( 
)
Continued from part 9
Suzi of Salisbury MD (05/19/07)
I also found that the mileage on my 2006 Prius fell far short of the advertised 60 mpg city. I am often getting as low as 35 mpg in city driving, highest I've ever gotten is about 40 mpg. I did my research before buying and bought the Prius because of its high mileage and low carbon footprint. Salesman who sold me the car continually touted the 60 mpg city mileage, made no mention of possible lower mileage.
Attempts to talk to service tech at dealership elicted shrugs and i don't know about that responses. A lengthy conversation with a customer satisfaction specialist at Toyota HQ in California brought the same kinds of ridiculous explanations that Mr. Benton mentioned in his article -- using things like headights, AC, radio, etc. would affect mileage, as would weather, temperature, street conditions.
I also got the explanation that although Toyota itself has done its own more realistic mileage tests and knows that the 60 MPG published by the EPA are reached under very unreaslitic perfect driving conditions, they don't feel under any obligation to tell consumers. According to the guy I talked to, the fine print on the sticker has the caveat that actual mileage may vary, which I was completely aware of. I can accept a 10-15% variation, but getting as little as 40% or promised mpg seems a bit out of line to me. I agree that there are only two explanations for this discrepancy: either there is something wrong with my Prius (but apparently not, as many others report similar results) or Toyota is lying to us about the real life mpg.
I should note that I get excellent mpg on the highway -- averaging 50 mpg at 70 mph, with 3 people and luggage on board! This is right on target with what the EPA advertised. While 40-45 mpg in city driving is great compared to the rest of the cars on the road, I am just disappointed in Toyota for willfully misleading its customers by withholding from them more accurate information about their cars. I would very much like to find some place where I can trade information with other Prius owners to find out who else is having this problem, and who is actually getting the 60 mpg promised.
Donna of Los Angeles CA (05/11/07)
On April 30, 2007 my 2001 Prius had a 30K mile major service. On May 3, '07, my Prius completely lost its brakes while on the 170 freeway. The invoice says found brake booster was defective and had failed. They found codes indicating problem in computer, yet did not check this system during major service. They charged over $1500 despite fact that this appeared to be a problem best addressed (& paid for) by Toyota. Glendale Toyota said they'd never had this problem despite servicing many 2001 Prius' many with much more mileage than mine. Toyota hdqrts in Torrance CA refused to allow access to or info from data base to find out if this was an anomaly.
Jim of Ashburn VA (05/11/07)
Within the lastr two days I purchasded a toyota prius from ourisman chantilly toyota in va. I was not appraised that the EPA estimates on the window sticker and all other advertisements were incorrect. When I called toyota they said it was EPAs fault and they were required to advertise the higher mileage even though EPA has revised the estimate based on consumer complaints.
I paid $26,000 for a rollerskate of a car simply for the high mileage. As it turns out I could have purchased a toyota corrolla for Half of the cost and gotten the samer mileage. I feel duped and cheated.
Gary of Pettigrew AR (05/09/07)
On Jan 9th 2007, we bought a new Toyota Prius. Our driveway is fairly steep and is dirt/gravel. We came and went for three weeks without any issue, then our car started shutting down about halfway up our 3/10 of a mile driveway. Once the wheels slipped the car simply shut down. We took it back to Toyota AutoPark in Fayetteville Arkansas where we purchased it. They said they hadn't had any problems like this before and contacted Toyota to get more information. They reprogrammed the computer and put different tires on the car to no avail. May 8,2007 they sent representatives from Toyota Little Rock and Houston, TX to our home with another Prius. It also stopped on our driveway. They have now told the dealership they are accepting no responsibility for this problem and the car is operating as it is supposed to. Our daughter's Honda sedan pulls our driveway just fine, as did the the loaner car Toyota gave us. I had no reason to suspect that the car would not do so. The Houston representative guessed that our road may have been frozen in Jan. which is why the car pulled the driveway just fine for the first three weeks. They will not pay us back for the car or pay the dealership for their loss.
