Consumer Complaint Detail

TOYOTA / PRIUS / 2004

Recalls
0 Injured
Investigations
0 Death
Complaints
No Fire
Components - Details
NHTSA Complaint Number: 005038306 Incident Date: Sep, 01 2005
Consumer's City: SAN JOSE Consumer's State: CA
Vehicle Transmission Type: AUTO Manufacturers Name: Toyota Motor Corporation
Model Name: PRIUS Model Year: 2004
Vehicle Involved in a Crash: No Component's Description: Engine and engine cooling:engine
Vehicle Involved in a Fire: No Persons Injured: 0
Vehicle's VIN#: JTDKB20U240 Date added to File: May, 23 2021
Date Complaint Received: Sep, 11 2005 Complaint Type: EVOQ
Incident Reported To Police: No Purchase Date: -
Was Original Owner: Yes Anti-lock Brakes: Yes
Number of Cylinders: 4 Date of Manufacturer: -
Was Vehicle Towed: - Description of the Complaints: Dt: total breakdown of wife's 2004 prius on september 2 in fine weather one in san jose. the vehicle displayed sudden and significant loss of power while merging into the interstate. loss of gas/engine power with failure of the internal combustion with engine to start, resulted in only electric motor propulsion and breakdown on the highway as the battery quickly went to single pink bar level within a 1/2 miles. multiple mil lamps lit up and stayed on. began to merge onto the highway from a stop speed of 30 or 40 mph and slowly accelerated into heavy traffic. she had to pull off to the (ugh) breakdown lane of the highway with all of its debris, etc. the dealer completed the repair, san jose invoice number tocs190787 dtd 9/2/05 applied eg047-04 on car. the dealer repairs seemed to have fixed the car. contacted a toyota prius advisor with three concerns: if there was a service bulletin for this characteristic that would prevent the roadway failure then why was it not executed during prior services 3-9-05, 5-26-05 & 6-09-05 at this same dealer. what led one to believe that the car was not reliable after this repair. the consumer, an accomplished engineer, a knew about software bugs. a software bug did not impair operation until the right combination of environmental factors was reached. the consumer assumed that all prius had this potential bug that contaminated the electronic control unit (ecu). ecu. *ak