Warning lights in cold weather, car seems to run (mostly) ok?

I live in Nebraska, and it has been cold recently (out of the past week, highs in 20's or lower). This hasn't been as much of an issue before, but in the past week I have had the red triangle of death, brake warning light, check engine light, and VSC light all come on at the same time, three separate times. Also, the display screen shows a red outline of a car with "!" through it. Each time this has happened, the lights didn't come on as soon as the car was "Ready" but only after the gas engine was running for a minute or two.

The first time the lights came on, I was driving back from class, but after I got back to my house I did some internet research and saw it may be a low oil indicator. Checked the oil, it was almost at the bottom mark on the dipstick, and it had been over 10,000 miles since the last one (oops! we don't normally do that). After reading some stories online, I took it in to get an oil change, and the lights went off for a couple days. Second time the lights came on, I checked the oil level, it was definitely over-filled, so I took it back to Walmart and had them redo the oil so that it was at the right level. I checked the oil level before leaving the parking lot that time and it was at the top mark on the dipstick. Again, all the lights were off for a couple days. Today, I drove my car for about an hour in the morning (temperature was around upper teens, wind chill below 10) and had no problems. Then, this evening I turn the car on and start driving out of the parking lot when the car beeps at me and flashes all of the warning lights again. I drove back to my house and it is now sitting in the driveway. I am not planning on driving it until I can have a car mechanic friend take a look at it on Tuesday, but he doesn't know anything about the hybrid system/battery.

My wife and I have also noticed that since the weather has been colder, the hybrid battery (shown on the "Energy" screen when driving) seems to be charging and discharging much faster than normal. I haven't seen it at only 1 bar or full of green bars more than a couple times in the 2.5ish years we have owned the car, but in the past two weeks it has happened 5-10 times (estimated). I am not sure if this is due to the weather, or if it could indicate a problem with the (hybrid?) battery. For obvious reasons, this makes us nervous :/

As a side note, I changed the transmission fluid sometime in December, so I was wondering if possibly I didn't put enough fluid back in. I have checked the diagnostic screen and found some codes, but most of them seem to relate to the audio, which doesn't concern me as much as the code that seems to indicate the transmission, which is why I mention the change I did a while back. I just don't know why it wouldn't have shown up until now. I'll attach some pictures I took tonight of the codes and lights.

Also, the battery is a couple years old, but after sitting for a couple hours the battery was reading 12.1 V according to the diagnostic screen, so I don't think that is the issue. We haven't had any trouble getting the car to start, and once it is running it still seems to drive normally with the warning lights on.
Can anyone help me figure out what these codes mean, and a possible cause for the warning lights? I appreciate the help!!

 

Thanks for the welcome, I have considered signing up here for a while, it seems like a great place!

Bisco, the car has 140,000 miles on it. And the battery shows above 14 V when it is "Ready" - the 12.1 reading was when it was off except for the diagnostic screen, if that changes anything.

Wil, I am honestly not even sure what the VSC light is supposed to indicate :/ I haven't noticed it flashing, it has just lit up a couple times recently with the other warning lights I mentioned. I'll take a look at the link you posted tomorrow morning, but if it is the hybrid battery going out we may end up doing a trade in to get another car

Thanks for the suggestions! I did some relatively brief searching for the Mini VCI and found some options on Amazon, but I (like others I have seen) would like to make sure I know exactly what I am doing before I start buying things that I can't return. That being said, can I find a decent (by that I mean written in a way that someone who has little experience with cars can understand) set of instructions of how to set up and use the Mini VCI to get the codes from the Prius? (and possibly our Camry also?)

I am unsure about how to charge the battery overnight, unless you mean taking the battery out of the car and plugging it in inside the house. Would it work to connect jumper cables from our Camry to the Prius and charge the battery that way, or would that be too risky? We don't currently own a 12 V battery charger but I can try to find one if it would help the car to last longer. Is there a particular kind of battery charger that is recommended for the Prius, or will anything do if it has the right settings?

I have to say, after looking at the site you posted, it sounds great, but I know my wife won't want to spend a couple hundred dollars on something that may not help our car much. Since it already has just over 140k miles on it and the battery may be having issues, I am nervous that it won't last until 200k, which we had hoped for when we bought the car. While I would prefer to try to repair various issues and prolong the life of the car, my wife more or less views any car as a bottomless money-pit and doesn't like to do much more than preventative maintenance, so this is something we have discussed before, though that was only with buying new tires or 12 V battery.

To anyone who has an idea, is it possible that over/under-filled fluids could be causing issues like this? Or I suppose that would be difficult to determine without the error codes that relate to the issues I have mentioned..?

Thanks again for your help, and if I just need to do some searches to find what I am asking about just say so, I don't want to take more of your time than you are willing to give!

 

That makes sense, concerning the fluid levels..I just wanted to try and rule out any easy fix before taking it to a dealership, but I think that may be what has to happen.

I will have to keep that idea in mind..I had not thought about doing anything to try and prolong the life of the 12 V battery, but it would help to save cost over time, I'm sure.

Ahh, that makes sense..a battery that isn't working properly won't retain a charge for a good amount of time, and therefore is not as effective. I'll check the battery today and see how it looks.

Paying only $100 sounds great! Last time I had to take my car in to a dealership they said it would be $200 just to get the error codes, and then they would let me know what needed to be fixed. That is the main reason I haven't returned to that particular dealership, so I'll try calling around before I go in. Just curious though, if I told the dealership that I got codes Xyz, XYYA, and ZZZ, would they believe me? I feel like I would get told that they need to use their own equipment to get a reliable reading from the car.

