EV system service required stop safely!

[Petal79]

Hi, I have a three year old outlander, about three weeks ago it went in for a three year service and had the service done plus three pieces of recall work done.
On the way home from the dealer as I pulled onto a roundabout and the car went into limp mode and the ev system message showed on the dash. I was able to get off the roundabout, stopped the car and then when I restarted it the car started fine and I drove home without issue.
The following day the car did the same on the way to work, so I called the dealer and they declared it unsafe to drive and took it in. They had it for a week, they could see it had a fault which seemed to relate to the coolant pump on the ev system, however on investigation there was nothing wrong with the pump. They couldn’t get the car to fault in 50 miles of test driving and so returned it to me. I drove home from the dealership without any issue and then left it on the drive for a week as we went on holiday.
On my first journey to work yesterday the same fault occurred. I was able to quickly pull off and stop and restart and then continue without issue. I contacted the dealer who told me they would talk to the foreman and call me back. They didn’t and the same happened again this morning, however I was nearly rear ended by a lorry which given I had my children in the car was quite scary! I’ve called the dealer again but they can’t fit my car in until Friday.

The car seems to go into limp mode as I accelerate away after having been in stop start traffic and it only ever seems to occur when the battery is half full. I charge my car at work and the fault has never occurred on the way home! Battery is always fully charged with no interruption to the charge. Also I now have a weird symbol on the dash of a plug icon and then a colon which appears as I open the drivers door after unlocking but disappears as I start the car.

Has this happened to anyone else? Any suggestions of what the dealer should do as they have never experienced this before! TIA

 

[ThudnBlundr]

That sounds extremely scary, so I hope you get it fixed soon.

I've not had this, but had a similar "phantom" error on a previous car. It turned out that there was an oxidised connection in the wiring harness, which was causing the false readings on that sub-system. It's a PITA, but you could try taking apart the connectors, cleaning them with a very fine sandpaper, and reassembling them. In my case, they replaced several costly components (under warranty - thank heavens!) before finding the real culprit
[EDIT] Safety point! Make sure you are working only on the 12V side with the 12V battery disconnected[/EDIT]

Another thought has just come to me: have you checked the condition of your 12V battery? They get very different use in a PHEV to a regular ICE, and you won't notice poor starting on a cold morning or other symptoms of a failing battery.

 

[Petal79]

Thanks for your reply. It happened again today and I tried to drive it in limp mode to the garage as the dealer had requested, but terrifyingly it lost all power on a very busy roundabout so I ended up stopping it and restarting it , but whereas previously the error cleared quickly it took about 30 seconds to clear before I could restart the car and get to the dealer!

They now have it again so we’ll see if they can find the cause of the issue this time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right and it is something simple, that’s causing the problem!