Help My Prius ran out of gas with no warning

Help My Prius ran out of gas with no warning (light blink)

and the dealer is telling me there is nothing wrong.

I searched for similar threads but couldn't find one with my specific problem so...

anyways,

I ran out of gas, but my car never gave me any warning. I got the 09 prius back in december, been driving it with no problems for the past 6 months until I got it serviced recently in June. Since then I've noticed a couple weird things.

I filled up my tank (6/14/09), drove 150 miles from San fernando valley down to San Diego where I'm now living and over those 150 miles the fuel gauge only went down by 1 dot. Thought this was strange so I filled up and the tank would only take 1.37 gallons. That works out to be 106 mpg, seems a little much and a little strange.

Then after driving only 122 miles (6/14/09 to 6/22/09) my fuel gauge was half empty. Filled up the car and it took 5 gallons. Which works out to be about 23mpg. Again a bit strange.

Next over about two weeks I drove it 340 miles on 10 gallons of gas. about 32 mpg, still low but not as strange as the previous two times.

Also when my gas got low, my car beeped and the last fuel dot started blinking as it always has and as the manual says should happen when fuel is low.

Well after that last time of filling up with 10.5 gallons I had been driving my car around and it got down to one dot and I had been still driving it around ( short distances only, my commute isn't very far) waiting for the light to start blinking before I went to fill it up. I had been keeping track of my mileage between the light blinking for the most part and so that's why I was waiting for it to start. Figuring I wouldn't run out of fuel because it should warn me before I'm so low that I run out of gas and there is a gas station less than a mile away.


Well...I ran out of gas this morning pulling out of my driveway. Pulled out, started to drive off and engine died, all my lights went on (check engine light, vehicle stability control light, brake light and Big red triangle exclamation mark master warning light. I turned the car around and drove it back into my driveway and the battery died as I was pulling in and I had to push it the rest of the way into the garage (in neutral).

Didn't know what was wrong as I didn't think it was out of gas, tried to restart the car a couple times but wouldn't get anything, lights came on (warning lights too) but nothing else and the car just sat there and could only shift into neutral.


Had the car towed to the dealer as I thought something else was wrong. Dealer guy turned on the car. Lights showed up. The gas gauge still showed one dot and it wasn't blinking.


I go to work they check my car over and call me a few hours later and tell me that all that was wrong is it was out of gas.

I tell him that there has to be something more than just being out of gas wrong because I never got a warning light or anything.

He tells me there is no warning light or warning of any sort on the prius. I tell him he's wrong, i've read the manual front to back and it's in the manual. He says he'll check it out and have his tech check the car. Calls me back, says ok there is a warning light but my tech checked the car and there is nothing wrong with the fuel gauge as we put 5 gallons in and it shows 5 bars.

I say this doesn't solve my problem which was that there must be something wrong as I received no warning. He says the prius has a funny fuel bladder where sometimes the amount of gas in it will vary. I know about this issue it mostly is seen in colder climates though, i'm in cali and the temp is in the 80s-90s and the temp difference between san fernando valley and san diego isn't enough where this should be the problem.

Plus the bladder issue doesn't change the fact that whether I have 7 gallons or 12 gallons of gas in the tank, when it gets down to 2-3 gallons the light should start blinking letting me know that the gas is down to around 2-3 gallons.


Anyways, long story less long, the guy insists there is nothing else wrong with the car. So now I have to go pick up my car tomorrow, and I know the issue of my low mileage and this fuel problem won't be resolved as all they did was put gas in the car.


So can anyone help has anyone had this issue or seen this issue before. Does anyone know what could be wrong or why my car might be doing this. These things never happened until in the past 4-5 weeks with the running out of gas happening this morning.


What are my options, right now it seems like I will just always have to fill up at halfway because I can't trust the gauge and I'll have to carry gas in the car because I never know when it will run out if it doesn't warn me.


Also while looking for info on google I stumbled on some people who said that running out of gas will void the battery warranty. When I turned on the car my battery was dead, like 1 bar I think if that. Now I didn't stupidly run it out of gas though, the warning system malfunctioned, so is the warranty something I should be concerned with being voided or is this only if you are like driving on the freeway with no gas.

edit: also is it normal for all those lights to go on when the car runs out of gas. Don't know why the brake lights and check engine light and stability control light would need to go on if it's just out of gas

 

lol I understand where your coming from but still

being at one bar doesn't matter, only being one bar is totally besides the point.

The point is that the car is SUPPOSED TO beep and then the light starts blinking when gas is low, if it doesn't one should generally be able to assume they have more than a gallon of gas in their car.

when one's commute is only 2 miles on average and a gas station is only a mile away one wouldn't really worry about running out of gas when the warning light hasn't gone on yet.


If i was going on a 60 mile trip with only one bar I would say you would have a point. But a 2 mile trip when that bar is not blinking is not gonna send off alarm bells in my head


The car is manufactured and designed so that when the gas is low the bar starts to blink.

If the bar doesn't blink when the gas is low or almost empty, that means there is some fault or problem somewhere. It's a malfunction.

It's not meant to only work 70% of the time, it should work all the time, especially on a new car.

I have never ever had a car run out of gas before the light went on. With the prius if the light goes on when there is about 3 gallons of gas left in the tank, then I should have at least around 40 miles left, if not more considering it's a prius. I've loved owning my car but the weird things over the past few weeks are starting to frustrate me.

I'm not looking for sympathy anyways, i'm looking for an explanation or any ideas on what could be wrong and why it's doing this.

 

So regarding my issue of my mileage being low or seeming to be off and rather low for the past couple weeks (23-35mpg compared to in the 40's before):

What is the best and most accurate way to go about monitoring my miles per gallon.

My current method is I take the total miles I had driven when I last filled up, and subtract it from my total miles driven when I currently fill up to get the miles driven between fill ups. Then I divide it by the amount of gas in the car figuring that's the about the amount of gas I used and that gives me the MPG.

Here is a picture of my mileage chart:

(Prius chat won't let me post a link to my picture since apparently I don't have 5 posts yet, annoying but anyways...)

there we go



I divide column C by column D to get mpg. Is this the proper and more accurate way to track my mpg or is the better way to go by what the prius computer says on the info screen where it has the bar graph

 

BTW: The mileage readout on the prius computer always has me getting better mileage than what my own calculations show when going by miles traveled/gallons filled up