Red Triangle/Dealer Refusing to Honor Hybrid Warranty?

the oil isnt the FUEL for a car

the electricity in the batteries of your prius are your fuel source. you use it every time you drive the car.

think about it.

 

I've thought about it and have decided it really isn't a good use of my personal resources (time, thought, electrons) to continue debating this with you.

I suggest others stop wasting their precious resources as well.

 

why? because it's an argument you can't win? Because the vehicle has two sources of fuel and we ALL know this to be true?

because "life" happens and every now and then people run out of gas?

Have you ever had to have the engine in your car replaced because you ran out of gas? Or did AAA just simply come and top you up?

Does this sound reasonable to you?

 

yeah, you get a warning light when you run out of gas. not to mention a low fuel warning and whatnot.
without oil, you get an oil light.

the owner is supposed to take measures to ensure there is oil in the car.
replace the word oil with gas. the sentence is still true.

it's maintenance.

look, i'm just saying running out of gas is not a defect in the car. really i am sorry, your situation sucks and i'd be upset if i were in your shoes, but it's not a warranty issue.

 

no... maintenance and fuel are very different and unrelated.

 

John is a wealth of information -- here's what he says:

Don't ever run out of gas! ​

​

​

[FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman]

Not having the engine available makes driving a Prius using just electricity very risky. Without gasoline it is very easy to push the motor & battery-pack beyond the tolerances they were designed to operate. The battery-pack is never supposed to be fully depleted, that shortens its life. Also, without gas there's no way to prevent certain mechanical & electrical components (like the fuel pump) from overheating. Since Prius can go quite a bit further between fill-ups than most vehicles, there's really no reason you should ever run out of gas anyway. But if you do, drive very slowly and just enough far to get out of harm's way then stop. Don’t keep driving. ​

[/FONT]​

The owners manual should have explained it this way. I don't think the average consumer would figure this out on their own.

 

Re: still the Red triangle!

Yeah, freaked me out a couple weeks ago, I was thinking of a tow to Toyota. After I regained my composure I thought I remembered a fragment of something I read here. Open-and-close not fully closed door, its fixed!!! Sorry that was not your problem

 

Lets take it easy on the OP here.... He has stated that he has basically accepted that Toyota is not going to help him, and is working on it himself. He came here asking for debugging help. I'm sure hes not very happy about the situation, but I don't think any of us would be regardless of who is at fault.

I agree, it would be nice if Toyota made the warnings more clear that you are out of gas and need to stop as soon as you safely can. As I understand it, its pretty hard to decipher what has even happened, just all kinds of lights and warnings but the car keeps going. It should be noted that any modern car can suffer expensive damage if you run it dry. You can easily foul your fuel injection system with junk from the bottom of the tank, burn out you fuel pump, burn your catalytic converter and o2 sensors and I'm sure the list goes on. A lot of these components are also covered under your extended emissions warranty unless you damage them by running out of gas.

I do think there is cause for concern here if Toyota starts voiding the battery warranty of anyone who has ever run out of gas. I would think they would need to be able to prove that the battery was run down beyond its normal operating range to prove that damage could have occured. I am unclear on whether there is sufficient data stored to prove this, or just that the car ran out of gas. If the battery is never run down below two bars or so, I wouldn't see how running it without gas would matter.

It would be nice if the HV system would shut down before any damage was done. I assume that the thought was to put the safety of the occupants over the safety of the car. If you are in a dangerous situation and really need to move the car it will let you do so.

Make sure you are not confusing running down the 12V with running down the HV battery. The discussions about battery problems from leaving doors open, lights on, leaving SKS on for long periods are all related to the small 12V battery. Similarly when the car died, as long as the 12V was ok you would still be able to "start it up". If the HV battery was so low the car wouldn't move you really may have weakened it permanently. The distance you could travel on the battery would vary signifigantly with the state of charge when you ran out of gas. If it was already really low, it would not have taken much to drain it completely.

To get back to your actual request, my feeling is that you will need to get it to the dealer to get the new codes retrieved in order for anyone here to be able to help. Might be time to try a new dealer and see what they say.

One more thing you could try, when you do the "3 restart to clear" procedure I believe you need to actually start the car and let it run a full warmup cycle (maybe 5 min?) and then shut it off and let it cool down (maybe 30 min?). My understanding is that just cycling through ready 3 times won't do it.

Rob

 

back on topic, you sure the big battery plug is in all the way? it's a little hard to understand what all is going on.

 

Running out of gas in the Prius isn't too big of a deal. After the SOC drops to a certain point, which I remember was 1 bar, the whole car will shutdown. You can turn on the Prius again and drive another 100ft, but that power is to get the gas pumping again once fuel is in the tank. The computers do what they can to protect the hybrid system, but it isn't 100% human proof.

 

i'd recommend getting in touch with Bear68 here. he's a hybrid tech in your area. there's not much to go on, on the internet, with a red triangle as the only clue. good luck with your car.

 

Now, now, lets all play nicely,,,,

Two things. IF the facts are as presented, and the OP just "ran out of gas" drove aways, refilled, everything fine for a while and THEN the HV battery crapped, I think it should be covered by warrantee. Clearly the HV battery shouldn't crap with one discharge cycle, especially if it didn't go to 100% depth of discharge.

On the other hand, I suspect that there is something else going on here that hasn't been said. I think the OP should take it farther up the Toyota ladder.

Icarus

 

I apologize for starting the thread regarding the warranty. I thought perhaps you would get some useful information from those with more knowledge than I. The tone of this thread has become a little nauseating.

I wish you the best of luck with your Prius.

 

Re: Dealer Refusing to Honor Hybrid Warranty?

Nonsense. The software in the Prius will shut down the electric motor before the battery can be damaged. There is no good reason for Toyota to claim you voided the warranty.