"EV System Service Required and degraded performance

Hi folks,

I have a 2014 Outlander PHEV and I'm having a serious intermittent problem that no-one has been able to troubleshoot.

For about 3 months now, the car drives normally often with no issue for a week or two, but then suddenly three error messages appear:
1) EV System Service Required
2) RBS Service Required
3) ACC Service Required
The car goes into limited driving mode (I think it will go about 40km), which on the highway with cars around feels quite scary. There doesn't appear to be a rhyme or reason for when it happens (fast, slow, driving a short time or long time, etc).

I took the car back to the authorised service centre and they checked it out, with the following results:
1) The 3 error codes were not stored at all, so my photos of the dashboard errors are the only evidence
2) There was an error code stored about the remote wifi control unit (part # 8637B364). I had no idea it was even fitted as it isn't enabled.
3) They suggested that if I didn't use that, they could unplug it to see if that fixed the issue.
4) After a week of driving with that remote wifi unit unplugged, the dreaded errors appeared again!
5) Basically they have no idea what the problem is and their only suggestion was that perhaps I had to replace the main traction battery but admitted this was a total guess

Has anyone experienced this, or have a suggestion about how I can further diagnose this? MMAL authorised reps don't seem to have a clue about it and I feel like I have to do a bit of my own digging as I understand replacing the main traction battery costs a fortune.

Thanks,
Sully

My guess (hey, the dealership can guess ... so why wouldn't I!) is that your 12 volt battery needs replacement.

Yes, agreed.

Typically these are problems with the little 12V battery, not the traction battery.

I would also suggest replacing your dealer with one that doesn't recommend swapping out the most expensive part of the car at a cost greater than its value because they are too lazy, greedy or stupid to do their job!

Unplugging the wifi module is the worst thing to do if you are having 12V battery issues. Best is to have it connected and registered to a phone. Doing so means that it will know that it is drawing power from the 12V battery (along with other small draws such as ECUs, alarms etc) and will run a daily scheduled charge cycle from the main drive battery to keep the 12V battery topped up.

Nevertheless, I would first change out the 12V battery if it is more than 5 years old.

sully said:

1) EV System Service Required
2) RBS Service Required
3) ACC Service Required
The car goes into limited driving mode (I think it will go about 40km), which on the highway with cars around feels quite scary. There doesn't appear to be a rhyme or reason for when it happens (fast, slow, driving a short time or long time, etc).

Click to expand...

Our PHEV did something similar, differing in comming to a complete halt. Minutes later going again. It got worse over some weeks, and later testing on rollers in a specialist EV-workshop ended in changing a cell monitoring unit.

After the repair the car has worked flawless.

Hi all,

Thank you for the replies everyone and apologies for not responding sooner, I think I don't have notifications set up in this forum properly!

A number of users recommended replacing the 12V battery. This was just done about a month ago due to the Mitsubishi recall regarding 12V batteries. The problem was there before and after so I think we can exclude this as the culprit but I will check the battery health myself as a precaution.

tfv43 said:

Our PHEV did something similar, differing in comming to a complete halt. Minutes later going again. It got worse over some weeks, and later testing on rollers in a specialist EV-workshop ended in changing a cell monitoring unit.

After the repair the car has worked flawless.

Click to expand...

This is interesting, do you have any details about this cell monitoring unit? I'm just south of the Gold Coast I may have to find an EV specialist here.

greendwarf said:

I would also suggest replacing your dealer with one that doesn't recommend swapping out the most expensive part of the car at a cost greater than its value because they are too lazy, greedy or stupid to do their job!

Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more it just means driving 1.5 hours away instead of 30mins away, but these guys have technical expertise of my mother-in-law and the imagination of my cactus so it may be worth it.

littlescrote said:

Unplugging the wifi module is the worst thing to do if you are having 12V battery issues. Best is to have it connected and registered to a phone. Doing so means that it will know that it is drawing power from the 12V battery (along with other small draws such as ECUs, alarms etc) and will run a daily scheduled charge cycle from the main drive battery to keep the 12V battery topped up.

Nevertheless, I would first change out the 12V battery if it is more than 5 years old.

Click to expand...

Well since it clearly isn't the WiFi module it certainly sounds like good advice to plug it back in. I never even knew I had it because it wasn't enabled but I've found some resources for activating it.

sully said:

tfv43 said:

Our PHEV did something similar, differing in comming to a complete halt. Minutes later going again. It got worse over some weeks, and later testing on rollers in a specialist EV-workshop ended in changing a cell monitoring unit.

After the repair the car has worked flawless.

Click to expand...

This is interesting, do you have any details about this cell monitoring unit? I'm just south of the Gold Coast I may have to find an EV specialist here.

Click to expand...

I know how cell monitorering works in theory, but how it's implemented in the PHEV i have no idea.
This was in Denmark, and the Mitsubishi dealer/import did the work on transport and kontakt to the EV-workshop. A varanty job, so not a lot of details to us.