Ability to accelerate is slowly dying and I have no idea what to do

how many miles, and has it had all recommended services?

 

If when you ran out of gas and the engine shut off and you continued to drive the car like its a magic carpet ride that severely stress out the hybrid battery. And can kill it.

Watch the mfd battery consumption level when your driving it . It instantly will tell you the battery condition as you drive. If its in purple bars all the time or worse you see a red bar its going to be new hybrid battery soon.

The bulk of all power comes from the hybrid battery. Without full and healthy participation from that battery you basically have an anemic 3500 lb go kart where you have to floor it everywhere which it turn will also damage the engine to boot.

Its nuts you can run out of gas on this car. It blinks at you when very low then sounds an alarm right before it dies.

 

Yeah... Hybrid battery pack probably went from being old and weak to really old and weak after your running out of gas incidents. You can deep cycle the pack several times to restore the pack's capacity. Or if you can afford it you can upgrade to a https://projectlithium.com/?ref=9qLPw pack and experience better performance than brand new in your old Prius. If you use my affiliate link above I can give you unlimited tech support.

 

Well now....you have an interesting combo of problems. You have the combo meter problem where the dash is dead. That makes it hard to see the Master Warning Light, which is probably on, but you don't know it because the guy reading your codes is likely using a reader that doesn't "read" the hybrid section. You very likely have a P0A80 and at least one more code designating a failed module in the battery.

You need to find someone with techstream software or a compatible code reader so they can get you the correct information to help you troubleshoot. This is likely an easy (hybrid battery) fix.

 

Also, when you run out of fuel in an older car, the last bit of fuel often sloshes residue and precipitates into the fuel intake, and can partially clog the fuel filter and/or other parts of the fuel system. This can lead to fuel starvation at high power demand, such as when accelerating or driving at high speed.

 

When you are accelerating, does the gasoline engine rev up more than usual, which could be an indication of weak battery, or does it rev up less than usual, which could be an indication of a problem with the gasoline engine?

 

how many miles on her, and has it had all the recommended service in the maintenance schedule?

 

Of all those service recommendations, only the spark plugs and throttle body cleaning has a chance of resolving your issue. Any real mechanic can do those. I doubt they ran codes on the car; your report shows none. Unless you shot yourself in the foot by pulling 12v power first.

You DO have other serious problems. You need a good independent hybrid mechanic. Like others, you probably also need a hybrid battery. A weak battery WILL make acceleration weak as it needs the hv battery boost then.

 

The stop lamp switch is located above the brake pedal, and is pushed in by the brake pedal arm when the brake is not being pushed. When the pedal is pushed, the switch is released, which activates the brake lights.

The brake lamp switch signal is also used by the control system to determine if the brake pedal is being pushed during starting and shifting. If the switch is defective, you might not be able to start up into "ready" or shift into "D" or "R".

Sometimes the switch itself is not defective, but simply out of adjustment. So it might be a good idea to check the adjustment before replacing the switch.

Since this is both a safety issue which could lead to or worsen a rear end collision, and a reliability issue which could leave you stranded, I recommend prioritizing the brake stop lamp switch.


Drive belt: Not urgent, but should be replaced soon.

Brake fluid and coolant: Depends on service history.

I don't know what an "EFT service" is, but cleaning the throttle body and MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensor every 60k miles or so is usually a good idea. A sticky throttle valve or dirty MAF sensor can cause lack of power, but it looks like they didn't list a diagnostic trouble code (DTC) for that, so it's questionable if that is causing your lack of power problem. Perhaps you should ask them for the complete list of DTCs that their diagnostic check returned.