My year-old Camry hybrid stalled out last night. It was the second time this has happened. The first time, about a month ago, I made a quick start from a light, followed by a quick stop, both actions to avoid an accident. (I was about to get rear-ended and scooted into the intersection to give the guy closing in my mirror more room.) After the stop, the car had no power but it started up, no problem. Last night, I was about a minute into my trip, stopped at a light, and the power just died. Again, it started no problem. This time I noticed that the radio went out. Not sure about the headlights. The emergency blinkers came on at the touch of the button before I restarted. In both cases, I stepped on the accelerator and got no power. Took it to the dealer and they couldn’t replicate the problem, of course, and whatever interrogation they did of the systems found no faults. They had to be convinced that I knew the difference between an actual stall and just going from gas to electric. It’s kind of disconcerting to just stall out in the middle of the street. And I’m concerned that this is a problem that could get worse – probably just after the warranty lapses. Any ideas?
No ideas on how to fix it, but if you keep having the problem, and keep taking it back, be sure and keep the receipts…if it does finally fail and they can identify it, you can at least show it was pre-existing. May help with a warranty claim.
Make sure you have a service receipt with your complaint clearly stated. That will cover you that you reported the problem during the warranty period. It seems there is a problem in sudden shifts from electric to gas and back, a “bug” in the system. This is the kind of thing that is learned by a mfg’r and results in changes to the computer program. Perhaps a “flash” of the computer to reprogram it up to the most updated status would “fix” the problem.
Thanks for your advice. It does seem like a computer problem to me. But they didn’t mention “re-booting” or updating and I didn’t think to ask. They did say they were checking with Toyota to see whether they had any thing on it and they didn’t