have red triangle and VSC lights on, how far is it safe to drive?

Usually if it's your inverter pump the little green car on the multifunction display will be red is that a fact? If you just have a red triangle and a bunch of yellow lights or amber lights it could be a myriad of nonsense drive if the car will ready to ye local auto parts store Menards whatever it's called out there let them read the codes with their big hunk and scanner they'll at least get basic p codes which will get you quite a far distance actually so just report back when you get those or if the MFD multifunction display little green car that's normally green in the far left of the display is red then you need to pop the fuse box and look at the AM2 fuse see if it's blown If it is there's a black plug above the fuse box if you unplug it that will take your inverter pump out of the loop electrically now replace the AM2 fuse that's blown and it probably won't blow again now ready the car and drive to the parts store and do whatever it is you're going to do and hot weather you can drive probably 25 or 30 miles maybe more without the inverter throttling back the charge to the battery once you get in the '80s and what not you'll need to keep it below 55 miles an hour if you can stay off the highway you'll be okay I drove around like this for a month and almost 100° weather in North Carolina with no damages You just don't want to be flooring it and trying to run down the highway at 70 mph that kind of thing let us know what the deal is with your little green car

 

No idea. Without a scantool that can check all systems for codes, you have no idea either. All you know is that the Hybrid Control ecu detected at least one of many dozens of faults that caused it to turn the warning lights on

Maybe it can make it, maybe it can't.

You can turn the car on to "ready" mode, then remove the cap of the inverter coolant tank (the one in front of the driver's side - under the hood). Look inside to see if coolant is moving around or is still.

IF the pump is dead I wouldn't think you can go too far in hot weather, - A/C use, high speed or load will cause "overheat" sooner.

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You can certainly get whatever trouble code is behind the VSC light, without having to wait for access to a scan tool. Just get it this way: Blink (a/k/a Flash) Codes – How to. | PriusChat

Sadly, that way doesn't work for the trouble codes behind the triangle light. And it's possible the only VSC code will be 51 (which only means "go pay attention to the codes behind the triangle light"), but even then you'll know more than you did.

If you end up wondering just what Tom's going on about there, it's a little visual pun that can happen if you normally drive around with the Energy Monitor screen showing. That screen happens to have a green car in the top left corner, just as part of its artwork.



When you get the triangle light, you also get a little red car-exclamation-point that overdraws the top of the display, covering part of whatever screen you're viewing at the time:



So if the Energy Monitor screen was the one you had up, with its little green car in the corner, then when the red-car problem symbol is overdrawn on the display, it can look like "the little green car turned red" if you're not paying much attention.

The problem symbol, though, doesn't tell you anything more than the triangle light does. They both only mean you need the trouble codes to know what's being reported. Neither one is specific to the inverter pump, or anything else.

 

It sure seems to be though whether it is or not is beyond the scope of my dealings anytime I see that car looking red not green I go look at the inverter pump when the red triangle is up that green car is not always red I have pictures of the triangle up in that car's green Not sure why doesn't really matter any of that nonsense is on I'm getting the code scanner to see what we got going on. I know when I clear the codes that car will turn green again until it's not I have also had it turn red when I had an interlock problem but like if I have a PO420 code it doesn't turn that car red my PO420 is permanent but also the triangle isn't on oh when I ran out of gas and that put the red triangle on I don't think the car in the MFD was red but I'm not absolutely positive but I may have pictures of what happened when that happened because I was taking lots of them then but anyway. Usually when I see that little car red I look at the inverter pump put my hand on it check the AM2 fuse just because I do and lots of times the pump is not pumping the AM2 fuse is not blown but we're not moving fluid through the inverter as soon as I replace the pump with something that will move the water and wait the code will clear the car will be green and we're driving or I clear the codes and all that happens because of the clear and that's that But that's just our three here I don't know exactly how it all is supposed to work and really don't worry much about all that I know what I see when I'm driving and what I see when I pull over and whip up the hood and look.

 

It's funny the way everybody else can plainly see in the photos how the car-exclamation symbol is drawn over top of the underlying screen display, even cutting parts of letters and other symbols off.

 

Well, from what I have read here on the forums, most parts stores do not have scantools that are capable of checking all (or even most) of the systems on a Prius.

Some people here get their own scantool. Here's a thread that reviews several apps and OBD2 devices for a smartphone. Some are capable of scanning all systems on a Gen 2 Prius.

https://priuschat.com/index.php?posts/3290690

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