general problems of the 2012 Toyota Prius - part 1

I am writing to express a complaint regarding the issues I have experienced with the brake system of my Toyota Prius c, 2012 model. For the past several months, I have noticed that the brakes exhibit strange noises, soft pedal sensation, reduced braking efficiency, were driving and the abs, traction, brake, and that other light turned on and the brakes became slow these issues have been observed on multiple occasions and pose a safety risk to myself, other drivers, and pedestrians. I have taken the vehicle for inspection, but the problems persist or have not been definitively resolved. I believe these faults may be related to defects in the braking system, and therefore I request a thorough inspection and necessary repairs at no cost, considering that the manufacturer could be responsible for manufacturing defects.

The contact owns a 2012 Toyota Prius . The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, the vehicle's high temperature gauge and check engine warning lights illuminated. The vehicle then stalled. The vehicle was able to be restarted. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired by an independent mechanic or dealer. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 190,000.

I bought my first used car, 2012 Toyota Prius, from fowler Toyota back at the end of October 2023, but I was not able to pick it up until September 21, 2023 due to extra time for re-conditioning. I did not haggle about the price nor complained about the 3 week delay. In the last 3 weeks of owning my car, the tpms sensor light and check engine light infrequently turned on. February 28, 2024 all the fault sensor lights on my instrument panel are on, along with the loss of proper braking function. I was not worried about the other sensor faults, but brake malfunction is a matter of life and death to myself and others on the road. I have had the car for a little over 4 months and less than 10k miles. I brought the car in to diagnose all the error codes. The dealer said it will cost over $2600 to fix the brake malfunction. I chose this particular car because carfax had well documented service records and fowler Toyota advertised that every used vehicle for sale has surpassed rigorous inspection. I voiced my complaint to the used car director and he offered numerous default excuses for unforeseen problems inherent in buying a used car. I said I did my due diligence by selectively purchasing a used Toyota Prius, from a reputable Toyota dealership that uses a Toyota certified service center to inspect and recondition vehicles for sale. All the cliche nightmare stories of buying a used car from the side of the road car lots came true in my experience at fowler Toyota. The worst used car story happened to me, despite performing my due diligence: to buy a used Toyota from a Toyota dealership that uses a Toyota certified service center for re-conditioning vehicles. I even paid more to finance my Prius through Toyota financial services, which did not offer extended warranty. For god sake, I was buying a Toyota with 121k miles. I only bought a Prius because I work too hard to throw away all my hard earned money on gasoline. The only recourse the dealership offered.

I was driving on the internet doing 60mph and there was a very loud bang and then a shaking of the parts under the hood. I was right next to an exit and coasted off the exit to a hotel parking lot. I had car towed to my mechanic. He said that the piston went thru the engine and the engine is done and needs replaced. I am having a hard time trusting Toyota again to purchase another Prius. I have had Prius for over 10 years and never had anything like this occur. I had no warning signs and no dashboard lights lit up until after all of this occurred and scared the life out of me then the engine light came on.

The contact owns a 2012 Toyota Prius. The contact stated that when the vehicle was started, there was a rattling sound coming from the vehicle. The contact stated that while depressing the accelerator pedal, the vehicle started shaking abnormally with the rattling sound. The vehicle was taken to the dealer where it was diagnosed with a blown head gasket and that the engine block needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 106,000.

There is no incident occurring to me . But I change some parts like head light. & whisper . Engine .

Head gasket failure.

The car was serviced regularly and for unknown reason the engine started running rough. I took it the mechanic and after completing a diagnostic test he said I have a blown had gasket in the engine. After reading online about the issue I discovered this year and model of Toyota are notorious for having a blown head gasket issue. My mechanic recommended the engine be replaced. This is an expensive repair and Toyota is denying any accountability about the issue.

