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IF the cat is the problem, you could leave your Prius parked in one of those areas where the tealeafs jack the car up and cut out the cat. (they dont know its faulty) and you could claim for a new one on insurance. Just expressing my thoughts in type. 🤔

I think you have what is called 'clutch drag' where the clutch is not fully disengaging. The hydraulics would come under suspicion first (master and slave cylinder) but its not impossible that the centre plate is sticking on the splines and not fully disengaging..... It may boil down to a new clutch and hydraulics...

Checking the EGR has never been part of Toyota's standard service regime, and the same applies to other marques we've owned. Certainly if problems occur they can be checked at additional cost.

I did change the transmission oil in our Auris a couple of years ago as per this link:- The old oil looked a bit dark. I did leave it to settle in a container for about a month or so, and it did become two distinguishable layers! I wasn't able to draw any debris to a very strong magnet placed against the bottle, though. In a conventional auto I thought it was the brake bands that were locally overheating/stressing the oil, eventually turning it the dark brown colour that indicated that it had got too hot (bad). On a normal auto box I always took brown oil to be in indicator of a change required. Obviously, that isn't the case in this transmission,, there are no brake bands etc. But then this oil is also serving the differential as well, so extra work for the oil there. By way of a (strange) comparison, I have an old MX5 NC, when I changed the diff. oil on that for the first time (very early - 25,000m, about 0.8 litres iirc, scheduled oil change is 40K, maybe 50K), the old oil had a really surprising amount of fine metallic debris, and yet those gears are in a constant mesh, and this wasn't a limited slip differential either. I made a mental note that I would change it again before schedule (this has not happened yet!). By comparison, the manual box on that car had its oil changed for the first time at the same mileage and it was really clean, Not what I expected . When I have changed transmission oils in other fwd cars, the amount of visible debris is disappointingly small; there hardly seemed any point to it. I'd say the Auris, judging by the oil in the picture, was a worthwhile job by the same scale. Maybe the HSD oil does get worked/loaded quite hard in spite of its simplicity? I am probably going to change the oil on a 55,000m Auris hybrid soon, a first time change, I'll let you know what the oil it looks like. The genuine Toyota oil is available for £10.50 a litre delivered, the fill/drain plug washers are about £4 a pair fwiw. I think one change, at least, is worthwhile just to remove all the particles from running-in. I have no doubt that the transmissions will not fail without it, but I have been in some high-mileage Prius taxis with whiny transmissions, I'd think an oil change would've pushed that noise occurrence further along the line for these cars. By the time you hear a whine, you've left it too late. The transmission's serenity is one of the high points of this car, I like working towards preserving it, and changing the oil is all I can do. Excuse the getting sidetracked. HTH.

Further to Kithmo's post above, just so you know, the engine check light comes on when there is an error but, will turn itself off after a preset amount of time and engine on/off cycles if the error has not re-occurred (or if the error is cleared by a technician etc.). So if the error event is recurring often enough, or continuous, it will stay lit. The time at which the light switches off (if it does) is not so critical - the fault has not repeated itself within the preset time 'window', but the error should be still logged in the ECU. (Viewable with your OBD2 reader!) Just to confuse matters, there is a pre-cat oxygen sensor (lambda sensor, lambda sond - all the same thing), and a post-cat oxygen sensor, this is used by the ECU to establish that the cat, is working correctly. But for the sensors and the cat. to work they all have to be hot, the oxygen sensors often have a heater built-in and the cat. needs to be at around 400 centigrade at its (ceramic) core. The pre-cat sensor is also used to adjust the fuel injection to achieve the correct mixture in normal use. All this catalyst technology became a mandatory fitment to EU cars in 1991, which is the event that encouraged (forced, really) manufacturers to ditch the good, ol' carburettor (notable exception here for Austin Rover and their electronic carburettor and 2-way catalytic converter - nice try guys!). I recommend the above 3 paragraphs are best read over and over before bedtime if you suffer from insomnia.

