PHEV Hybrid system malfunction - engine died on me

[Matt O]

Had an uncomfortable experience tonight.

In EV mode just north of 70mph in outside lane of motorway

Switched to HV mode for a bit of power to clear the car on the inside who had started to speed up.

Sudden judder and "Hybrid system malfunction Visit your dealer" came up, along with "pre collision system malfunction". Car rapidly lost all power and slowed to a crawl.

I managed to get to inside lane - miracle no one rear ended me and coasted into a lay-by -only just made it as absolutely no power in car. 

Switched car off and amazingly it restarted as if nothing wrong - warning signs all disappeared. 

Going to take it to dealer this week but losing confidence in this car - cars shouldn't just stop and lose all power. 
I'd rather the system protected me than the engine or whatever it felt it was doing.
Felt I was lucky to avoid a more serious outcome.

[Catlover]

Scary. A few Yaris Gen4 owners have had the same experience.

[Nick72]

2 hours ago, Matt O said:

Had an uncomfortable experience tonight.

In EV mode just north of 70mph in outside lane of motorway

Switched to HV mode for a bit of power to clear the car on the inside who had started to speed up.

Sudden judder and "Hybrid system malfunction Visit your dealer" came up, along with "pre collision system malfunction". Car rapidly lost all power and slowed to a crawl.

I managed to get to inside lane - miracle no one rear ended me and coasted into a lay-by -only just made it as absolutely no power in car. 

Switched car off and amazingly it restarted as if nothing wrong - warning signs all disappeared. 

Going to take it to dealer this week but losing confidence in this car - cars shouldn't just stop and lose all power. 
I'd rather the system protected me than the engine or whatever it felt it was doing.
Felt I was lucky to avoid a more serious outcome.

 

 

Serious issue. First time I heard of something like this on all forums I visit including USA.

This sounds like a wiring fault or other electrical fault. Could be 12V system related?

[ernieb]

Sounds seriously scary. The way you talk about the issue I would almost consider the two issues are linked? I've had loss of collision avoiadance but never a problem when switching to HEV.  As Nick has said this is the first time I've seen anything like this so hopefully and isolated incident but non the less a dip in confidence for you.  

[Catlover]

Take a look on the Yaris forum on TOC, I not saying the same cause but the result was the same…. Failure, scrabbling across MWay lanes etc, same sign in dash.

[Broadway One]

14 hours ago, Matt O said:

Had an uncomfortable experience tonight.

In EV mode just north of 70mph in outside lane of motorway

Switched to HV mode for a bit of power to clear the car on the inside who had started to speed up.

Sudden judder and "Hybrid system malfunction Visit your dealer" came up, along with "pre collision system malfunction". Car rapidly lost all power and slowed to a crawl.

I managed to get to inside lane - miracle no one rear ended me and coasted into a lay-by -only just made it as absolutely no power in car. 

Switched car off and amazingly it restarted as if nothing wrong - warning signs all disappeared. 

Going to take it to dealer this week but losing confidence in this car - cars shouldn't just stop and lose all power. 
I'd rather the system protected me than the engine or whatever it felt it was doing.
Felt I was lucky to avoid a more serious outcome.

Mornin' all.....sympathise, that is a seriously scary experience & a real downer on confidence.

Sure we all want to see something tangible as to the cause.

Big thanks for sharing with us.......Barry Wright, Lancashire.   

[jamiem1987]

Read a few things whilst researching the PHEV which i have on order re. a recall with 4x bolts that ground the 12v system, maybe worth looking at for the original poster, it sounds similar:

https://www.rav4world.com/threads/does-the-rav4-prime-have-12v-battery-issues.307882/page-2

[Nick72]

20 minutes ago, jamiem1987 said:

Read a few things whilst researching the PHEV which i have on order re. a recall with 4x bolts that ground the 12v system, maybe worth looking at for the original poster, it sounds similar:

https://www.rav4world.com/threads/does-the-rav4-prime-have-12v-battery-issues.307882/page-2

Wasnt there a TSB for an earth grounding issue? Sure I read this somewhere. 

[ernieb]

There was certainly in the US but I was assured that this was not an issue for the UK build as it was well into the serial production numbers.

[philip42h]

5 minutes ago, ernieb said:

There was certainly in the US but I was assured that this was not an issue for the UK build as it was well into the serial production numbers.

... but, if it was a production problem, then it would apply in the UK too - the US Prime and the UK PHEV are built in the same factory in Japan !!!

(No, I hadn't realised that until today! 😉 )

Obviously, it is possible that no cars were built for the UK until after the problem was resolved in production.

[Lawnmowerman]

1 minute ago, philip42h said:

... but, if it was a production problem, then it would apply in the UK too - the US Prime and the UK PHEV are built in the same factory in Japan !!!

(No, I hadn't realised that until today! 😉 )

Obviously, it is possible that no cars were built for the UK until after the problem was resolved in production.

Which begs the question if not that then what??????????????

[philip42h]

6 minutes ago, Lawnmowerman said:

Which begs the question if not that then what??????????????

Then something else ... 🙂

Easy for me to say since it's not my problem until it is shown to be common to the HEV, but from looking at the US thread and the two posted TSBs I couldn't see a correlation between them and the OP's issue. The thread and TSBs relate to 12V auxilliary Battery discharge issues rather than PHEVs 'hiccupping' when asked to change mode on the motorway.

I did try the reverse in a HEV - switching into EV mode while running at motorway speed - and the car told me to f o and not be stupid ... 🙂

[ernieb]

1 hour ago, philip42h said:

... but, if it was a production problem, then it would apply in the UK too - the US Prime and the UK PHEV are built in the same factory in Japan !!!

