They're replacing the ECU someday

This is a follow up on previous reports I've made regarding my new 2004 Prius with now 27xx miles.

I got tired waiting to hear what's being done. I had waited a good week or more to hear back from the Minot ND service dept. So I called the dealer we bought it from in Bismarck ND. I thought I should bring him up to date just incase we had to go the route of claiming we had fell under the ND "lemon laws" with this one. It's been in for repair four times for the same problem. Towed in for twice, released as fix three times and now were told to drive it until they come up with a fix.

The Bismarck dealer got back to me a day or so later and tells me that based on his discussions with Kansas city Toyota, and west coast California Toyota that the solution is in the works. He was told that several cars around the country have the same problem more or less. The exception being that our car also has a problem with the cruise control not working. The solution I am told is that Toyota is now "designing" a new computer, which I take this to mean they are making a new ECU. I'am not clear on all the specifics but I'am told that this problem with the ECU is because it is overly sensitive to RFI (radio frequency interference). Here in rural ND it's hard to imagine that there's much in way of intense RFI.

I called the Minot Toyota service representative with this info. He was sort of non plusse. Well I thought maybe we should try and resolve the cruise control. He indicated to me they wanted to await the computer solution. I said that was given no impression that that was going to happen any time soon. It could be a year I said until they "make" a new computer. The service representative said then how about bringing it in Wednesday morning.

It will be interesting to see for a fact that the cruise control outage is or is not related to ECU.

I might also mention that now that weather is up in the 40's ; 50's and sometimes the 60''s the average mileage is no better than 39.7 per mile.
We hope that this may also be related to the ECU. I haven't gotten around to calculating on my own what the actual mileage is. I'am reporting what is showing on the display panel.

So if you think it's all honky dory in little Priusville stay tuned