In September 2022, my car, a 2012 Toyota Prius v with 79, 056 miles, began making noises in the engine area and the brakes became loose, meaning it took more pressure on the brake pedal to engage the brakes. In November 2022 the following warning lamps on the dashboard came master warning light, brake system warning light and warning buzzer, brake system warning light, abs warning light and slip indicator. I took it to the Toyota dealership near lipton Toyota in ft. Lauderdale, FL, and they diagnosed car with the trouble code of c1391-abnormal leak of accumulator, internal abs actuator failure. To fix this problem, lipton Toyota will charge $3124. 29 for the repair. Toyota motor sales, u. S. A. , inc. Issued a customer support program notification that would cover this repair if the malfunctions happened before coverage ended. Primary coverage was applicable until December 31, 2021 with no year/mileage limitation. Secondary coverage was applicable for 10 years from the vehicle's date of first use or 150,000 whichever occurs first. Date of first use on my Prius v was 03/01/2012 and my mileage is 79k. So as you can see, I am just out of the coverage window. My private mechanic and myself have appealed our case to Toyota that this problem should be a recall with no limits on coverage. (Toyota motor sales, u. S. A. , inc. - case reference # 230206000678) I believe that if I had driven my car more, (which was not done because of the pandemic 2020-2021) this issue would have come up before the cut off date for repair coverage. I also believe that this problem with the brake booster and brake booster pump assemblies on certain 2012-2014 model year Prius v vehicles should be a recall.

I am having issues with my Toyota I was never contacted NHTSA campaign 18v684000. My car has failed numerous times.

I was driving on the expressway and experienced a sudden loss of power. The internal combustion engine suddenly stopped and did not deliver any power to the wheels. I immediately received a message on the system that said 'check hybrid system stop vehicle in a safe place'. The electric motor still continued to provide some power with the available battery charge. I was able to make it to the shoulder of the road but it was challenging to get to the shoulder with no power or warning and high speed traffic. My wife and I were in the vehicle. The vehicle had no engine or error codes until the failure on the expressway. The vehicle has the code p0a1a and p0a94. This is consistent with the error codes in the NHTSA 19v491000 recall and Toyota safety recalls e0e and f0r.

The contact owns a 2012 Toyota Prius v. The contact stated while driving at 30 mph, the vehicle stalled inadvertently. Several unknown warning lights were illuminated. Additionally, the brake pedal was depressed but failed to respond. The contact veered to the side of the road and intentionally hit the curb in order to stop the vehicle. The vehicle failed to restart. The contact stated that the vehicle later restarted and was driven to the dealer. The dealer diagnosed that the abs actuator had failed and needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure and informed the contact that they could not assist as an unknown Toyota courtesy program issued for the failure had expired. The failure mileage was approximately 160,000.

Head gasket blow up at 175000 miles.

My Toyota Prius v only has 121,153 miles on it and during a short drive to work where we never reached speeds over 50mphs our Prius v overheated causing a blown head gasket and all sorts of combustion issues. The repairs were $3000. This is a 2nd family car which has always been maintained by expert, license auto mechanics. This should never happen on a car with such low milage! I have learned that this is a common issues with this Toyota Prius model and Toyota should file a recall and fix the overheating issues.

Abs , traction control,brake lights on. No power assist brake, no abs, no traction control.

There has been a safety recall on my vehicle for the years 2004-2009 models of the Toyota Prius, but my model year is 2012 and I have the exact same issue. 1) my check engine light comes on and off and it appears to be the hybrid electric water pump issue related to the coolant. The cap pops off and spills out. 2) when the light comes on, I am assuming the car is starting to overheat and is putting myself and my 3 year old daughter at risk as this is the primary car we use to transport her. We have just stop taking her out at all due to this issue. When the car overheats, I pull over and it can be risky as sometimes, I am on the highway or local streets. I do not want this issue to cause problems for other other drivers as well while I am trying to pull over where ever I am. 3) the problem as I stated above has been acknowledge by you and Toyota but just for 2004-2009 models. 4) the problem has not been inspected by Toyota, the police, or third party. I have been the only person checking the car and I am using a diagnostic check engine light tool to read the code and looking under the hood to find the coolant pump leaking and popped out just as indicated in the recall for other models. 5) yes, the check engine light and high temperature light goes on and off. The issue first appeared around November of 2020.

It is having heavy miss fire which make the enging shaking too much many times.

At about 100,000 miles the engine began using (burning) oil at the rate of about 1 quart every 1000 miles. Now at 150,000 miles the oil usage is 1 quart per 500 miles. The oil has been changed using the recommended lubricant more often than required since the car was new. Toyota is aware of the problem and has redesigned the pistons and rings but but offers no financial help for cars off warranty. The dealer estimated repair cost is over $5000.

