AutoUtility currently tracks 10 official NHTSA owner defect complaints for the 2021 Toyota Prius Prime. Electrical System issues are the most frequently reported category, appearing in 4 complaints (40% of submitted records). Among these NHTSA complaint records, 4 filings cite a crash, 1 reports one or more injuries.

Key Problem Findings
  • Total NHTSA Complaints: 10 reports
  • #1 Reported Problem Area: Electrical System (4 reports • 40% of submitted complaints)
  • Secondary Problem Areas: Brakes & Traction Control (3), Driver Assistance & Safety Tech (3)
  • Crash-Citing Complaints: 4 filings
  • Fire-Citing Complaints: 0 filings
  • Complaints Reporting Injuries / Fatalities: 1 injury filings • 0 fatality filings
Reporting Methodology: Statistics describe unverified consumer submissions voluntarily filed with NHTSA. Complaint volume is not normalized for vehicle sales volume or miles driven. Multiple components can be cited within a single owner complaint submission.
Total Complaints
10
Submitted to NHTSA ODI
Crash-Citing Complaints
4
Filings citing a collision
Fire-Citing Complaints
0
Filings citing smoke or fire
Complaints Reporting Injuries
1
Filings citing one or more injuries
Complaints Reporting Fatalities
0
Consumer filings citing fatalities

Most Reported Problems for 2021 Toyota Prius Prime

Top automotive subsystem defect categories ranked by unique owner complaint volume in federal records

#1 Problem Area 40% of complaints

Electrical System

4 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
⚠️ 1 crash report 🩹 2 injury report entries
#2 Problem Area 30% of complaints

Brakes & Traction Control

3 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
⚠️ 2 crash reports 🩹 2 injury report entries
#3 Problem Area 30% of complaints

Driver Assistance & Safety Tech

3 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
⚠️ 1 crash report
#4 Problem Area 20% of complaints

Fuel & Propulsion System

2 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
⚠️ 1 crash report 🩹 2 injury report entries
#5 Problem Area 20% of complaints

Powertrain & Transmission

2 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
✓ 0 crashes or fires cited
Domain Share Note: Share percentage represents the proportion of unique complaint filings referencing each vehicle system. Because single complaints may cite multiple systems (such as engine and electrical simultaneously), domain percentages represent individual category incidence and may sum to over 100%.

Recent NHTSA Owner Reports for 2021 Toyota Prius Prime

Representative defect filings submitted by owners to the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation

Electrical System NHTSA ODI ID: #11723068
Filed: 03/09/2026

"Odometer Fraud. The contact purchased a 2021 Toyota Prius Prime. The contact discovered that there was a mileage discrepancy after the purchase. The vehicle was a private sale. At the time of the purchase, the vehicle mileage was 73,000. It was later discovered upon checking the vehicle history..."

Incident Date: 03/06/2026 • Raw NHTSA Component: ELECTRICAL SYSTEM
Brakes & Traction Control NHTSA ODI ID: #11696251
Crash Cited 2 Injury Entries Filed: 10/29/2025

"I was slowly entering a handicapped parking place right in front of a business. The distance from the front of the parking space to the building wall was about 15 feet, one car length. I approached the place to stop in the parking spot when in a split second the car violently surged forward and..."

Incident Date: 10/22/2025 • Raw NHTSA Component: ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,SERVICE BRAKES,FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM
Driver Assistance & Safety Tech NHTSA ODI ID: #11688961
Filed: 09/22/2025

"The contact owns a 2021 Toyota Prius Prime. The contact stated that while shifted into reverse(R), the rearview camera intermittently went black. No warning light was illuminated. In addition, the contact stated that while driving at various speeds, the rearview camera intermittently went black...."

Incident Date: 07/15/2025 • Raw NHTSA Component: BACK OVER PREVENTION
Powertrain & Transmission NHTSA ODI ID: #11651621
Filed: 03/30/2025

"Rodents accessed and damaged the car because there essentials components are not protected."

Incident Date: 03/03/2025 • Raw NHTSA Component: POWER TRAIN,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM
Driver Assistance & Safety Tech NHTSA ODI ID: #11620914
Crash Cited Filed: 10/20/2024

"My vehicle is equipped with Toyota Safety Sense, which includes Full-Speed Range Dynamic Radar Cruise Control (DRCC) and a Pre-Collision System. Today, while driving with DRCC engaged, my vehicle followed a leading car and appropriately slowed down to 2 mph as we approached a signalized..."

