PHEV Flood Fail
Posted: Wed, 27 Jun 2018, 22:33
Almost a year since our PHEV failed suddenly for no obvious reason, we had the same thing happen today, albeit with possible provocation this time.
We had 75mm rain (in our own rain gauge) overnight and so there were some very large puddles on the roads around our place. We headed off for our dental appointments this morning and waded through about 4 large puddles, none more than axle-deep. About 2km past the last puddle we had a familiar cacophony of error messages on the dashboard. Basically every TLA (three-letter-acronym) our PHEV answered to was failing.
As happened last time, the vehicle dropped into "crawl" mode. I suspect this "crawl mode" limits the max current as acceleration was very sluggish, but we were able to get up to 40kph or so. We got back home, parked the PHEV in the garage and left it, heading out in our alternative vehicle, now very late for our dental appointments.
So, was it the water that triggered this problem? If not, it's a pretty amazing coincidence. We did some reading about the PHEV and fording and it appears that the official line is muddy. The manual makes some vague reference to not driving through water, however a number of people have stated online that they have been told that driving through water is OK, though various maximum depths have been quoted.
We've been extremely happy with our PHEV to date, despite the failure last year that resulted in a 6-week hiatus while the dealer struggled with the problem. Today's event has dented our confidence
We're not home tonight so the vehicle will have a long rest (and dry out hopefully) in its garage. However, what do we do if it starts up without any error messages as it did last year after "resting" for an hour or two?
Cheers,
We had 75mm rain (in our own rain gauge) overnight and so there were some very large puddles on the roads around our place. We headed off for our dental appointments this morning and waded through about 4 large puddles, none more than axle-deep. About 2km past the last puddle we had a familiar cacophony of error messages on the dashboard. Basically every TLA (three-letter-acronym) our PHEV answered to was failing.
As happened last time, the vehicle dropped into "crawl" mode. I suspect this "crawl mode" limits the max current as acceleration was very sluggish, but we were able to get up to 40kph or so. We got back home, parked the PHEV in the garage and left it, heading out in our alternative vehicle, now very late for our dental appointments.
So, was it the water that triggered this problem? If not, it's a pretty amazing coincidence. We did some reading about the PHEV and fording and it appears that the official line is muddy. The manual makes some vague reference to not driving through water, however a number of people have stated online that they have been told that driving through water is OK, though various maximum depths have been quoted.
We've been extremely happy with our PHEV to date, despite the failure last year that resulted in a 6-week hiatus while the dealer struggled with the problem. Today's event has dented our confidence

Cheers,