sudden loss of all drive power on motorway

[itserve]

Have had the GX4hs since September and had no problems, but first long journey to Austria this weekend brought on serious issues. The car just lost all power on the busy A11 on a stretch with no hard shoulder. I could only coast to a halt. Pitch black, raining, lorries thundering past. Tried to restart and engine warning light on. No drive. Called police and after half an hour with my young family trying to shelter in the tree line was attended to by highways. I tried once more to start the car and after two more cycles the car had drive again. Same thing happened on the German autobahn about 6 hours later. It then happened again about 3 hours after that. Both times, waiting 5 minutes and multiple restart attempts eventually returned drive. I guess a software issue but very very dangerous.

 

[schlumbel]

This doesn't sound good. A colleague of mine (we both have a GX4h since June) experienced also a power loss. Happened on a Swiss motorway, no special circumstances, motors simply stopped delivering power. Restart after some minutes … and everything was normal.
Did you run on the ICE or battery at the time it happened ? Cruise control on or off (my colleagues was on at that incident) ?
Curious what your dealer says ….

 

[itserve]

Although I wouldn't wish anyone to have the experience I am relieved the problem has recurred elsewhere.
The first time it happened was running on ICE after about 2.5 hours driving. I had the speed limiter on, and I had been gently braking to slow. When I reapplied the throttle there was nothing there. At that point also no warning lights either. The second time I was using the adaptive cruise control on the autobahn. The third time no aids as I was trying to narrow down a cause - but it still happened. Oddly the same morning on Friday I had the 12v auxiliary 15A fuse blow (number 23 behind glove box) when using a tried and tested in car twin DVD set for my kids. The fuse in the 12V plug was still fine so I have no idea why that 15A one should have blown. Perhaps something amiss in the wiring loom?

Oh and don't ever rely on the so called Pan European assistance to get you to your destination as we called them and explained our problem the first time it happened and they could only offer us a hire car to use to get to the channel tunnel, and another when we returned to the UK after our holidays. Fat lot of good when we needed to drive to Austria hence we risked continuation of our journey.

 

[jaapv]

Just don't knock it into N with your knee. On UK cars the passenger does it.

 

[itserve]

Yep thanks for the useful comment. This fault put my family in danger.

 

[jaapv]

I felt pretty stupid when I discovered the cause.
I can well understand your frustration. Having driven many tens of thousands of miles of Autobahn I have been in similar situations - they're scary.

 

[itserve]

It definitely isn't the case that the car was knocked into neutral. We even tried that to see and the selector needs to be held to the right for at least a second before it will switch from drive to neutral when moving. As I said, we also got an engine warning light and could not get going again without waiting a few minutes and trying several times to restart, switching the car completely off and on again.

 

[Ozukus]

If you look at the following post and in particular starting on page 4, this post describes a similar incident to yourself.

http://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=670&hilit=fatal+trip&start=30

It appears that at high speed the car does not have enough residual energy to provide any charge to the main battery which falls below its acceptable SOC (20%) thus putting the car in turtle mode.

Not seeing these sort of problems where the speed limit is 70MPH/110KMH or less, just those countries with Autobahns!

 

[maby]

Have had the GX4hs since September and had no problems, but first long journey to Austria this weekend brought on serious issues. The car just lost all power on the busy A11 on a stretch with no hard shoulder. I could only coast to a halt. Pitch black, raining, lorries thundering past. Tried to restart and engine warning light on. No drive. Called police and after half an hour with my young family trying to shelter in the tree line was attended to by highways. I tried once more to start the car and after two more cycles the car had drive again. Same thing happened on the German autobahn about 6 hours later. It then happened again about 3 hours after that. Both times, waiting 5 minutes and multiple restart attempts eventually returned drive. I guess a software issue but very very dangerous.

What speed were you doing in the period before the problem? The thread that Ozukas refers to was speculating about issues related to prolonged runs at close to maximum speed.

 

[jaapv]

If you look at the following post and in particular starting on page 4, this post describes a similar incident to yourself.

http://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=670&hilit=fatal+trip&start=30

It appears that at high speed the car does not have enough residual energy to provide any charge to the main battery which falls below its acceptable SOC (20%) thus putting the car in turtle mode.

Not seeing these sort of problems where the speed limit is 70MPH/110KMH or less, just those countries with Autobahns!

That is not a sudden death scenario. The car will bleep first and display a limited power warning, then it will indeed limit power and go into "Turtle" mode (with a turtle displayed) to charge up to the minimum SOC. It will not stop, unless you run out of petrol as well.