Incident Date: 10/20/2024 • Raw NHTSA Component: FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE
Consumer Narrative Notice: Excerpts are sanitized text descriptions submitted by vehicle owners to the federal ODI database. They reflect the reporting consumer's observations at the time of filing and have not been independently confirmed by vehicle manufacturers or government investigators.

Complaint History for Toyota Prius Prime

Reported defect complaint volume across sibling model years (2017–2024)

Model Year NHTSA Complaints Crash Reports Safety Recalls Detailed Report
2017 Toyota Prius Prime 143 20 0 View 2017 Problems →
2018 Toyota Prius Prime 15 4 0 View 2018 Problems →
2019 Toyota Prius Prime 8 0 1 View 2019 Problems →
2020 Toyota Prius Prime 16 5 1 View 2020 Problems →
2021 Toyota Prius Prime Current Page 10 4 0 Current
2022 Toyota Prius Prime 8 3 1 View 2022 Problems →
2023 Toyota Prius Prime 5 0 4 View 2023 Problems →
2024 Toyota Prius Prime 11 1 4 View 2024 Problems →
Comparative Disclaimer: Complaint totals are unadjusted historical counts and are not normalized for vehicles sold, active fleet size, or total road mileage. Newer model years naturally have had less calendar exposure time to accumulate owner filings.

Detailed NHTSA Component Breakdown for 2021 Toyota Prius Prime

Complete distribution of consumer defect reports across all 10 granular NHTSA system and subsystem classifications

Vehicle Component / System Total Complaints Crash Reports Fire Reports Reported Injury Entries Reported Fatality Entries
AIR BAGS,SERVICE BRAKES,ENGINE 1 1 0 0 0
Back Over Prevention / Camera NHTSA category: BACK OVER PREVENTION 1 0 0 0 0
Electrical System NHTSA category: ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 1 0 0 0 0
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,SERVICE BRAKES,FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM 1 1 0 2 0
Forward Collision Avoidance NHTSA category: FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 1 1 0 0 0
POWER TRAIN,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 1 0 0 0 0
POWER TRAIN,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM 1 0 0 0 0
SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC,VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL 1 0 0 0 0
Other / Uncategorized NHTSA category: UNKNOWN OR OTHER 1 1 0 0 0
Visibility & Wipers NHTSA category: VISIBILITY/WIPER 1 0 0 0 0
Data Attribution & Reporting Methodology: Complaints are unverified voluntary submissions to the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI). Because multiple vehicle components can be cited within a single owner complaint submission, component-level rollups may sum to more than the unique complaint count (10). Injury and fatality entries in the detailed table reflect raw values entered by reporting consumers across individual submissions; they are not deduplicated casualty statistics and may include duplicate or unverified entries. Complaint volume is not normalized for sales volume or vehicle mileage and does not represent an audited component failure rate.

Official NHTSA Defect Investigations (1)

1 CLOSED

Formal safety defect inquiries and engineering analyses opened by the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI)

Official Federal Inquiries: NHTSA opens a defect investigation when safety screening or consumer defect trends indicate a potential unreasonable safety risk. An open investigation is a formal inquiry and does not by itself confirm a defect or result in a mandatory recall.
CLOSED Defect Petition (DP) ODI Action #DP22005
Opened: 2023-01-27 • Closed: 2023-08-07

Pedestrian alert sounds

Affected Component: ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:PROPULSION SYSTEM

NHTSA received a petition on or about July 18, 2022, requesting that Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 141 be applied to all electric and hybrid vehicles operating in the United States. The petition can be reviewed at NHTSA.gov under ODI Number 11486072. FMVSS 141 establishes performance requirements for pedestrian alert sounds for motor vehicles. The standard applies to hybrid and electric vehicles that have a gross vehicle weight ra...

✓ Resulted in Safety Recall Campaign: 22V063000 Official NHTSA File →
Official US Government Data Provenance

The complaint records on this page are retrieved directly from the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) public database.

Local Production Store Compiled: August 2026 • Deterministic Audited Dataset • Zero Dynamic External API Runtime Latency.