The abs brake pump experienced an "internal failure" at mileage of 113k. There is a customer service notice that covers 2012 Toyota Prius and Prius plug in for the same issue regardless of mileage until 2019, and then up to 150k miles after that. However, my 2012 Prius v was not covered. This abs brake pump just suddenly failed, there weren't any leading indicators. Toyota knows it supplied defective parts for the abs brake pump. There is already a lawsuit of other 2012 Prius v owners complaining of the same. However, Toyota has not corrected their service notice. They won't release the details of how they can justify coverage to all other 2012 Prius, and Prius plug-in, but not Prius v. The repair is significant ~ $3,500. Also, last year my engine block was cracked and needed to be replaced. Thankfully, this happened ~ 80k miles, so it was still under extended warranty. But this failure was surprising for a Toyota. I had wondered why I had to change the oil more quickly than the recommended 10k, I would change it every 5-7k, or at least have it checked. It seems they have the same issues with their 2020 rav 4s. I'm surprised they haven't fixed an issue from a 2012 vehicle yet by 2020.

The engine caught fire while sitting in my garage. I had driven it for a few hours doing deliveries for a store and parked it in my garage around 2:30pm. About 1. 5 hours later, my wife was coming home and opened the garage door and saw smoke above the hood of my car and then a few seconds later it burst into flames. I believe that it was smouldering for a while and the gust of wind when the big garage door opened gave it the extra push to ignite. The car was bought used and had a front end accident prior to my purchasing it so the electrical system could have melted and started the fire but the inspector that Toyota sent did not give me any copy of his report. It is a 2012 model. I bought the car in 2014, and had it for about 5 years until this happened and completed burned up the car and all the contents of my garage. I had a t-mobile sync-up module in the obd port and it recorded a drop in voltage from around 12 to 5 volts at the time of the fire which I believe was transferred to my phone when I was near it.

Problem with head gasket, low miles, cold engine starting, stationer, and some times in motion.

Head gasket 77,000 miles with the head gasket issue the car engine was shaking when it's warming up. The car log showed misfires in 1st and 4th cylinders.

After the latest hybrid software upgrade on my car we noticed that the gas mileage dropped by 10%. Then as we were driving in heavy traffic on a two lanes four different warning lights came on two which were for the braking system and two others for the hybrid system. Took the car to the Toyota shop and they found the hybrid batters needed to be replaced at 63,000 miles.

Soon after getting a recall software update for the hybrid system, the car displayed hybrid system check message and lost power. Car had to be towed. Created an extremely dangerous situation due to nature of problem while driving on the road and had to pull over right away.

I went to the charles maund Toyota dealer at austin, TX for a recall. Nhtsa recall id 18v684. According to the official recall remedy from NHTSA, "if the vehicle has experienced an inverter failure with certain hybrid system faults related to this condition, the inverter assembly will be repaired or replaced free of charge. " my car lost power on the highways several times recently. The error code is p0a08, which is related to inverter failure with certain hybrid system faults, so the inverter assembly should be repaired or replaced free of charge. But the dealer didn't want to replace or repair the inverter for my car. There is still a potential threat on my car to lose power on highways.

Rough start at cold start when car is left for more than 12 hours. Intermittent problem cannot be determined at dealer due to infrequency of issue, but happens multiple times a month. Toyota was unable to help me and says this is unrelated to the exact same issue plaguing 2010-2013 Prius and Prius v models, even though symptoms are exactly the same.

Engine shake on start up when vehicle is not in motion , seems to be an issue with power.

Problem with the fuel bladder causing the gauge to read incorrectly. The gauge gets stuck at a quarter tank and before you know it, you're out of gas. Once this happened, it caused the hybrid system to fail and locked the car up even after putting gas in it. Has to do a master reset of the entire car to get it to start again.

The contact owns a 2012 Toyota Prius v. While driving various speeds, the air conditioner was activated and there was a strong odor in the vehicle. The vehicle was taken to the dealer (Toyota of renton, located at 150 sw 7th st, renton, wa 98057; (425) 228-4700) where it was diagnosed that the odor was due to mold. The dealer cleaned the vents and the vehicle was repaired, but the failure recurred several other times. The vehicle was taken to the same dealer, but they used the solution to clean the vent the second time. The vehicle was repaired, but the failure still occurred. The manufacturer was not contacted. The approximate failure mileage was 50,000.

