About $1300, in this particular instance.
A couple of times in the past, the Prius had exhibited a Known Issue: the engine would start up a bit too slowly on a cold morning, and the computer would declare a timeout and light up all the panic alerts.
On those occasions, the code somehow always cleared before I got it to the dealership.
Well, this warm morning, with the engine warm from earlier driving, it happened again, and it didn't clear. So, time to get it fixed....
Now, all it really needs is a parameter tweaked, to accommodate the slower-than-expected startup of a cold or aging engine. Alas, the ECU in the NHW11 doesn't accommodate field firmware upgrades, so the solution to error code P0300 ("random multiple misfire") is to replace the entire freakin' engine ECU with one that has the new version of the firmware.
And it couldn't, naturally, have done this repeatably while it was under warranty. Oh, no. It had to wait until the warranty had unmistakably expired before it would do that trick for the service department.
Oh, well. It's back to normal operation now, and I expect to keep it for another few years. I don't think there are any further Known Issues with the NHW11, aside from early failure of the auxiliary battery... which hasn't happened to me yet, in the 7 years I've had the car.
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