If this car won't perform as a normal car it should have some warning label on it letting the consumer know before the go out and buy a thirty thousand dollar car that won't go up their driveway and one that Toyota will not stand behind to their dealerships. I'm sure if our car did this in a place where there was traffic it would be a safety hazard.
Chuck of Bedford TX (05/04/07)
The 12 volt battery in my 2002 Toyota Prius discharges and it won't start if the car isn't run every day. Repeated trips to the dealership have not cured the problem, despite an upgrade of battery.
William of Butler PA (04/25/07)
I drive a 2005 Toyota Prius on the sometimes snow-covered roads of Western PA. I am usually the fastest car on the road when they are snow covered, passing all the SUV's and Hummers. I have even driven 20 miles on unplowed backroads when the main roads were a sheet of ice, no problem.
I don't think your evaluation of one car in Vermont is any indication of a widespread problem.
John of Brunswick ME (04/23/07)
I own a Toyota Prius and have experienced this problem of getting stuck in minimal snow in my relatively flat driveway. Shoveling around the car didn't even help. I had no other person to help push the car. So I couldn't leave.
unable to get to important appointments
Steve of Albany OR (04/22/07)
When shutting the engine down with the headlights on the drivers door must be opened to turn off the lights. We have had a dead battery four times in 30,000 miles. Most American cars will have a beeper or simply shut off the lights when this happens. We are very happy with our Prius but just have had this one small problem.
Doug of Santa Fe NM (04/20/07)
2007 Toyota Prius, purchase 2 Nov 2006, shows 43 or so mpg cool video screen of consumption. I write miles and gallons at each fill up. When I divide the gallons into miles driven on the tankful I get 37.5 on the average. Seems like a built in fraudulent data method.
My hopes for car that substantially exceeded my previous car's mileage-- a 2003 Kia Rio Cinco which got 30 mpg in town and approached 39 to 40 mpg on the highway. The Kia figures are based on the tankful to tankful gallons into mile driven method. I feel cheated-- maybe defrauded.
Sandy of Menlo Park CA (04/18/07)
I bought a 2006 Prius due in no small part to the advertising from Toyota that their Prius gets 55-60 miles per gallon.
My car averages 40-45 mpg and has never gotten 55-60 mpg. I feel this is false and misleading advertising and should be stopped. I know of no Prius owners who get the promised gas mileage and believe a class action lawsuit against Toyota for false and misleading advertising is in order.
Joseph of Plainfield VT (04/16/07)
Thanks for your response. Too bad you couldn't offer any suggestions beyond printing my complaint. However, perhaps something good will come of that. I hope you received both of my submissions and will emphasize the follow up I discovered on Car Talk's website in terms of the solution it offers for an on/off switch.
Toyota may have reasons for not including this - as there seems to be some risk to their system some people pointed out if traction control were to be disconnected by owners. But my deeper concern is that Toyota seems not to want to admit that there is a potentially life threatening problem in their present design.
To see how far I can get directly with the company, I've decided to pursue Toyota directly to see if they will decide to respond by doing what is right not just for me, but for others as well. I am hoping not to even have to consider legal action and instead hope that reaching high enough into the company will convince them to take this problem up in a serious fashion.
Joseph of Plainfield VT (04/14/07)
In many ways I love my new Prius and regret having to start down this path with Toyota. However, I'm having the same dangerous problems with my 2006 model as described by Christopher and others I've seen on the Internet.
I live in the mountains of Vermont - up steep hills and dirt roads. I consider the slippage problem - with the shutting down of power to the wheels just when you need more (not less) traction - to be a very serious problem and a potentially life threatening design flaw.
After a lengthy call, the line I was given by Toyota Corporate when I called them yesterday was that the system was operating the way it's supposed to, which is what I learned later others have been told. However, it became clear that they were resistant to accepting that operating the way it was supposed to was the problem.