The key search words are:- OBD2 ELM327 bluetooth dongle Basically, this is:- On Board Diagnostic Version 2, and, ELM327 is the protocol it works under, I think. If you have an Apple phone then the compatability can get slightly more complicated, definitely check for this in the description of the item. If you search this forum, or post the question 'What OBD2 dongles are recommended?', you should get a lot of replies. Mine is a few years old now, else I'd suggest that (Amazon marketplace bought) one, mine was £10. Sizewise, they are generally a bit larger than a box of matches. You are looking to connect to the car's OBD port that is a mandatory fitment on all European cars since the early 2000s, it is usually somewhere near the base of the steering column, and looks like an old SCART/Peritel video socket. This connection is the one the dealer always uses. As an app to run on your phone, you might try 'Torque Lite', which is free. But there are others.

...You probably know that for £15 you can buy a 'dongle' to plug into your car to read/erase the error codes (of any modern car) via your smartphone? These are amazingly useful!

I have no experience of invoking the 'Hybrid Health Check' battery warranty that should come as part of a normal Toyota dealer service, but this hybrid battery guarantee scheme has been (newly) extended to run for cars up to 15 years. If you had had a Toyota service recently enough to be in that scheme (unlikely from your recently described events?) then you might be covered for hybrid battery failure. I can't see a link between the catalyst and battery problem, only in the *extremely* unlikely situation that the car turns off battery charging whilst it attempts to further heat up, what it judge to be, an 'underperforming' catalyst, but I'm not aware of any situation where the car works in that way. It would be interesting to know the error code behind the Engine Management Light that you had.

My tariff allows tethering. So if I've understood CPN correctly I need to make sure bluetooth is on and connected to touch 2go and also tethering. Will try later. Thanks to all for the help.

May be worth paying Toyota the £40 for them to do the HV Battery health test, may thow up that one or more cells have expired. If that is the case Toyota can replace individual cells or there are now specialist doing the same, at a reasonable cost. In other words, if it is a HV battery fault, it is not always necessary to replace the whole battery

Hi Anthony. First of all I am feeling proud to of helped you and even more proud that you have got your car working again. At least you know if it happens again you know how to fix it but of course I question if your alarm is 'fit for purpose', i.e. have it removed or replace it for a new one? We are a friendly bunch on here, much more than other Toyota Owners sites and advise is always free so to speak.and ask. All the best mate, Mike.

As per Catlover and Kithmo, at my MOT testing station, the helpful chappie told me that there is no emissions test on these. I think that when the first Priuses came into the UK it was discovered that you couldn't easily and reliably force the engine to run for the emission test, so they exempted it . But I can't see any reason why the MOT emissions equipment shouldn't be used on the car for your situation (i.e. cat. verification), you just need to turn the heater right up with the windows open, or put the engine into the 'diagnostic' mode to make it run. I have used the diag. mode, but it was a couple of years ago, the button pushing sequence escapes my memory, but no tools were required to put the car into it. The figures you obtain for the engine exhaust will be the same as any modern catalyst-equipped petrol car, as long as it's warmed the cat. up.

My mate with a Gen3 Prius takes his car for MOT to the local test station where taxis go for MOT which is more rigorous then “normal” MoT and he tells me they don’t check emissions.

Thanks for the suggestion Scott. As it happens I went to the Shell garage yesterday. So maybe I'll stick with them . A little bit more but if it's better for the engine .. worth it. Ps.. warning message still no longer there 😊 Looks like the regen worked on the way home last night. Fingers crossed!! Nice long trip planned tomorrow. And fuel from Shell

Sounds fishy to me. A cat could be damaged by too much oil or unburnt fuel getting through to the exhaust, but there'd have to be something else significantly wrong with the engine or fuelling to cause either of those. The ICE just running more shouldn't do that, unless it's already burning a load of oil (piston rings tend to go on these). Has the 12V battery been changed recently? If it's bad it can cause various spurious issues, and I've seen it lead to various mis-diagnoses in the past.

Bushes worn? Rattle could be metal on metal like the anti roll bar. MOT should highlight this though. I did have a rattle once from a spanner being dropped to the side of the air filter box. Found it and was one spanner richer 😊

Manuals use dry clutch(s) so no contamination in the oil, whereas auto boxes have wet clutches. As the clutch wears, you will get debri in the oil and therefore it is critical that the valve body and solenoids remain in working order.