Tow truck is here and we can’t figure out how to get the car in neutral - there is zero power (and tow truck tried jumping as well.) Not a single light and unable to get can in neutral for tow
If its only front wheel drive (not all wheel drive) it has to be towed with the front wheels lifted off the ground. The tow truck operator should know that.
Update: Terminal connections on battery were tight, but apparently a loose bolt holding the negative cable connection to the negative wire. Tow driver tightened the connection as I filled with mixed emotions of excitement to hear the car chimes sound and loss of pride and embarrassment that I didn't track that myself in advance of the tow driver. Tow: While at the end we got the car running, this tow issue is a real one we need to know. Yes it was a flatbed that arrived AND none of us (me, my wife, all our on-the-fly research on the phone) nor the tow driver nor any of his resources he was calling, were able to get the car into neutral. Every resource seemed to require power to shift the car into neutral. Had the tow been required, we were all stuck. How can you get the Gen4 Prius into neutral with zero power?
Wait, say what? The Gen4 Prius can NOT BE PUT INTO NEUTRAL W/O POWER? Gen 3 had options. How about Gen5? Was this by design, or oversight? This hasn't been an issue for owners?
In a lot of cars (even including the first-generation Prius), there is an ignition key cylinder on the steering column, and when the key is turned off the steering is locked. That serves a mandated theft-protection purpose. Prius starting with gen 2 has a non-locking steering column. You can always turn the steering. To serve the mandated theft-protection purpose instead, the transmission is moved in and out of Park by an electric motor, which is mounted in a hard-to-reach place on the transmission, and it is a kind of motor that you can't even just hotwire by sticking two wires on a battery. It is a kind of motor that only moves when current is sent to its three sets of windings in the right kind of sequence, which is done by the Transmission Control ECU, which has got to have 12-volt power, and it communicates with the ECUs that recognize your key code, and will only shift into neutral if it is convinced you have powered up the car, using a recognized key. I'm not sure what you meant by "Gen 3 had options." This has been the Prius anti-theft measure going clear back to gen 2. If you are not able to provide 12-volt power and a recognized key, your options are pretty limited. You could build yourself a box of electronics producing the right output sequence to spin a switched-reluctance motor, and patch it into the wires to the Park actuator motor, and "hotwire" it that way. Or you could remove the motor from the transmission and use a big screwdriver or the like to shift the linkage inside. Maybe that got a little easier with gen 3 because gen 2 had the actuator motor on the firewall side of the transmission in a place nearly impossible to reach, while gen 3 moved it to the front. But the gen 3 one is still held on with tamper-resist covers over the mounting bolts. There is, intentionally, no easy way to get the car out of Park without having power and the proper key. Having the tow driver put dollies under the wheels is generally going to be easier than any way of trying to defeat that.
the easiest option for any of them is a jump pack, or cables. no big deal, unless the 12v isn't the problem, then you have a bigger deal
There really is no true "neutral." The drivetrain has no disengagement from the electric motor and gasoline engine. It's a simulated neutral, achieved by the computer, to deliver no torque to the wheels, regardless of which motor/engine is running or if the car is in motion. The towtruck driver should know that a dolly under the front wheels is how you tow a Prius.
Paul has posted this kind of thing before. If anything, it is more accurate to describe the transmission as always in neutral (or Park, when it's mechanically locked), requiring the computer to 'simulate' all non-Neutral behavior. Because MG1 is a free element inside the transmission, when there are no currents flowing in the stator windings to interact with it, it freely spins and there is negligible torque passed from the engine to the wheels or vice versa. The thing that gets in your way trying to move the car without 12-volt power is simply the Park-locking mechanism and the (intentional) difficulty of retracting it without 12-volt power and the correct key. Get the Park linkage retracted and you can go ahead and power the car back down if you want (if you unplug the Park motor first so the automatic return to Park on power-down can't happen), and the car, needing no power, rolls around pretty much like any other car you ever pushed around in neutral. You have to lean a little extra hard to start it moving, because this capacitor is normally at 0V when the car's off, and your initial shove puts a charge on it from MG1: It's not all that big a capacitor, so your first shove brings it pretty quickly to a voltage matching MG1's, at which point current flow ceases and the car's no harder to push around than any like-sized car in neutral.
