Here are the symptoms: The red triangle appeared two days ago, with the vsc, abs, etc. , and the battery fan was running. it was a warm day, about 89F maybe, and we had just driven about 1/2 hour on the highway and then 15 on a slow local road. The car sat since then. Now, only the red triangle and the symbol that looks like a car with an exclamation mark remain lit. Dr Prius reports P3000P0A82 The attachment is a few seconds of screen capture from Dr Prius What does the code mean? Is it reasonable to clear the battery codes and wait and see if or when it reappears? (In other words, can I clear it and drive it, lets say locally if not a day trip.) Apologies, I am sure this must have been asked before. I did try to work through the search results for a while before giving up and posting. (Part of the problem is that there is sometimes more than one answer, and it is hard to know which is correct.) Thank you
seems to be a cooling fan problem. have you opened it up? sometimes the connector pins are corroded. you should be able to drive it locally if it isn't hot out.
Thank you, that would be good news. But how do we know that? And is the occasional "red" battery module in Dr Prius of any significance?
Thank you, and apologies for my initial hesitancy. I try to understand as much as possible before taking things apart. For those who might need it, there seems to be a definitive list of codes at ihybridbattery com prius-dtc-codes The entry for the P0A82 indeed says "Detection item: Hybrid Battery Pack Cooling Fan 1", and trouble area: Battery cooling blower assembly Battery smart unit Power management control ECU HV battery intake duct Wire harness or connector For the next part, getting access to the fan assembly: I found a few videos. It seems easy enough. In a nutshell, the procedure seem to be take out the back seat and take apart the interior. For some more context, thinking back over the years. This probably happened a few times. The first was after a 5-6 hour drive, the code was cleared and it did not come back for 2-3 years. The next time was after our younger daughter brought her dog for a visit while shedding. The blower was cleaned, bu it was really not that dirty. And now here we are again, 2-3 years later. So, I am debating between plan (A) simply clearing the code, run local errands for a bit, and see if it comes back, or plan (B) open it up and see what needs cleaning or re-seating if anything. Plan (C), start swapping stuff out, seems premature and needlessly expensive. Thank you