I contacted my local Toyota dealership, with whom I did not have a service history as this is my first Toyota (longtime Honda customer!). I went to a scheduled appointment armed with pages of blog printouts, documenting the known issue. While I was ready to tackle the issue as a lawsuit, he deflected the whole thing with his desire to draw me in as a new customer.

Their diagnosis determined “circuit check revealed an internal short in headlamp ECU (electronic control unit) caused bulb to short. Replaced ECU and bulb. Operational test verified repair. Repair and parts covered under goodwill policy.”

The installed parts note part #90981-20015 bulb, HID and 81107-47150 Computer Sub-Assy”.

My regular mechanic said that the ECU is equivalent to an igniter, which regulates voltage and current going to the headlamp, similar to a flourescent ballast.

The ECU is covered under the 3 year / 36k warranty. My replacement was covered at no charge under a “goodwill policy” because I was only 655 miles over 36k. (The initial headlamp failure occurred when I was out of town & mileage less than 36k.) However, he also stated “off the record” that service managers can internally approved such replacements up to 70k miles. However, those in the 80-100k mile range will likely not be approved.

I attempted to convince them to also replace the passenger side headlamp as a preventive measure, but they refused. I’m sure it’s a ticking time bomb. With 42,554 current miles, both headlamps now work correctly.

Call Toyota Customer Experience Center at 800.331.4331 to log a complaint. Or, write them at Toyota Customer Assistance Center, Box 2991, Trrance, CA 90509-2991.

I suspect the voltage needed to maintain the bulb is on the cusp of being too low… so low that aged bulbs need a “refire” to keep them going and even that doesn’t work after a bit more aging of the bulb.

I have put the cheap Chinese bulbs in both of my cars some 30K miles ago and have never had another issue.

The OEM solution would be to use another bulb that does well on a tad less voltage to maintain the burn, or use a ballast than runs a tad higher maintenance voltage.

Seems the way they have solved it is to simply not have HID’s any more.. back to Halogen and LED’s “for low beam” on the 2010.

Seems phillips lost allot of credibility with these bulbs and no one is stepping up to the plate to make things good.

Its a bit more forgivable when you get what you pay for.
My cars both went out around 50K. “one bulb in each car as I have two 06 prius’s.

I replaced all 4 bulbs in my two cars with the cheap chinese bulbs from ebay. Since over 30K, I had one of the 4 chinese bulbs go out so I put one of my original OEM bulbs “that hadn’t gone bad” in its place…. I’ve had no problems since…

and thats going on 30K+ miles now.

I don’t know if the inherent design of the bulb is bad or if there are bad lots “I doubt it since even the 08 Cars are starting to show up with the same problem” or if there is a mismatch between bulb and ballast… but I”ve got my 35 bucks out of my chinese bulbs already…

How long does one need to drive a bulb before they have satisfaction if it cost hundreds of dollars?….
When It supposed to last 8 – 10 times longer than Halogen, you tell me.

If it’s an electronic problem, then there’s an issue there… but I’ve never heard of widespread problems with the electronics associated with HIDs except with the cheap Chinese crap that washes up on our shores from time to time.

The 06 uses the D4R … make sure your ordering the right one.

I’ve ran my ebay bulbs for over 30K now with no probs….. Its quite disturbing why Phillips bulbs cost so much more.

all in all i don’t think they have PR disaster on their hands if their dealers all behave this way while they assess if this is widespread or just a few hundred/perhaps thousand unlucky owners with a bad run of parts at the factory. i owned a sludgy sienna, and trust me, this dealer handled this one much better than denying a problem with the sienna eventually resulting in us trading in the vehicle.

regardless, i have invoice from them stating failure and my concern of safety issue. i’m at least now eligible for lemon law arbitration if this recurs in the near future.

my 07 prius had both headlights fail simultaneously while driving at night.

obviously the lamps themselves did not fail at precisely the same moment, but something else in the control circuitry did fail. cycling the lights…and they come on again. in my case, this failure is huge safety issue of an otherwise outstanding car. sitting at dealer as i write this awaiting their disposition of the problem.

If you buy a 50000 mile tire and it falls apart at 10K, I’m sure you won’t just go Boo Hoo!

What do we expect….?
How about excellence for a product that cost so much to replace or even maintain…. many of these customers are losing thier lights at 20 and 30K miles… thats one year of driving….

NOT acceptable!.. you can downplay it all you want….. Its apparent you haven’t had it happen to you!

Your recollection isn’t accurate. There’s never been a regulation in the U.S. or elsewhere requiring one-handed, five-minute headlamp replacements. The one and only rule even remotely similar to this, which was enacted in 1968 as a part of FMVSS 108 and is still a part of that regulation, is as follows:

S7.8.2 (…)each headlamp shall be installed on a motor vehicle with a mounting and aiming mechanism that allows aim inspection and adjustment of both vertical and horizontal aim, and is accessible for those purposes without removal of any vehicle parts, except for protective covers removable without the use of tools.

@brandloyalty: You’ve got some valid points there about standardised sealed beams vs. model-specific headlamps. See page 3 (rightmost column) of this document.

Then I learned how hard it is to change MANY bulbs these days. I found I couldn’t change those in my Mazda myself, and the shop had a hell of a time getting them out.

So now the survey says to report all bulbs that require more than five minutes to change. This is my way of encouraging manufacturers to make them easier to change.

