'maintenance required'

It means you can either

A) use it as an excuse to buy a new car, or
B) get an oil change

You decide!

The light is designed to turn on every 5000 miles. The light doesn't indicate anything about how your car is doing specifically, it's just to address people who file lawsuits because they want to blame everyone but themselves for not changing the oil...

To turn that light off for another 5000 miles:

Set yr odometer to show total miles not trip miles and turn off car.. Then start the car normally but while holding down the trip/odometer button. Keep holding the button as the odometer reading counts all the way down and the light goes out. Super easy!

 

there is a maintenance schedule in your o/m, it has recommendations for every 5k or 6 months, whichever comes first.

 

For our 2010, you hold down the mph/kmh button on the dash as you press the start button with your foot on the brake. The display has to be on Trip A.

Had to do this tonight as I left work.

Worked for me.

 

Every 4500 miles, the light blinks on start up to remind you that you will need maintenance soon.
By 5000 miles since the last reset, it is solid and never goes off.

Once you have done the 5000 service, you can reset the light for another 4500 miles. Raytheeagle mentions what works for him above. the owners manual tells what works for you. (should be the same as Ray)

 

The warranty and maintenance booklet lays out the what and when of maintenance. If it's missing you can download from Toyota tech info, in the manuals section.

I'll upload a spreadsheet translation of what's involved tomorrow.

Do note: it's miles OR months, whichever comes first.

Also, there's a few items not in the schedule but very worthwhile to do, namely: transaxle fluid change, brake fluid change (in Canadian schedule), and once in a long while: throttle body, exhaust gas recirc and intake manifold clean. Plus oil catch can install is beneficial.

As well, full brake inspection IS in the schedule, every 30k miles or tri-yearly IIRC, but sadly overlooked/ignored by a lot of owners.

 

Please don't mention the warranty booklet, the owner's manual and everything else that may help us figure the easiest of questions out. Truth is we need to avoid all that solving our own problems stuff. What's most important is to feel clueless and helpless and find a social media forum to do all the hard work for us. That's what works best right? I mean what would I do every day if I couldn't solve other people's problems on Prius chat?

 

Maybe steer someone to the Toyota info AND impart a little extra info or comment? The middle ground.

 

Here's the info from the Warranty and Maintenance booklet, condensed into a chart. For me, going through the exercise to create this was more-or-less necessity. The booklet presentation completely rankles: telling you event-by-event what's needed, and never spelling out the frequency/pattern behind.

In the process of making the chart I noticed a few "gaps", ie: a maintenance item that was regular as clockwork, say every 3 years or 30K miles, and then they missed it one time. I think this illustrates one inherent danger in the format: it's virtually impossible to spot errors/omissions.

 

I’ve seen on here many people say both coolant change at 120,000 mi but on your helpful table, engine coolant is 100,000mi. If that is correct, I’m behind on engine coolant change

 

that's tellin' 'em

 

By that (wrong) way, none get reset. The right way was a few posts later.

You can't reset total miles accidentally, legally, or without special tools. But if you get the method wrong, you can easily reset Trip A. When my first Prius received its first service, the fumble-fingered tech also reset Trip B.

The maintenance trip meter is not displayed on the dash, it can be read only with special tools or an OBDII-port engine monitor, such as many of us use.

 

Yeah the table is just taken from the Warranty and Maintenance Booklet, albeit in an easier to read format. There's this:



And then the postscript #3:



Which basically means:

engine coolant at 100K (or 120 months)
engine/inverter coolant at 150K (or 180 months)

And so on, both every subsequent 50K or 60 months.

 

Thanks for the conformation. A lot of people posted here to change both at 120,000 mi so I followed suit and now I’m behind on it.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.