College Student vs "Check Hybrid System" and a dashboard lit up like a Christmas Tree..

welcome! sorry to hear about your troubles.

how many miles on her?

start the car and after the engine shuts down, open the cap to the inverter fluid reservoir. there should be ripples in the water, as the pump is always pumping while in 'ready'.

if you're lucky,there's no movement, and you need a new pump.

i would advise eco mode in the future and gentle accelleration with speed limit driving, of you can't afford repairs.

 

You might want to check the voltage of the 12v battery at the fuze box, or at the
battery itself in the trunk on the passenger side. If it's low, you will get all kinds of
weird messages. It's the easiest thing to check, and doesn't cost anything.

 

Even on a college budget, I'd advise looking for a way to get yourself a diagnostic tool that will show you the codes. There are a bunch of possibilities for what problem you are having, and trying to solve it without knowing what it is can very quickly turn into a false economy that you can't afford, unless you happen to get lucky on the first or second guess.

There's a thread in the Gen 2 forum comparing diagnostic tools and showing several options that should read all the codes from a Prius. It is in the Gen 2 forum because mr_guy_mann has tested the tools specifically with Gen 2 cars, but it's likely the better options on the list for Gen 2 will work with Gen 3 also.

In the meantime, if you don't have a usable tool available, even paying the dealer for the usual hour of shop time to retrieve and tell you your trouble codes would not be a bad investment just this once.

It is possible the codes will show that your issue is covered under a customer service program, which would probably make you happy. And if it is a covered problem, I think you'll avoid the charge for reading the codes, too.

 

got to try this on my car! the P0A08 check hybrid system code keeps popping up on mine as well.

 

Take out a $10,000 school loan to fix it as Long as you don’t make over $125,000 as student. The current administration will cover all of it, I mean tax payers.

 

"As well" is not really the right thing to say here, as the original poster has not mentioned any P0A08, and in fact does not know which of the couple hundred possible issues might be involved yet.

 

see post #2

p0a08-dealer-clueless.151186

 

No, they don't. A Gen 3 Prius has around two dozen ECUs in it, way more than most generic scan tools would even think of asking for codes, and they're not all together on a single CAN bus. We know that Toyota Techstream will pull all the codes, and as for any of the alternatives out there, we need threads like mr_guy_mann's linked above to help us learn which tools will and which won't.

 

if the engine won't shut down, go for a ride and watch the battery meter. you can put a kleenex over the fan grille to check if it's running, they're usually very quiet, and clean is not abnormal.

you can also check the inverter fluid by pressing the power button without your foot on the brake

 

you definitely want to clean up any corrosion, and test the battery under load

 

The P0A80 judgment that the ECU makes is not based on the static voltages you read with your multimeter, but on how the module voltages hold up under load.

Any small amount of corrosion you might see on bus bars is unlikely to be a factor: if the nuts were properly torqued, if you remove them you will probably see clean metal underneath, where it really matters.

P0A94 isn't about the inverter cooling pump (that would be P0A93). P0A94 is an issue with the DC/DC converter, which produces the 12 volts for operating the car when in READY. You may want to check at a dealer for coverage of that under a warranty extension.

 

Agree that the Op needs to go to the dealer and request diagnostics, particularly as related to the inverter code since its likely to cause the stall and is still covered by Toyota. If it is the inverter, the diagnostics will be free. Various functions are in the "inverter" including IPM transistors and a dc to dc converter.

Often extraneous codes appear when one device fails. While the hv battery is getting old (many have been replaced or repaired by now on a 2010), I doubt more than one thing failed during this incident. Same goes for the speed sensors.

 

Yes, go to the dealership first for any recalls. At the same time, they usually will give you a proper diagnostic for that.

 

The transistor kit includes the power semiconductors in the inverter that makes everything work. Sometimes called the IPM.

The proper terminology for the Inverter repair is a Customer Support Program which is a voluntary repair paid by Toyota only after a specified failure. A Recall is usually a safety oriented defect that is done regardless of its current operational state.

 

This is what it looks like:



As you can see, it is a fairly elaborate module. There is more to it than big transistors, but those are the main attraction: six each controlling the power flow to each of the big motor-generators (MG1 and MG2) inside the transaxle, and a couple more driving what's called the "boost converter", which takes the roughly 200 volt battery supply up to around 650 volts for the MGs, and the reverse when taking power from the MGs back to the battery.

Besides the big transistors, this module has a bunch of supporting components monitoring the current and temperature of all the big boys, and reporting all that status back to the MG ECU that is calling the shots. Also, you see a pipe nipple sticking up at the top left and another at the bottom right. When you look at the inverter assembly under the hood, you can see those nipples sticking right out of it; they are where the coolant hoses attach. The liquid-cooled heatsink to keep those big transistors cool is also included in this module.

IPM ("integrated power module" or "intelligent power module" depending on whom you ask) is an industry-standard name for this kind of thing. It's not really super-"intelligent"; its abilities are really limited to turning the big transistors on and off when the MG ECU says to, and protecting itself from gross overheating and overcurrent. The rest of the intelligence making the transaxle work is in the MG ECU and the power management control ECU.

"Transistor kit" is kind of a funny name Toyota also uses for it, though often it makes people think more of a bag of transistors or something, not this assembled module.

Each MG is a three-phase motor-generator, so each one has three wires connecting to it. In the IPM, each of those wires connects to two transistors, one connected to the + DC rail and one connected to the − rail, so the IPM can independently switch each of the leads of each motor to either + or − voltage, or none, at any given instant.

The other two transistors are used in a kind of circuit that uses a big inductor and capacitor to either 'boost' the lower voltage from the battery to the higher MG voltage, or 'buck' the MG voltage down to battery voltage for charging.

So that's the thing that got replaced any time your invoice says "IPM" or "transistor kit".