That this system is fundamentally flawed in a way that could put people's lives at risk and poses dangers in environments like mine - where navigating fresh slippery snow and steep inclines are a necessity. Despite my insistence that there must be many other people like me who are experiencing this same problem, Toyota Corporate did not acknowledge this as a widespread problem.
Common sense told me something wasn't right and I needed to press this as far as necessary, including some form of lawsuit, which is not my tendency at all, but I consider this problem to be serious enough to warrant a recall by the company. So after my unpleasant encounter with the corporation, who had lost my initial complaint about this problem filed several months ago to which I never received a follow up - I decided to do some searching on the Internet which is how I came upon your website.
Then I found a number of similar complaints elsewhere and learned that what I thought was the problem - which was the vehicle stabilization control system - was probably not the cause, but rather it was traction control which I hadn't heard about before. It was clear after a short while that enough people are experiencing what I have been that Toyota should have easily been in a position to inform me of this and acknowledged this as an issue, which they didn't. I questioned them regarding whether an override switch was available and learned it wasn't and later saw that this is the solution that others had suggested.
This really leaves me with no option but to get rid of this car somehow unless the traction problem can be disengaged. However, I want to drive a Prius or something like it because of my great concern for the environment and I want to know if the problem exists on all Prius's or just some models. Finally, in one posting I read last night someone suggested that a Prius had to be driven differently. This made some sense to me given a recent experience I had but it was ultimately not convincing.
I did find in a recent snowstorm, as this writer suggested, that I was able to make it up a friends very steep road (just barely) crawling at about 3 or 4 miles per hour at best. (My friend I was visiting has an 05 Prius with the same problem and warned me not to drive my Prius on that day.
He's wanting to take action with me.) At any moment I thought the car would come to a complete stop but to my surprise it actually made it up - although I smelled strange odors and the battery was down to 1 bar, the lowest I've seen it. So I do see that it's possible to drive this car differently, flooring the gas peddle to barely crawl and have it work - but it was so touch and go and had another car been coming (up or down) I wouldn't have been able to move out of the way and probably couldn't have restarted with no momentum from a standstill.
It is completely clear that I am unable to trust my Prius in serious snow conditions and I now choose not to drive it whenever possible in fresh snow, when the traction is most slippery. Yesterday, I was not even able to get the car to move more than a few inches in reverse on my almost entirely flat driveway over just a few inches of fresh, wet snow, even when there was no snow under the car itself.
As a result, the car, which I happen to love in many other respects, is rendered useless in fresh, unplowed snow. My greatest concern is that I would be unable to respond in slippery conditions if someone were sliding out of control and my safety (and those with me) depended upon my being able to get traction DESPITE the slippery conditions in order to move quickly out of the way to avoid a collision. The bottom line is that this design flaw does not allow me as the driver to control my car. It decides for me when my wheels should stop spinning, which is completely inappropriate and ineffective given the driving conditions I face on a daily basis in Vermont for almost half the year.
So far I've managed to avoid serious mishaps, but I consider this such a serious design flaw that it seems it may be worthy of a class action suit and massive recall. I'm writing to find out what my recourse might be as I am not willing to own and drive a vehicle that I feel is unsafe at least in slippery conditions. As I begin going down the path of learning what my rights are and seeing how Toyota will respond to this when pressed, I was hoping you could give me some advice. I called wanting to know who I needed to talk with at the corporation to get this problem resolved and declared my readiness to go as far as I needed to in order to have this problem resolved.
I wanted a number or address for someone with decision making power. I was told I was talking to the right department but felt I wasn't talking with someone with authority to resolve a consumer complaint. It was requested that I bring my Prius to a local dealer to get it checked out as a first step, which I'm doing on Tuesday. However, it's clear to me that this is just going through the motions and that I need to learn what my recourse is and how far I may need to go toward lemon laws, lawsuit, class action, exchanging vehicles, etc. If you can be of help I'd appreciate it very much. Thank you.
