2010 Prius IV Inverter Failure

It is a little bit OT, suprised me as well (maybe EU doesn't like the Prius uncoventional shape). Here it is:
Toyota Motor Europe Corporate Site NewsDetails

 

Yep, I agree with bretaz. JTEX05 should file a safety complaint w/NHTSA just so this is tracked. It sounds like a legit safety related defect to me.

 

This failure is similar to what happened to us with regards to our 2006 Prius. About 3 years ago, our Prius had a bunch of warning lights come on all at once. My wife was driving, I wasn't there. Apparently she drove a couple of blocks, pulled into a shopping center, parked and turned off the engine. She tried to restart the car, but a whole bunch of warning lights came on again (even more than before?), and the car wouldn't start. We had it towed to a dealer here in Poway, CA. They said that the "inverters" had failed and that they had to replace the transaxle! I was a little disappointed as I thought this might just be the beginning of trouble. The repair was covered by our standard 36K warranty and we now have 85K miles on the car with no further trouble. What really bothered me at the time was that the repair technician completed the repair and then said that the car still wasn't working. He then, after another day, said that the cables to the trans-axle had to be replaced. I don't know if they had done this to begin with, would they still have had to replace the whole trans-axle? How many of you out there have had to do this? Anyone ever have to pay for this repair? I'm guessing this would have come to 7 or 8 thousand dollars. We're not sure if we want to keep our Prius after our extended warranty expires in 2012.

 

With 2,000,000 prii on the roads you would have heard about it if it was a common problem.

 

There are not 2,000,000 genIII Prius on the road. It may take several years to see any definite patterns of weak spots on this car. Toyota may alread know some, but I am pretty sure they are not going to make this information public. Time will tell.

 

The GenIII's repair procedure states to check all possible cable connections before invertor or transaxle replacement. Due to the construction of PSD (MG1, MG2) the whole piece should be replaced, even it is a MG2 position sensor issue. Hopefully OP will update this thread after the fix with more deatil info.

 

At least 2 million inverters, that is. Even different generations, the basis of design remains the same. One severe weakness in design would have brought problems before.
600 thousand 3 Gen units per year so far is a good indicator.

I believe this case is a manufacturing quality issue, nothing else.

 

The internet has really helped owners report problems amongst themselves. Many times, owner groups identify problems before the manufacturer does. It is now much harder for the manufacturers to try to hide things from us. Sneaky little bastards.

 

Update Portugal: a 2009 2 Gen Prius has given practically the same symptoms. At the dealer now, I will give more info as I know.

 

See Toyota Auris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's 15,237 to be exact.

 

Paja's link was really good. In Europe 8.6% of Toyota/Lexus sales were hybrids in 2010. With the full year Auris sales and hopefully good Prius+ and Yaris sales the future will be even better. I think i read an article with Ford predicting 5% of their sales being EV or hybrid...... in 2020.

 

I have a brand new 2010 Prius and love it. I have been trying to determine whether to extend the warranty. The odd thing is that the hybrid system warranty (100,000) covers the inverter but not the transaxle which appears to be covered until 60,000. I noticed the word "motor" included in the list of covered parts. So does that mean the MG1/ MG2 is covered until 100K or 60K?

Ray

 

It's odd we do not have an repair update. Is it still broken?

 

Hybrid system warranty is 10yr/150K in carb states - I believe 8yr/100K for other states. This would be covered...

 

Carb states?

 

I think CARB is the acronym for the California Air Resources Board. If so, does that make California the only CARB state, or have some other states adopted the California emissions standards?

 

Correct on the first point.

Yes to the last point. See http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-prius-main-forum/90125-about-buy-used-prius-2.html#post1267200 partial (or complete?) list of CARB states. There's some debate afterward in that thread about some possible additional CARB states.

 

Oh no, TX ain't in that lineup. ;-) So 8 year/100K seems likely (need to recheck the warranty).

 

redundant post, deleted

 

Must be.
Toyota dealer to blame, or the OP to blame?