(No, I hadn't realised that until today! 😉 )

Obviously, it is possible that no cars were built for the UK until after the problem was resolved in production.

The fault was early in US production and fixed before my car hit the production line, mine was a first UK batch so pretty certain that all UK cars would be OK. 

[Bernard Foy]

15 hours ago, Catlover said:

Scary. A few Yaris Gen4 owners have had the same experience.

Yes Toyota had a recall on that particular issue.

[Broadway One]

6 hours ago, ernieb said:

The fault was early in US production and fixed before my car hit the production line, mine was a first UK batch so pretty certain that all UK cars would be OK. 

Hi......another forum plus & contributors, such soothing words are welcome. 

The RAV PHEV does stretch engineering to the limit on many fronts.

Don't wish to diminish in any way just how serious this malfunction was.  

However my faith in Toyota remains, 100% reliability is impossible IMO.

So thankful we can share experiences on this platform.

Barry Wright, Lancashire. 

[TonyHSD]

Well it seems has been happening more often lately, even happened to my old Auris back in December. This fault it is not related to the 12v Battery but can be related to the hybrid Battery, engine, transmission, clutch damper, inverter fault and in all scenarios can be either electric (software) or mechanical issue. Best to run diagnostic and see any additional fault codes registered along with hybrid system malfunction. In my case there were no additional faults, the warning lights remained, the car was drivable after restart but I had to clear off the faults myself with diagnostic tool( Carista) , no problems since then. After reading many posts about that I am coming to conclusion that lost of traction on the drive wheels and engine over spun rpm’s had caused all that and the car behaved that way to preserve itself from self destruction. Use to be a firmware upgrade regarding this issue on my particular model , all done but here we go I went through it anyway. Best to run a diagnostic for beginning and take it from there. That’s not safe at all, I was put in very dangerous situation on the motorway. 

[ernieb]

Thankfully I've never experienced this issue but years ago had a Vauxhall Carlton that had one of the faulty petrol cut off (in the event of a crash) relays. I was in the outside lane with a car full of people doing 70mph and the relay cut the fuel off. It was rush hour so traffic all around I had to switch off the ignition which locked the searing wheel and restart, thankfully the engine fired and we made our way to the hard shoulder. So a similar experience and very frightening.

[Lawnmowerman]

Some engineering protocols are indefensible when safety is put at risk. Pre-covid we were regular cruisers and Viking were our preferred cruise line.

However, they came close to disaster when they had engine failure off the coast of Norway. They had 4 engines but only 2 operating as 2 were receiving maintenance - not unusual. But, in very rough seas, both engines shut down due to low oil pressure. The oil in the feed tanks were (just) above minimum but in the rough seas as the oil moved in the tanks it went below the minimum. The built in protocols shut the engines down to save them from damage. Trouble is, in trying to save the engines they almost lost the ship and passengers on the rocks (go figure).

At the time I argued that the decision to shut down the last engine should remain with the master. The same with cars, Rover (if I remember correctly the 3500) had an ignition cut out if it lost pressure - I argued that was not best practice in the outside lane of the motorway at 70mph plus!! I think Ernie would agree.

 

 

[Cyker]

You're going to hate newer and newer cars then! I've already had my one cut power a few times because it thought I was going to crash into someone... while I was half-way across a T-junction with cars coming from both directions!!

I'm sure it's supposed to let you override it if you mash the accelerator, but it doesn't...

[Matt O]

Dealer visit booked for Thursday. 

Car driving normally now.......

Will update !

[preperationlaunch]

3 hours ago, Lawnmowerman said:

Some engineering protocols are indefensible when safety is put at risk. Pre-covid we were regular cruisers and Viking were our preferred cruise line.

However, they came close to disaster when they had engine failure off the coast of Norway. They had 4 engines but only 2 operating as 2 were receiving maintenance - not unusual. But, in very rough seas, both engines shut down due to low oil pressure. The oil in the feed tanks were (just) above minimum but in the rough seas as the oil moved in the tanks it went below the minimum. The built in protocols shut the engines down to save them from damage. Trouble is, in trying to save the engines they almost lost the ship and passengers on the rocks (go figure).

At the time I argued that the decision to shut down the last engine should remain with the master. The same with cars, Rover (if I remember correctly the 3500) had an ignition cut out if it lost pressure - I argued that was not best practice in the outside lane of the motorway at 70mph plus!! I think Ernie would agree.

Arguably, seizing your engines at sea will also be liable to put safety at risk. Humans are fallible too.

The 'fix' seems to have been not running the oil levels low enough to trigger those alarms, not the removal of said alarms.

[Lawnmowerman]

20 hours ago, preperationlaunch said:

Arguably, seizing your engines at sea will also be liable to put safety at risk. Humans are fallible too.

The 'fix' seems to have been not running the oil levels low enough to trigger those alarms, not the removal of said alarms.

Of course. My point is that the master should have the final say whether to have your last remaining engine shut down. Seized - shut down , same effect - no power. The alarm should have rung loud and clear on the bridge to warn of the impending shut down and be given the opportunity to override it.

A massive helicopter airlift was instituted to evacuate passengers - in itself very risky. Ship was 100 metres from the rocks.

[Cyker]

Well this is the downside of automatic emergency systems - The designers can't predict every scenario so there's always a chance it will do the Wrong thing...

At least the contingency evac plans worked!

[srt]

On 1/31/2022 at 10:12 PM, Matt O said:

Dealer visit booked for Thursday. 

Car driving normally now.......

Will update !

Did you get a conclusive explanation from your dealer and/or Toyota?