Red Triangle and beep for 1 second or less

I had the same thing with the red triangle coming on for a few seconds but I didn't have the oil light. The red triangle came on for a few seconds only on tight turns at higher speeds on the highway. It had been about 5k since last oil change and the red triangle was coming on for about 2k miles before I found out it was oil while on vacation. The oil was below the dipstick so I put 2 quarts in to get it halfway between the dots and drove it another 500 miles before I did the oil change. It has 162k miles on it and is an 06. I will start checking the oil now.

 

Thank God I googled this issue and found this thread! I bought my 2005 Prius about 18 months ago and it didn't come with a manual so I'm working blind. I have had the oil changed and I don't drive it much, but I guess short trips must be harder on it than I realized. My oil was 2 qts low...thank God I caught it fast.
I don't think it's been even 3000 miles since my last oil change (the car is around 155,000)... what would cause it to burn oil so fast (no sign of any leaking).

 

You can download a copy of the owners manual online. If you search around Priuschat you will notice the oil burning is a very common issue. It’s due to a bad design of the pistons and rings.

 

Thank you all for posting all there. My prius 2007 had the same symptom. And my OBD reader read no error code (well, there are some error code but they are for different problems that is irrelevant).

And it happened increasingly frequent since last two months, from occasionally to the point that it happened every trip. (I am not the main driver for my household's Prius so I did not know it was that bad.)

I believe the diagnosis above is correct. It even explains why the symptom tend to occur only when the car is turning.

In my case, my oil level was extremely low, lower than all the other reports in this thread. For what it's worth, let me tell you how I ended up setting a forum-record of lowest oil level, so that my fellow Prius owners, you will know what to look out for. I have been using synthetic oil whose quality is good for 10K miles. By the time the "maintenance" light was on, it reached 5K. I checked the oil level at that time and it was above the low dot on the dipstick thus still within normal range, and the color was nice golden brown. So I did nothing and planned to change oil later, maybe after another 1K or 2K (because I was still using a 5K filter at that time). But then I completely forgot this, and the car is approaching 11K now. I thought, if the oil consumption would be similar to the first 5K, it should be just slightly below the low dot of the dipstick. Today I changed oil. Holy moly, the dipstick was basically dry, with only one drop of oil at the very tip! After I drained the old oil, I got only 1 quart out of it, and the color was dark brown. Not sure whether the accelerated consumption in the second 5K was caused by using a filter that was good for only 5K.

After changing/adding 4.4 quart of 10K oil with a 10K filter, the symptom is completely gone in the next trip. I know the sample size is small, but, given that it was to the point of happening multiple times in every trip, the improvement seems already tangible.