.