Took in car for oil change /tire rotation , a software update was performed without my authorization from Toyota on to my Prius v , car went from getting 40 mpg highway to 32-33 mpg highway . City mpg dropped from 41 mpg to 36-37mpg . Dealer claims car has wrong tires which I agree, except those tires were the same tires on the car before and after the software update. Calculated the gas mileage myself before the recall and was pretty close to what the car's computer said ti was , calculated the gas mileage after the software update was done and it came very close to what the computer said.

My Prius is using 1 quart of oil per 900 miles, the Toyota dealership did a oil study and verified that indeed the car is using 1 quart per 900 miles, but will not do anything about it and stated my car is no longer under warranty and could be rebuilt for 9000 dollars-this is a commuter car only and has only been used for open road driving.

Driving the interstate at 65 mph the engine stopped - with no warning of any kind, the air, dash lights, radio, etc all continued to work. We coasted to the side of the road & restarted the engine. We purchased new & had all the required maintenance done at the Toyota dealership. We learned of a recall on the news in February & took the car in for the repair. (a software problem related to the car engine stopping while driving) when we learned of the recall we remembered this had happened to us about a month earlier, again, on the interstate at 65 mph & thought it was just a fluke at the time. We were very upset when this latest incident happened after having the recall repair done on the car & having driven a few thousand miles between incidents. We drove the car directly to our dealer's service dept and reported these facts to the service manager. They immediately took it in and tried to detect any evidence of the incident. They told us that they also contacted Toyota corporate technical services for assistance. They were not able to find any evidence of the incident. As we are now afraid to drive the car, they gave us a car to drive until the problem could be resolved. We don't want to see this car sold to an unsuspecting driver. We feel this is a life threatening defect and Toyota should repurchase the car from us at a fair value so that we could replace it with another car. We contacted the Toyota customer experience center yesterday by phone and filed a formal complaint, they opened a file and gave us a case number. Today we were contacted by phone by a Toyota regional analyst and were told that since they cannot find any evidence of the incident by using their computer system we would need to file a lemon law complaint. We told him that we expect Toyota to resolve our issue - we should not have to prove the defect. Help.

Moldy odor emits from vents. Had round rock Toyota dealership attempt to correct the issue four times and also had called up Toyota corp but issue was never resolved. On the fourth attempt at the dealership, Toyota had authorized a carbon-type cabin filter that was suppose to be able to remove the odor but it did not help. Did not fix or replace the root cause of the issue. Food was never allowed in this vehicle; air vent was selector for fresh (not recirculate). This is my third but last Toyota. It breaks my heart to have purchased a brand new Prius and by 3000 miles, strong moldy odor exists. Dealer had sprayed lysol, provided ac refresh kit but evaporator or ventilation system is faulty. Toyota bulletin # t-sv-0142-13 (sept 12).

Starting in spring 2013 and continuing during the rest of the spring, summer and early fall in the hottest months, after parking my Prius c outside, it always had issues starting, which continues to this day. I will put the key in the ignition, start the car, all the dash lights come on and the car will usually not allow me to put it into reverse or drive. I have to take the key out of the ignition and start it again at least twice before it starts normally as it does when the weather is cooler and/or when the car is parked in my garage. A couple of times, I managed to get the car to go into reverse, but it was almost impossible to steer as if the parking brake was on. Then the vehicle stopped, leaving me in the path of oncoming traffic. This has been happening since I bought the car and the dealership says they can't fix it unless they can recreate the problem. I have taken pictures and viseo, but that makes no difference to them. This is a dangerous problem and needs to be fixed. This is the second complaint I have filed this matter as my first does not seem to appear here.

The contact owns a 2012 Toyota Prius. The contact stated that the vehicle failed to start. The contact mention the vehicle had to be given a jump start in order to start. The vehicle was taken to a dealer where the failure was unable to be duplicated. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The vehicle was not repaired. The approximate failure and current mileage was 17,500. The VIN was not available.