Suzi of Salisbury MD (05/19/07)
I also found that the mileage on my 2006 Prius fell far short of the advertised 60 mpg city. I am often getting as low as 35 mpg in city driving, highest I've ever gotten is about 40 mpg. I did my research before buying and bought the Prius because of its high mileage and low carbon footprint. Salesman who sold me the car continually touted the 60 mpg city mileage, made no mention of possible lower mileage.
Attempts to talk to service tech at dealership elicted shrugs and i don't know about that responses. A lengthy conversation with a customer satisfaction specialist at Toyota HQ in California brought the same kinds of ridiculous explanations that Mr. Benton mentioned in his article -- using things like headights, AC, radio, etc. would affect mileage, as would weather, temperature, street conditions.
I also got the explanation that although Toyota itself has done its own more realistic mileage tests and knows that the 60 MPG published by the EPA are reached under very unreaslitic perfect driving conditions, they don't feel under any obligation to tell consumers. According to the guy I talked to, the fine print on the sticker has the caveat that actual mileage may vary, which I was completely aware of. I can accept a 10-15% variation, but getting as little as 40% or promised mpg seems a bit out of line to me. I agree that there are only two explanations for this discrepancy: either there is something wrong with my Prius (but apparently not, as many others report similar results) or Toyota is lying to us about the real life mpg.
I should note that I get excellent mpg on the highway -- averaging 50 mpg at 70 mph, with 3 people and luggage on board! This is right on target with what the EPA advertised. While 40-45 mpg in city driving is great compared to the rest of the cars on the road, I am just disappointed in Toyota for willfully misleading its customers by withholding from them more accurate information about their cars. I would very much like to find some place where I can trade information with other Prius owners to find out who else is having this problem, and who is actually getting the 60 mpg promised.
Donna of Los Angeles CA (05/11/07)
On April 30, 2007 my 2001 Prius had a 30K mile major service. On May 3, '07, my Prius completely lost its brakes while on the 170 freeway. The invoice says found brake booster was defective and had failed. They found codes indicating problem in computer, yet did not check this system during major service. They charged over $1500 despite fact that this appeared to be a problem best addressed (& paid for) by Toyota. Glendale Toyota said they'd never had this problem despite servicing many 2001 Prius' many with much more mileage than mine. Toyota hdqrts in Torrance CA refused to allow access to or info from data base to find out if this was an anomaly.
Jim of Ashburn VA (05/11/07)
Within the lastr two days I purchasded a toyota prius from ourisman chantilly toyota in va. I was not appraised that the EPA estimates on the window sticker and all other advertisements were incorrect. When I called toyota they said it was EPAs fault and they were required to advertise the higher mileage even though EPA has revised the estimate based on consumer complaints.
I paid $26,000 for a rollerskate of a car simply for the high mileage. As it turns out I could have purchased a toyota corrolla for Half of the cost and gotten the samer mileage. I feel duped and cheated.
Gary of Pettigrew AR (05/09/07)
On Jan 9th 2007, we bought a new Toyota Prius. Our driveway is fairly steep and is dirt/gravel. We came and went for three weeks without any issue, then our car started shutting down about halfway up our 3/10 of a mile driveway. Once the wheels slipped the car simply shut down. We took it back to Toyota AutoPark in Fayetteville Arkansas where we purchased it. They said they hadn't had any problems like this before and contacted Toyota to get more information. They reprogrammed the computer and put different tires on the car to no avail. May 8,2007 they sent representatives from Toyota Little Rock and Houston, TX to our home with another Prius. It also stopped on our driveway. They have now told the dealership they are accepting no responsibility for this problem and the car is operating as it is supposed to. Our daughter's Honda sedan pulls our driveway just fine, as did the the loaner car Toyota gave us. I had no reason to suspect that the car would not do so. The Houston representative guessed that our road may have been frozen in Jan. which is why the car pulled the driveway just fine for the first three weeks. They will not pay us back for the car or pay the dealership for their loss.