I drive quite a bit of Autobahn and I am not one for the slow lane, but in over a year and 30.000 KM. I have only seen this once, just a couple of weeks ago. The car had not been charged up overnight, it was packed to the brim with luggage and had a skibox on top.
Driving constantly @ 90-100 Mph against the wind it did a bleep-limited power once on a very long gradual incline. It did not actually reduce power, though and the display cleared as soon as I lifted my foot of the accelerator for a second or two not to reappear.

 

[itserve]

My speed was between 80 and 85 mph. Fully laden with a roof box too. But no warning beeps, just loss of drive.

 

[itserve]

It's going in to the dealer next week. We got back from Austria with no further problems by leaving the charge button pressed. Average economy for the thousand miles home was 24mpg.

 

[gobiman]

Sorry to hear the story. The autobahns are pretty unforgiving at the best of times!
Also does tend to knock your confidence in the vehicle.
I drove to Austria at half-term but, having thought about taking the PHEV, stuck with my old X5 4.8iS which has winter tyres.
What also put me off was the short range on a 35 litre tank - not good when pushing to catch Eurotunnel.
Do please let us know if there is any definitive diagnosis and good luck.

 

[greendwarf]

Sorry to hear the story. The autobahns are pretty unforgiving at the best of times!
Also does tend to knock your confidence in the vehicle.
I drove to Austria at half-term but, having thought about taking the PHEV, stuck with my old X5 4.8iS which has winter tyres.
What also put me off was the short range on a 35 litre tank - not good when pushing to catch Eurotunnel.
Do please let us know if there is any definitive diagnosis and good luck.

As I posted elsewhere, I drove to southern Alps and back and the car performed faultlessly - so this looks like a "one-off".

BTW I didn't find the fuel tank size a problem - it forces you to take the recommended break every 2 hours or so - but then I had the flexible ticketing so did not have to meet a particular slot. I think it's worth the extra money - roll up when you like, collect the freebie refreshments (also 2 bottles of wine) and head straight to the front of the queue

 

[FrancoPHEV]

I had a similar experience last week when, after a steady run up from Paris to Caen at an average 115kmh, I was approaching a roundabout and it was as if the Phev decided to do it's own emergency stop: anchors down and ABS doing its stuff. Thank goodness there was nothing behind me. I still have absolutely no idea what happened but 1100km and 4 similar journies later, I have not had a repeat performace.

 

[itserve]

Dealer has looked at the car and no fault codes were logged which is very worrying. The incident Has been reported to Mitsubishi who are apparently monitoring reports so I would urge anyone who has experienced the same to tell their dealer to tell Mitsubishi.

 

[karl]

... I was approaching a roundabout and it was as if the Phev decided to do it's own emergency stop: anchors down and ABS doing its stuff.

I had a Peugeot a couple of years ago that sometimes decided to emergency brake if I moved my foot too fast to the brake pedal, even though I didn't push hard at all. It was very unnerving when it happened. I typically triggered it when i didn't know the way and discovered that I had to make an unexpected turn...

 

[jaapv]

I had a similar experience last week when, after a steady run up from Paris to Caen at an average 115kmh, I was approaching a roundabout and it was as if the Phev decided to do it's own emergency stop: anchors down and ABS doing its stuff. Thank goodness there was nothing behind me. I still have absolutely no idea what happened but 1100km and 4 similar journies later, I have not had a repeat performace.

Do you have FCM? If the radar sensor picked something up mistakenly it would do exactly that. You would have had a large sign "Brake" flashing in that case.

 

[Trex]

Hi,

This from anko's pdf from Mitsubishi translated with onenote says :

"If more power is requested will come down 26% the battery charge. 22% SOC: the a/c and heater are disabled. 20% SOC: The power is reduced and the turtle indicator on the instrument panel will light up. At 26% goes turtle indicator off again. 13% SOC the petrol motor on the car will stop."

If itserve missed the turtle mode on the dash, and the power reduction was not enough, and the hv battery got to below 13% SOC could be this is what happened?

He had a big load at high speed and later used charge button and had no further problems.

EDIT the exact phrase in Dutch is : "13% SOC: Als de benzine op is zal de auto stoppen. " . jaapv or anko :?: Is onenote translation correct?


:Regards Trex.

 

[jaapv]

Coming to a stop is not like the running into a brick wall experience described.