I was returning home from a road trip and with five miles left the accelerator stopped working and the check engine light came on with the service electrical system message. I was able to safely coast to the side of the road. It started working again but it stopped working 5 more times and barely made it to my driveway. It’s been in the shop since 7/6 and now they say a new hybrid transmission will be in on 8/3. This is the worst situation that I have ever had with any vehicle!
2020 Chrysler Pacifica Plug-In Hybrid transmission complaints
Page 2 of 2: complaints 11 to 17 of 17, newest first, as owners wrote them.
Vehicle completely lost all electrical and drivability components while driving. Car could not be restarted or shifted into gear to get out of lane. Gave multiple warning lights. Vehicle was towed to dealership and was assessed a few days later.
On July 30th 2022 the van suffered total loss of motive power while driving on a rural highway at 65mph. The incident put my family as risk as I was required to coast the car off of the side or the road to keep from becoming an obstruction to traffic. If the incident had occurred on a 3 lane highway or in heavier congestion I may have been unable to pull off the road before losing my momentum. The van showed no prior indication of malfunction until it shuttered as the engine stalled. Following the shutter and loss of all forward power the car dash produced a check engine light followed by a warning to Pull over and place car in Park. I pulled over to the side of the road and was able to place the car into park and shut it off. After that the car would not start or shift out of park and only displayed "Service Charging System" on the dashboard. The car was then towed to the nearest Chrysler dealer (Watson Benzie, LLC 1514 Benzie Hwy Benzonia,MI49616-9650) where it was determined that "Power Inverter Module" had failed and needed to be replaced. As of September 19th 2022 the car is still at the dealer awaiting a replacement part. The damaged part should be available for inspection.
The vehicle, shortly after starting, says service charging system and loses power completely. Power steering goes out along with any brake assist and no gas pedal power. I’ve almost hit several cars while trying to regain control of the vehicle. When I finally get it to stop, the work around I’ve found is to power off the car for a few minutes, power it back on, then it’ll work. But this happens about once a week. The dealer attempted a repair once but issue persists. We’re taking it back in. But based on online forums, this is a dangerous and widespread problem with the Pacifica Hybrid. Please investigate! I have kids. Thanks!
While driving on electric only power at highway speeds, the van stalled. The dash showed "put vehicle in park to restart" and I had to pull over with no ability to accelerate, come to a complete stop, and place the vehicle in park in order to start the van again. This happened several times, the dealership was unable to recreate the stalling issue, but found two codes stored from the check engine light coming on just prior to the stalling: P0A43 - Drive Motor A Position Sensor Circuit Intermittent P0A3F - Drive Motor A Position Sensor Circuit Both Chrysler and the dealership initially refused to attempt any repairs, and wanted me to take possession of a vehicle that is randomly stalling at highway speeds, which is extremely dangerous. When I refused and pushed them to actually address the codes, they decided to replace the transmission, which houses Drive Motor A. This same issue and process has been repeated with Pacifica Hybrid models ranging from 2017-2021, and is widely reported on the website Pacificaforums.com
On my Pacifica Hybrid the vehicle drivetrain loses all power and requires the driver put the vehicle in PARK and TURN OFF the ignition and START the vehicle again. Typically this happens when BOTH of the following conditions are met: 1) battery for the hybrid drivetrain, not the 12v accessory battery, runs to 0% or less than 1% state of charge 2) hard braking or sudden braking or braking when going down a hill. The hard braking seems to overwhelm the recharging system when the battery is at 0% causing a powertrain shutdown and all kinds of error lights flashing. It eventually ends with a "SERVICE CHARGING SYSTEM" message. Once the vehicle is in this condition it is very easy to replicate as I was able to do in this video that I recorded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6NF-kKPx5w This is quite dangerous and has left me barely able to get to the shoulder of major highways several times.
The vehicle is an electric and gas hybrid vehicle. While driving the vehicle at highway speeds, the vehicle goes completely dead. There is no power to accelerate, no power steering, reduced braking. This happened in june of 2020 and the vehicle had to be towed to the dealership. The dealership had the vehicle for approx. 3 weeks to repair and a new electrical inverter was installed. A similar event happened on 04-13-2021, however this time once the vehicle went dead and the vehicle coasted to a stop, after trying to turn the vehicle back on it was again under power. The vehicle was able to be cautiously driven to the dealership and at the time of writing this it is being services for this issue. In both the june 2020 and current situation, there was an error code stating "service charging system". In both circumstances, this has occurred at highway speeds with significant urban traffic. My wife was driving the vehicle this last time with our child in the vehicle. When this happened she was on a one lane express lane where people travel at the highest highway speeds. She was so concerned about getting struck by another vehicle she considered having both of them depart the vehicle and cross multiple lanes of traffic to get to safety. It is extremely dangerous for the people in the vehicle and for cars around the stalled vehicle. Thankfully they did not get struck.
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