Has anyone experienced a low-speed stall in a Prius v?

Were you still in drive? You didn't have your foot on the brake, right? (You never know... some people are two-foot automatic drivers.)

In the absence of driver error, it sounds like you and anyone else who's had a legitimate episode of this should file a safety complaint at Home | Safercar -- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

 

Your dealer needs to know about this (safety liability problem, etc.). He may be able to get some data out of the black box that will show what's causing the problem.

 

Maybe you held the break hard while waiting for traffic to clear up, and the hill start assist turned on? This happened to me once, and it causes you not to be able to apply gas to the car for a couple seconds.

No idea why it would stop in the middle of an acceleration under normal circumstances though.

 

It's a drive by wire system - perhaps you have a bad throttle position sensor??? I mean that's the weird thing about electronics - they either work or they don't... the intermittent issues are really hard to find. hopefully - you don't have a mouse trying to build a nest under the hood by chewing wires.... seen that before - what a mess.

 

Soemthing very similar happened to me, however not as dangerous because there just was a long delay prior to exiting my garage when it "stalled". New this week to vehicle, so I chalked it up to driver error.

 

I have experienced slow reaction from the throttle, but then I was just tyring to squeeze the most MPGs out of it. Sometimes I find I really have to push the pedal a distance to get response from the throttle. Did you push the pedal all the way to the floor and got nothing? It is a little weird getting used to starting off with the engine not running. (You would see the EV indicator during this period.)

 

Ok, since I initially read this post I have been observing during my commute...

If I had been in EV mode... it will do this and in the morning on cold start now that the temp has started falling outside...

here's what it does.

The engine starts up it's warm up cycle - initially at a high idle guessing 1000-1500 rpm. if i accelerate in drive -
the engine rpm will not increase even when the throttle goes above the ICE line on the indicator...

once the engine reaches the warm up temp - then the rpm will rapidly ramp up - depending on where my foot is at... and everything is as normal...

so it appears to not let you load the engine too hard cold. which makes sense. but i have not experienced a "stall" just a delayed increase in engine rpm in relation to throttle. - it will do this in pwr mode as well on a cold start.

 

This phenomenon you describe is to my understanding a consequence of the CVT/design. The engine is designed to run at it's peak hp/torq (optimum power) as the CVT continuously changes ratios. This is to help improve gas mileage.

 

I agree the CVT works to maintain the engine in the torque band - I have a polaris atv that uses a belt driven pulley system as a CVT- think snowmobile clutch.

I disagree that - that is what I am experiencing. Simply due to the fact that once the engine is warm or at operating temperature - it responds much faster or what i would say is normal - and when cold only for the first couple minutes - it will not rev up - I can have the indicator up as much as 3/4 the way up and the engine will not increase rpm ...
a couple blocks later - and as soon as i touch the throttle - it's increasing revs.

That tells me, the computer is programmed to allow the engine to warm up before winding it up. as you know, when passing or hard acceleration, the engine can turn some pretty high revs. Doing that on a cold motor - can cause some serious damage. I'm sure they prevent that - which contributes to the longevity of the setup.

I'm not complaining - don't get me wrong here, it's just that I noticed - as the temps have dropped here from 100 degrees to now 55-60 in the morning - the "normal" startup for me has changed somewhat.

 

Did you ever find out what the problem was? I have experienced almost the exact same thing.