I was surprised this evening when the Check Engine Light, Master Warning Light, and "Check Hybrid System" text display all came on and stayed on during my 15 minute commute home tonight in my 2007 TCH. The hybrid battery also seemed to be showing lower than normal charge levels (10% to 30%). At one point, the car stalled completely and I had to pull off the road and restart it. Unfortunately, I called my dealer and they won't be able to look at it until Tuesday due to the long weekend. I have to wonder if this might be heat related, since it was about 90 degrees F and the car was sitting on concrete in the sun all day. Even with the heat, it doesn't seem like it should happen. The car has gas, all the fluid levels look good, the engine looks good, and there are no obvious leaks. I just had the 6th month service about a couple months ago. Anyone else have anything like this happen?

 

Sorry to hear about your experience. I doubt it is heat related, as I live in Tucson, and bought my TCH last July when it was the middle of summer, and over 100 degrees daily until late Sept., without any issues.

Please keep us updated on what the dealer finds. There was one poster here that had a similar issue many months ago, and I think it was resolved, but can't remember what the outcome was. Perhaps a search here will help put you in the know, and in touch with that poster.

heres 1 I found..it was the "inverter"

https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...t=10211&page=4 in particular, see posts by "charlesc"

 

Sounds somewhat similar to what my '04 Prius (and others) experienced back in '04. Basically the system "thought" the ICE started and it really didn't. In other words the system got "confused". It was resolved with a flash update to one of the control modules. No wrench twisting involved. The car was driveable after powering it off and on again. The MIL condition had to be cleared by the dealer after the control module was reflashed.
Not saying this is the same issue, just sounds rather similar.

 

I wanted to thank those of you that posted responses. I appreciate it.

I got my car back from the dealer tonight and it seems to be working okay for the moment. However, I do not feel that the root cause of the problem has been found and corrected. The dealer basically said that the car was showing a fault code for coil #3. As a result, they swapped coil #3 with #2 and cleared the codes and things seemed to work fine. The work orders shows that 0.5 hours of tech time was spent. While swapping the coils may make some sense in attempting to isolate the problem, wouldn't it have made more sense just to replace coil #3 with a new one?

Here is what the work order said:
"CUST STATES MIL ON
RET CODE P0353 POAOF
SWAP #3 IGNITION COIL WITH #2 COIL AND CLEARED CODES
TEST DROVE AND FOUND ALL OPERATING AS DESIGNED
NO CODES RETURNED"

 

Two possible scenarios:
Dealer swap of components.
If problem "moves" then coil is definitely bad.

Dealer replacement of suspected bad component:
If problem reoccurs you are back to square one.

At least the dealer has taken an action that would provide more information IF the problem reoccurs.

Granted, dealer leaves open the possibliity of a reoccurance but just replacing a component that is not known to be 100% bad leaves that possibility open as well. I think the dealer made a prudent move.

Parts swapping to isolate a failing component is very common practice in the high tech industry.

 

I had the same problem..The dealer discovered a "loose ECU connection" they repaired the connection. issue resolved!

 

As a former F-16 avionics technician in the Air Force for 15 years, i would keep an eye on it. Chances are that the fault could have just been a glitch. If it returns and swaps to the #2 coil, you have found the culprit. If it does not return, then it probably was a software error or something similar. Hopefully..........it will not come back.

 

Swapping the coils could be from the Toyota Shop Manual to help isolate the trouble.

Best to use a quality gas from the top tier list.
http://www.toptiergas.com/retailers.html

I always buy gas from a rather large multiple pump station. I got some bad gas once that was a major brand when I had my '03 Corolla. I was on a trip and had filled at a small station. After switching to a different brand, the car ran ok.

 

This happened to me today, except I didn't get any type of system failure warning. My "engine to tire" indicator showing if the car is charging, using gas, etc just showed a tire and an engine, but no arrow / line pointing and the car was moving!

I was driving on the highway at 60 mph with my 2008 TCH from Kentucky, and all of a sudden it felt like I was slowing down. It was a gradual slow down, so I would be suprised if the engine completely shut off, but before I knew it I was going 40 mph and the gas pedal was not responding. Semi trucks were just barely missing me as it took a while to remember where the hazards were. Luckilly I came to my senses as I saw a bridge up ahead and quickly pulled over so the car wouldn't die on the bridge. I had about 6" of clearance from the cars and semis flying by and was freaking out so decided to start the car again, and it started!

Took it straight to the dealer and they could not find any error codes or repeat the problem during two 10 minutes test drives.

I did run over a deer (yes run over) a couple months ago which was $5000 worth of damage so was wondering if that could be the reason, but good (I guess) to see others have this problem.

I could have been ran over by a semi!

 

This week my hybrid Highlander failed at temperature close to 5 F. It displayed the message "Check your Hybrid System", This message popped up when the vehicle was traveling and once the vehicle was turned off, it never came back on. This vehicle has hardly done the 5th service. The Toyota service engineer has no clue what is going on. it is 3 days since I turned in the vehicle ! any information in this regard is highly apreciated