If this car won't perform as a normal car it should have some warning label on it letting the consumer know before the go out and buy a thirty thousand dollar car that won't go up their driveway and one that Toyota will not stand behind to their dealerships. I'm sure if our car did this in a place where there was traffic it would be a safety hazard.
Chuck of Bedford TX (05/04/07)
The 12 volt battery in my 2002 Toyota Prius discharges and it won't start if the car isn't run every day. Repeated trips to the dealership have not cured the problem, despite an upgrade of battery.
William of Butler PA (04/25/07)
I drive a 2005 Toyota Prius on the sometimes snow-covered roads of Western PA. I am usually the fastest car on the road when they are snow covered, passing all the SUV's and Hummers. I have even driven 20 miles on unplowed backroads when the main roads were a sheet of ice, no problem.
I don't think your evaluation of one car in Vermont is any indication of a widespread problem.
John of Brunswick ME (04/23/07)
I own a Toyota Prius and have experienced this problem of getting stuck in minimal snow in my relatively flat driveway. Shoveling around the car didn't even help. I had no other person to help push the car. So I couldn't leave.
unable to get to important appointments
Steve of Albany OR (04/22/07)
When shutting the engine down with the headlights on the drivers door must be opened to turn off the lights. We have had a dead battery four times in 30,000 miles. Most American cars will have a beeper or simply shut off the lights when this happens. We are very happy with our Prius but just have had this one small problem.
Doug of Santa Fe NM (04/20/07)
2007 Toyota Prius, purchase 2 Nov 2006, shows 43 or so mpg cool video screen of consumption. I write miles and gallons at each fill up. When I divide the gallons into miles driven on the tankful I get 37.5 on the average. Seems like a built in fraudulent data method.
My hopes for car that substantially exceeded my previous car's mileage-- a 2003 Kia Rio Cinco which got 30 mpg in town and approached 39 to 40 mpg on the highway. The Kia figures are based on the tankful to tankful gallons into mile driven method. I feel cheated-- maybe defrauded.
Sandy of Menlo Park CA (04/18/07)
I bought a 2006 Prius due in no small part to the advertising from Toyota that their Prius gets 55-60 miles per gallon.
My car averages 40-45 mpg and has never gotten 55-60 mpg. I feel this is false and misleading advertising and should be stopped. I know of no Prius owners who get the promised gas mileage and believe a class action lawsuit against Toyota for false and misleading advertising is in order.
Joseph of Plainfield VT (04/16/07)
Thanks for your response. Too bad you couldn't offer any suggestions beyond printing my complaint. However, perhaps something good will come of that. I hope you received both of my submissions and will emphasize the follow up I discovered on Car Talk's website in terms of the solution it offers for an on/off switch.
Toyota may have reasons for not including this - as there seems to be some risk to their system some people pointed out if traction control were to be disconnected by owners. But my deeper concern is that Toyota seems not to want to admit that there is a potentially life threatening problem in their present design.
To see how far I can get directly with the company, I've decided to pursue Toyota directly to see if they will decide to respond by doing what is right not just for me, but for others as well. I am hoping not to even have to consider legal action and instead hope that reaching high enough into the company will convince them to take this problem up in a serious fashion.
Joseph of Plainfield VT (04/14/07)
In many ways I love my new Prius and regret having to start down this path with Toyota. However, I'm having the same dangerous problems with my 2006 model as described by Christopher and others I've seen on the Internet.
I live in the mountains of Vermont - up steep hills and dirt roads. I consider the slippage problem - with the shutting down of power to the wheels just when you need more (not less) traction - to be a very serious problem and a potentially life threatening design flaw.
After a lengthy call, the line I was given by Toyota Corporate when I called them yesterday was that the system was operating the way it's supposed to, which is what I learned later others have been told. However, it became clear that they were resistant to accepting that operating the way it was supposed to was the problem.