What would have been wrong with upgrading the sealed beam design, making them universal (as they were) and allowing the only proprietary component to be style/shaped plastic covers? Proprietary plastic headlight assemblies are a massive consumer ripoff.

Fortunately the aftermarket responds with knockoffs and eBay puts buyers and sellers in touch.

All cars are a PITA in one way or another…

As MBella says… most other transverse engined cars are designed with a little more common sense. I can take off and replace the separate accessory belts on my Mazda at home with nothing more than hand tools and five minutes of work.

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What a silly… SILLY complaint… HIDs burning out after a few years of use? Boohoo… my bulbs go out every other year. Sucks that these people actually have a car where you can’t simply unscrew one bulb and slot another one in… but that’s becoming increasingly the norm, nowadays… I agree… regulations should mandate light fixtures designed to allow bulb changes in just a few minutes by the roadside. Much safer.

But what do you expect from manufacturers nowadays? Some of them don’t even want you to know your coolant temperature (yeah, the gauges on most dashboards are unscaled, but seeing slight rises or drops in the coolant temps can help pinpoint problems before they become catastrophes… I’ve avoided catastrophic engine failures thanks to that inaccurate little gauge) and some don’t even want you to know what your oil level is (no dipstick)… that’s just not nice…

The point being, here, that a Prius owner having this problem could find themselves stranded because they have no headlights and its nighttime, and further stranded because of the parts expense.

In the particular HID headlight failure I had, you could flick the headlights off and on and get a few more minutes from the bulb. Some searching on Priuschat suggested that this was a problem with the bulb, not the ballast. (The ballast problem has a different characteristic.)

So, yes, there are workarounds and diagnostics that can be applied to the Prius headlight. But, unfortunately, it’s more like troubleshooting a computer than troubleshooting a scooter.

PeteMoran,

Who’d have thought the rest of a Prius was an otherwise normal car, just as likely to suffer from some unplanned issue. Get over it.

Absolutely! With all of the hype, it’s easy for people to forget it’s just a car — especially when people insist in stirring their political ideology mix. But, when push comes to shove, it has 4 wheels, ball joints, wheel bearings, and crumple zones. :-)

Definitely a problem that Toyota could have handled better. But I’m not seeing why AdAge/Autonews chose to single out this problem.

Don’t usually expect such a closed minded comment from Petemoran. There is no excuse for a life/safety item to cost that much, or be that difficult to repair. It does make one realize that as much a technology can improve vehicles in many ways, when they get old, they will be junked because the repair parts are too expensive, or the knowledge base will have moved on. I am willing to bet that either the cost of these lamps/controls will drop OR non-HID retrofits will become common. Just like air suspension retrofit kits are available for Lincolns or Range Rovers…

Until your feeble, old night vision is trashed by the government mandated HIDs coming the other way on a busy two lane. They’re great if you have them, not so much if you’re the other guy. Wait until the pick up with HIDs, a lift kit, and blazing foglamps pulls up behind you at a pre-dawn red light.

Bill N.

It’s over 24 years old, and the popup headlight just stopped working on me. That is to say, the light will turn on, but the unit won’t pop up. Not so odd for such an old bike, but apparently this was a chronic problem even on two-year-old models back then.

As a result, you can’t get the motor unit any more, even though lots of people want ‘em — presumably they ran out of old stock a long time ago. And, of course, buying a new unit (when still available) was expensive and would just fail a few years later.

But you know what? When you open the hood on the bike (yes, it has a hood) there are four stickers marked “1″ “2″ “3″ and “4″. And, if you look at each sticker, there’s an attached wrench to turn, or a device to slide along a track, or a prop to move from one place to another.

Follow the numbers, use your brain for a moment, and your headlight is manually popped open and propped up, so that you can keep on riding even though the motor is dead.

The point being, here, that a Prius owner having this problem could find themselves stranded because they have no headlights and its nighttime, and further stranded because of the parts expense. For something as critical as a headlight, you’d think there would be a quick workaround (like my scooter’s manual popping mechanism that doesn’t take a genius to figure out) or a cheap and quickly replaceable bulb (like my scooter, or almost every car on the road.) Instead, they’ve got a part that can’t be replaced without taking off the bumper(!) and a bulb replacement cost that makes it extremely likely that an owner with one burned-out headlight won’t fix it right away (or can’t afford to) — removing the redundancy of two lights, and significantly increasing the odds of being left with no lights at all.

It feels like one of those marketing decisions; the latest greatest hybrid can’t have ordinary reliable and cheap lights, there has to be a high-end option, nevermind that the way the rest of the car is designed makes them expensive and impractical to fix.

I wonder how many people would have optioned up to the high-line if they’d been told the replacement cost before purchase. I also wonder how many potential purchasers have been told “they’re good for the life of the car.”

Who’d have thought the rest of a Prius was an otherwise normal car, just as likely to suffer from some unplanned issue. Get over it.

It says more about the valuable customer expectation that Toyota have built for themselves. Domestic owners would just shrug their shoulders in acceptance; they’re use to crap, I guess.

If you search, however, a real low-tech eye-opener, read the verbatums for the 2000-era (guess 99-01) Ford Focus steering column lock … thousands of affected customers, stranded cars, post-warranty with no factory good-will, and 400 bucks a shot to replace with a new column, only to see it fail again in time…