Loss of Power on Prius v (lowercase v for the Prius v wagon)

Similar story to others posted, driving on Rt 80 in PA yesterday I lost power, warning lights appeared all across the dash, but was able to pull the car off of the road to a lot where AAA picked it up and towed it to the local Toyota Dealer. It is a 2012 Prius v (lowercase v for the Prius v wagon) 2 with 62,000 miles. Heard this afternoon that the dealer has determined the inverter needs to be replaced and he does not yet have the entire list of materials necessary so he cannot give me a firm price but he expected that it would "be expensive." Details tomorrow morning. Toyota 800 customer service associate said that the repair "should" be covered under the 96 month, 100,000 mile warranty on hybrid related systems. Update tomorrow morning.

 

Dealer confirmed that Toyota would cover the entire repair cost. Next issue will be temp rental car expense as this happened 500 miles from my home and the estimated repair time is one week They do not have the parts locally and parts come in from CA. I will have to either drive back next weekend to pick the car up, 9 ours each way, or have the repaired vehicle shipped to me. More later.

 

I rented a car for the return trip home and eight days later drove back to PA to pick up the repaired Prius. All repair costs were covered under he extended 96 month, 100,000 mile warranty for the hybrid system. Warranty repairs ran to $2300.00. My insurance carrier will not cover the rental costs. Out of pocket cost to me so far, considering the loss of the car occurred 500 miles from home, is approaching $900. More later.

 

Initial claim, via telephone, for out of pocket costs was declined by a Toyota Customer Service Agent. I filed a formal written claim with documents supporting every out of pocket expense. After ten days I received a counter offer from Toyota agreeing to cover basically 90% of my expenses. I accepted their offer and am now waiting for the payment. They said that would take up to four weeks to process.

 

Received a notice on 8/29/16 wherein Toyota acknowledged that there is a problem with the Intelligent Power Module in the inverter assembly which may fail and cause the loss of power. This is not a recall notice rather it is an extension of the original warranty for 8 years with unlimited mileage. Should the failure occur and be verified by a dealer Toyota will pay for the replacement of the defective part and all expenses related to failure.

The failure of this IPM was known to occur four years ago on certain other models of the Prius but was no considered to be a problem on the Prius v until now. Better late than never for other owners the "v" who will experience this problem. But, for me, I am less than satisfied when I consider the time I loss and the expenses that were not reimbursed plus this out of pocket expenses that I did not include in my original claim.