HUMU's brain following accident

Hi: I don't know how many of you follow accident stories, but I've got an interesting followup to HUMU's hit and run accident which happened on June 22. I was hoping by this time to be waxing fantastic about the splendid repair job and how good it was to finally get my car back. No deal.

First, the auto body shop did do a fabulous job fixing HUMU. "Repair" isn't really a good term as they in fact replaced virtually all the damaged parts with new. Last Thursday, the 21st, I was told I could come a pick my car up.
I have a friend who lives about a mile or so from the body shop and who's been following the whole accident event. On the drive over to his house, I noticed immediately that the smart key didn't work, but attributed that to having waited two weeks to tell the body shop guys to turn off the smart key.

That wasn't the problem. The body shop sent HUMU across the street to the Toyota dealer who has been doing the maintenance on my car. Apparently, no one can figure out what happened to HUMU's smart key function. They've gone through all the normal routines but nothing clicks.
There is a "Prius guru" who works for them and he too is stumped. The dealership is talking to Toyota headquarters and trying out their suggestions, sometimes more than once. Nothing.

It has been a week since my car was "ready"/not ready. My insurance company, State Farm, is probably not too happy either because the liability is theirs, not Toyota's, since the car's problem is the direct result of an accident and not a Toyota defect.

I'd be interested in hearing from any of you who've had a problem with your Prius that was so unusual that the best techs at your dealership couldn't figure it out. I hope this isn't a warning of some hidden defect in the design of the Prius that might affect some of you should your cars be involved in accidents.

Not ready to sell my Toyota stock. Waiting for the president of Toyota to call with a great deal of apology and hoping that I'd take a new Prius fully loaded as a gesture of compensation from Toyota. Also hoping President Bush wakes up about global warming. About equal chance of either.

Bob
p.s. It would be a lot more fun participating on the chat line if I knew I had an actual, driveable Prius.

 

Evan: Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I only had HUMU for about 30 minutes and drove only a few miles; once I realized the smart system was inop, I went right back to the body shop to get there before they closed so that I could leave the car and get my rental back. I haven't seen the car since then (a week ago). I assume they will have tried all the obvious possibilities. The tech guy at Toyota of Lake City said that, if necessary, they will do a wire by wire diagnostic. Maybe they will just swap out the computer and start over. They have all three fobs.
I'll keep you posted, especially if this turns out to be something that could affect other people's Prii.
Thanks for your efforts in making this chatline work so well.
Bob

 

Re: HUMU's brain following accident update

Well, Toyota of Lake City has had HUMU for almost two weeks now and they're about going nuts. Latest news is that they got one of the fobs to work; then managed to get a second fob functioning. When they tried to get the third fob on line, HUMU went back to only one working fob. They've made some contact with HUMU's brain, but the system isn't completely fixed yet.. They worked on the left rear unit, but the culprit seems to be the glove box computer. At any rate, I will be getting a virtually new car back from these guys.

I was told that they are bringing in the big guns from Toyota as they have never seen anything like this before. HUMU might make it into some technical journal about computer glitches in cars. Any chance that Microsoft did the original programming?

More later, if anyone's interested in the comatose Prius in Seattle.

"Open the pod bay doors, HUMU".......