Red triangle light on

Hello,

A red triangle light came on on the dashboard of my 2006 Prius. Also, there is a beep every time I turned the car on coming from the MFD along with a message that says "problem" and it is followed by a red car with icon on the top left corner on the MFD.

I noticed the HV battery meter on the MFD only showed two brown bars a few times, first thing in the morning in the past few days (one of those days it was down to one brown bar). Yesterday when all the above problems started, I noticed the HV battery was two bars from being fully charged at around 2:45 p.m. When I got back home last night and checked on the problem again, it only had two brown bars with the same error messages, and the vehicle was in the garage the whole time.

I turned the car on this morning and noticed the battery meter only had two bars on the MFD, and went down to one bar after I drove the vehicle in reverse out of the garage. The engine ran for about 10 minutes charging the battery and stop after it put around two blue bars on the meter; however, I noticed the battery chischarged again down to two or one bar while the vehicle was just sitting in the driveway in less than 7 minutes. Headlights, radio, and AC were all off. I have also noticed that the vehicle has been running the gas engine more frequently than when I first got it. The gas mileage has also decreased

I am thinking about taking it by the dealership but I thought I'd ask here first in case someone has encoutered a similar problem and has found solution. The car only has 115k miles on it and has never given me any problems except for all these that started yesterday.

Thanks in advance,

Selby

 

I just went home and checked the oil and so far so good. I'd hate to drive unless I had to because I am afraid the thing may just leave me on the side of road since the battery drains in just a few minutes while the vehicle is just sitting there with nothing running, it was down to one brown bar just now. Not sure if it matters, but I changed the transaxle fluid back at around 88k as recommended here. I noticed a yellow light located just above the red triangle with the exclamation sign in the middle of it just now came on in addition to other lights. I forgot to mention earlier, but the check engine light has also been on the whole time along with the triangle and car icon on the mfd.

 

Ok,

I went by the dealership yesterday and these are the codes they pulled P3000 (battery control system), P0A80 (replace hybrid battery) and P3011 (battery block 1 becomes weak).
Driving the vehicle to the dealership was not a problem. Once they were done, I started driving it back to the house, but I noticed the vent on the right side of the rear seat was blowing the whole time after turning the vehicle on (that rarely ever happened). I also noticed the vehicle suddenly accelerated while coming up to a full stop. The battery appeared to be fully charged up, but the MFD only displayed the engine doing all the work. Another thing I noticed was the sudden lack of torque. It didn't matter how much gas I gave it, it had an extremely low take off speed and the engine just didn't seem to be putting a lot of torque to the wheels. I guess the vehicle is not driveable anymore.

 

Of course they did $3294..........I guess I'm gonna start looking somewhere to get one besides the dealership.

 

Aren't these batteries supposed to last over the life of the car?....I know a cell can go bad at any time as well as a number of other things with these batteries, especially since I took exeptional care of the car. I am a bit disappointed though. I am gonna have to get the battery replaced and get rid of the vehicle and just go back to a regular car. Anybody interested in buying it as is and replace the battery or after I replace the battery, let me know....I won't be selling it for much. By the way, thanks to everybody for the help.

 

How hard and/or dangerous is it to remove and replace a battery block from the battery pack? I know ebay sells them for around $40 dollars plus shipping and if that is all that is wrong with, is much better than spending $3k at the dealership or buying a salgave pack that may go out soon after the vehicle is back on the road.
I have a friend who is a mechanic that would help me do it, but he would like to see and/or know how it is done so that he does not get fried in the process. Could somebody show me a step by step manual on how to do it or maybe direct me to a link or video somwhere to see how it is done? Is the dealership's diagnostic accurate as far as saying that block 1 gets weak or could there more blocks getting weak? If I counted right, the pack has around 30 blocks/cells at 7.2v each?
Anyways I would appreciate any help I can get.

 

I live in AL. The car was driven on a daily basis on my off days always loaded with 4-5 people since that was the only vehicle we had for awhile.

 

I came across an opened 04-09 battery and decided to replace the cell to ge the car running again. So I noticed it has 28 blocks of (6 cells each) connected in a series circuit. Which one of those blocks is #1, the closest to the ECU or the one on the other side? I also noticed battery leads/contacts apeared to be clamped, what can I use to remove/reinstall one of them around the middle of the whole thing so that I can break the circuit? Any info I can get on this will be highly appreciated

 

Thank you for the information Patrick, the orange interlock you are referring to is the one near the ECU that you pull off and have to wait a few minutes until the voltage drains out correct? I did not know it opened the circuit. I though the voltage was still live inside the big cover, so my next question is, how many sections of the actually circuit does the interlock open, half - 110 on each half or more sections? Can you specify what voltage remains live....14.4 per pair or more?