Complaint Review: Toyota Prius -

Never drive a Prius, Toyota flaw worse than Boeing 737-MAX MCAS situation....

I drove a Toyota Corolla 2003 for over 15 years and past 210k miles and never had a problem. Now this brand new Prius is crapping out on me for no reason left and right and at the most inconvinent times. Seems like there is a software bug or firmware flaw somewhere in the actual car itself where it will wake itself up in the middle of the night for no reason, and without driver intervention, and proceed to discharge all the juice in the auxilary battery and then it refuses the start up because the aux/small battery is dead.

This happened to me when I went to the nearby Kroger just like a mile or two away, parked and went to grab something to eat, took no more than ten minutes, and when I came back out the Prius completely died and wouldn't start again. I had two other individuals with me as passengers that can attest to that I didn't leave lights on and that indeed shutdown correctly.

I took the Toyota dealership and they did a test and said nothing was wrong and that I must have left the engine on etc etc etc.. So now I have dashcamera that records for a good minute or so after the engine is shutdown and car is powered off. I have since caught the car doing this many times even though I shutdown the engine correctly. And the only way to get it back again is to jump it, but the battery isn't in the front, it is located in the back passenger right seat and almost impossible to reach and the only way to jump it is to have to mess with some capacitor panels/ fuse box in order to get it to the point where one can proceed with jumping it.

Video Clip #1

https://vimeo.com/312524176

Video Clip #2

https://vimeo.com/312524327

Even though this is a Prius and literally half the car is a big battery, Toyota confirmed that the main power cannot be used to start a car and that if the car thinks the smaller aux battery is gone or too low, it won't start the car regardless. In many of these instances my Prius still had full main batter power, way more than enough to start the car but due to the way it was designed that power could not be used for starting an hybrid electric car. Go figure...

I had the car died on me again just last night, here are two dashcam car video clips, the first one is from my return trip coming home from Kroger last night, notice that the video camera keeps recording for about 60 seconds after the engine is turned off. Notice that I remembered to switch off all car lights, and that the engine was shutdown before I went inside the home, and there were no beeps, no alarms and no warnings that would have otherwise been indictive of the engine being left on or the car did not shutdown /poweroff correctly etc...

The second clip is from this morning, notice the low noise immediately coming from the car when I tried to start it. There was enough battery to power the dashcam recorder but obviously not enough power to start the car engine... The low groaning noise is very indictive of a power failure or that the battery failed to keep power....

This is either a auxiliary battery (not main battery) issue, or a larger issue with the way Prius is designed. On some occasions I noticed the Prius car will WAKE itself up in the middle of the night for no reasons, seemingly to discharge battery/power and then shut itself down... it could be possible that the car is waking itself up but then on occassion it will fail to automatically return back to sleep and this bug/flaw may also be what is contributing to this strange but now chronic issue.... It seems to be a defect in the very design of the Prius C itself and a manufacterur defect that Toyota must admit to, must fix and must resolve.

Word of advice, stay far far away from the Prius!!! The gas savings is not worth the trouble of getting killed because your cars randomly dies on the middle of the highway or refuses to start in an emergency situation!!!!!

Video Clip #1

https://vimeo.com/312524176

Video Clip #2

https://vimeo.com/312524327