That this system is fundamentally flawed in a way that could put people's lives at risk and poses dangers in environments like mine - where navigating fresh slippery snow and steep inclines are a necessity. Despite my insistence that there must be many other people like me who are experiencing this same problem, Toyota Corporate did not acknowledge this as a widespread problem.
Common sense told me something wasn't right and I needed to press this as far as necessary, including some form of lawsuit, which is not my tendency at all, but I consider this problem to be serious enough to warrant a recall by the company. So after my unpleasant encounter with the corporation, who had lost my initial complaint about this problem filed several months ago to which I never received a follow up - I decided to do some searching on the Internet which is how I came upon your website.
Then I found a number of similar complaints elsewhere and learned that what I thought was the problem - which was the vehicle stabilization control system - was probably not the cause, but rather it was traction control which I hadn't heard about before. It was clear after a short while that enough people are experiencing what I have been that Toyota should have easily been in a position to inform me of this and acknowledged this as an issue, which they didn't. I questioned them regarding whether an override switch was available and learned it wasn't and later saw that this is the solution that others had suggested.
This really leaves me with no option but to get rid of this car somehow unless the traction problem can be disengaged. However, I want to drive a Prius or something like it because of my great concern for the environment and I want to know if the problem exists on all Prius's or just some models. Finally, in one posting I read last night someone suggested that a Prius had to be driven differently. This made some sense to me given a recent experience I had but it was ultimately not convincing.
I did find in a recent snowstorm, as this writer suggested, that I was able to make it up a friends very steep road (just barely) crawling at about 3 or 4 miles per hour at best. (My friend I was visiting has an 05 Prius with the same problem and warned me not to drive my Prius on that day.
He's wanting to take action with me.) At any moment I thought the car would come to a complete stop but to my surprise it actually made it up - although I smelled strange odors and the battery was down to 1 bar, the lowest I've seen it. So I do see that it's possible to drive this car differently, flooring the gas peddle to barely crawl and have it work - but it was so touch and go and had another car been coming (up or down) I wouldn't have been able to move out of the way and probably couldn't have restarted with no momentum from a standstill.
It is completely clear that I am unable to trust my Prius in serious snow conditions and I now choose not to drive it whenever possible in fresh snow, when the traction is most slippery. Yesterday, I was not even able to get the car to move more than a few inches in reverse on my almost entirely flat driveway over just a few inches of fresh, wet snow, even when there was no snow under the car itself.
As a result, the car, which I happen to love in many other respects, is rendered useless in fresh, unplowed snow. My greatest concern is that I would be unable to respond in slippery conditions if someone were sliding out of control and my safety (and those with me) depended upon my being able to get traction DESPITE the slippery conditions in order to move quickly out of the way to avoid a collision. The bottom line is that this design flaw does not allow me as the driver to control my car. It decides for me when my wheels should stop spinning, which is completely inappropriate and ineffective given the driving conditions I face on a daily basis in Vermont for almost half the year.
So far I've managed to avoid serious mishaps, but I consider this such a serious design flaw that it seems it may be worthy of a class action suit and massive recall. I'm writing to find out what my recourse might be as I am not willing to own and drive a vehicle that I feel is unsafe at least in slippery conditions. As I begin going down the path of learning what my rights are and seeing how Toyota will respond to this when pressed, I was hoping you could give me some advice. I called wanting to know who I needed to talk with at the corporation to get this problem resolved and declared my readiness to go as far as I needed to in order to have this problem resolved.
I wanted a number or address for someone with decision making power. I was told I was talking to the right department but felt I wasn't talking with someone with authority to resolve a consumer complaint. It was requested that I bring my Prius to a local dealer to get it checked out as a first step, which I'm doing on Tuesday. However, it's clear to me that this is just going through the motions and that I need to learn what my recourse is and how far I may need to go toward lemon laws, lawsuit, class action, exchanging vehicles, etc. If you can be of help I'd appreciate it very much. Thank you.
Guide created: 04/05/08 (updated 06/24/08)
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