To anyone who has suggestions, what sort of things should I try to have my mechanic friend check this evening? He is great with non-hybrid cars, but I think our Prius is the first hybrid he has worked with, so anything with the hybrid system/battery would be out of his knowledge area. I'll definitely ask him if he can check the 12 V battery, but is there anything else that you would recommend?

Thanks again for all the help!!

 

Not really, but the only service I have had performed is oil changes and new tires. The only work I personally have done on the car is to change the transmission fluid and the inverter coolant.

Jim, that makes sense, I was partially wondering if it would work on other cars but figured it would. And if I still have to pay for the dealership to do something that I already did (get the codes) then I guess the benefit there would be that I know whether or not the service is worth having done before I even take my car in, which would be helpful.

And I have been searching about this for a while now..normally I have been able to find all the info I need (like the transmission and coolant stuff, even what to do when the lights first came on), but this situation seemed a little more unique, so I decided to finally make an account here
Seeing my car give me a bunch of "take me to the dealership" lights is kind of stressful, so I apologize if I am being stubborn or rude or anything :/

Ok, I got some codes and from looking them up online here is what I found:

P3000 - HV battery malfunction (doesn't sound good)
P0300 - Random/Multiple Cylinder Misfire Detected
P000A - May be a mistake? Scanner said "engine position system performance bank 1"
P0A80 - Replace Hybrid Battery Pack (NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!)

So, obviously we are not going to drive the car anymore, and will be looking to trade it in somewhere soon. Is there a way to make the lights on the dash go away so that we can hopefully get some value out of the car before it dies completely?

Also, what causes some of these codes? The scanner said that the P0A80 code indicated that the battery overheated - is that accurate, or was the scanner off because it is a Prius? (I have read that some scanners don't report codes for the Prius very accurately.) If that is the case, and the battery overheated, any ideas on what might have caused that?

 

You are correct..hah I tried unplugging the battery to reset the codes, started the car, an yay no lights! Unfortunately, the next time I turned the car on it brought all the lights back :/ Tried the process again and the same thing happened again. (This was after I cleaned the battery fan, it actually wasn't very dirty and I was surprised by that after seeing pictures of others on here.)

Ok, so we have conceded that taking it to a dealership is the best option at this point. Unfortunately, the closest dealership to us is about 30 minutes away, most of which is highway driving. We have been there before and the prices seem to be higher than what we expect (even from a dealership - they were going to charge us $200 to get the diagnostic codes, which we ended up not paying because it was covered under a recall - one that I found out about from this site! But, I digress :/ ) so we are hesitant about taking our car there. The dealership where we purchased the car is about an hour away, again mostly highway, and my cousin works there so he said he can have them get the diagnostic codes for $78. I am hoping that he can help us get some lower prices for the hybrid battery too (although he seemed hesitant to agree that that is the problem) but won't be able to give me any numbers until Monday.
Edit: I have read about a couple other people having some luck with Toyota corporate/upper management/idk what to call them - is this something that happens with some regularity? Or should we not expect any help aside from what my cousin can provide from the dealership?

We are also hesitant to drive the car at all, given the situation. The battery reading on the info screen goes from one bar to completely full in a span of less than two minutes. After I cleaned the battery fan today I took it on a test drive around the neighborhood, and at one point I parked and restarted the car. The battery was almost full when I turned the car off, and when I turned it back on (less than a minute later) the battery level dropped down to one or two bars in less than two minutes, and charged again after I had only driven a couple blocks. I wasn't going faster than 20 mph, so it was probably a comparable amount of time (<2 minutes). I am assuming this means we should not drive the car unless we are taking it straight to the dealership :/

Thank you for the help Jim, I really appreciate it! We were told (by the dealership - maybe that should have been a warning sign?) and believed that we would have this car for at least 4 years (hopefully 5) and get 200k miles out of it, so it is hitting us hard that we may have to purchase another car already.

 

After reading other posts on here about similar lights/error codes, I feel pretty convinvced that it is the battery as well, but when I called the dealership and explained the codes, they said they don't think I should assume the worst and just bring the car to the dealership so they can check it out. However, they also said that if it is the hybrid battery it will cost about $5000+ to replace, which is more than the KBB value for the car, so that doesn't sound like a great option :/
I am a little annoyed that the dealership doesn't seem to think that the battery is the issue. Has anyone else had a similar experience, or is this abnormal? I am considering calling another dealership and describing the situation to see what they think about it.

We are at least the second owners of the car (I am not sure if there was only one or two owners before us) so I am not sure if that would influence anything from the Toyota help line, but I will try calling them tomorrow. (Didn't have time today due to classes.)

Thank you for the help! I appreciate all the comments and suggestions!!

 

Just an update, we are not planning on taking the car to a dealership, just trying to trade it in for something with less miles, and hopefully a little newer. As we were driving to the dealership we heard the battery fan running so that doesn't seem to be a good sign :/

Our thoughts about replacing the battery are that the is high enough, and wouldn't necessarily increase the value or lifetime of the car enough, in order for us to consider it worth the cost. The dealership keeps telling us it probably isn't the battery, that we shouldn't worry about anything until we get it in and get it checked, but from what we have seen in the car and on these forums it seems to be the battery that is going out.

Thank you to everyone who has offered advice and support - we really appreciate the help we received, both in this thread and before I made an account and came here regularly to get some info on a recall or maintenance information.