New owner - Master Warning on, VSC on, yellow brake icon - HELP!

Hello everyone!

This is my first post and first plea for help so I'm really hoping you knowledgeable owners can help me.

My girlfriend just purchased a 2005 Toyota Prius T3 Vvt-i Auto which has done 28k miles and is in super condition. All services done so far at Toyota main dealers.

She's been looking to purchase one for months and we finally found this one and bought it for £4k which seemed like a bargain to us especially given the reliability of the cars. Did all the relevant checks including MOT history and everything is perfect.

Picked up the car and drove it 60 miles home - worked perfectly and was a real pleasure to drive. I usually go for smaller and pokier cars but really enjoyed the ride and watching the hybrid stuff working

Later that evening I managed to be a total doofus and drive about 500m with the parking brake on - nothing noticeable happened (apart from some squeaking...) and I drove another mile with the brake off and the car was perfect.

30 mins later I got back in the car and the 3 lights were on - I drove it the mile home with no difference in feel or drive.

Next day, girlfriend drove it and NO lights were on.

Next day, got back in the car and these 3 lights were on again - she took it to the local main dealer who did a diagnostic and immediately told her that it needs a new part which costs £2k! We did a bit of research (on this forum and others) and realised that they were most likely talking about the invertor/converter and of course my girlfriend was very unhappy about this.

Checked with the previous owner who has not seen these issues before and we also checked on the age of the 12V battery. It was old enough to insist on a check - the main dealer tried it and told us it was really low on charge so we got a new 12V put in. Same issues.

I drove the car home from the dealer and have tried various things:
1) Disconnected the 12V battery for 20 mins and connected again - no difference
2) Used the secret maintenance mode (on the main screen) and cleared all codes - no difference
3) Used a ODB2 box (cheap off ebay) and read the codes and cleared them all - no difference
4) Tried doing a master reboot but the instructions I've found only appear to be valid for USA models?

The car appears to work perfectly - I've attached a picture showing a 12 mile journey and you can clearly see the hybrid battery going from 60% charge and purple at the start of the journey to 90% and green at the end.

I'm really stuck for what to do next - try it on EV mode only at 100% charge to test the hybrid? How long should it go?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I feel so sorry for my girlfriend - it took a long time to save up this money and she is so disappointed.

I've attached the dealers report, the diagnostics, the before and after pics etc...

Thanks in advance

Kev

 

Quick update - someone on another forum said this:
"Since this showed up after your run with the parking brake ON, AND the fact that one of the warning lights is for brakes.......
I think it is highly likely that overheated brakes fried something there.....like a wheel speed sensor."

 

Thanks for the responses to you both - forgive me noobyness but could you please link me to the correct part so I can start getting some quotes for it?

 

Ok cool will do

 

Sorry I forgot to ask - how hard are these things to fit? I'm not suggesting I'll do it myself but maybe my local mechanic who is not a hybrid specialist?

 

Sorry sorry forgot to ask this - is it the inverter or inverter/converter?

 

Thank you so much for you help

 

May I please ask one more question?

Are you suggesting that as the car appears to function perfectly (it's driven daily for many miles, gets 50+ MPG, battery charge goes down and up but is usually 80% +) the warnings are for a fault and not a failure? Would a failure of this part bring up different codes?

Could this point to a secondary component failing/wiring fault etc...?