NHTSA complaint #11439002

Owner complaint summary

Description: - Recurring on multiple occasions - Multiple lights on the dash come on. They may flash or persist - i.e. engine light, turtle light, crash avoidance light, among others. - The vehicle loses power (it’s a hybrid). This includes the motor and the engine. - The steering is compromised. You cannot steer the vehicle very well during this loss of power. - The vehicle usually will not restart and must be towed in or, in some cases, the battery can be disconnected causing the vehicle to reset and allowing it to begin operating again. This solution can work for a several power cycles or none at all. - When this happens, and you attempt to restart the vehicle sometimes when the power returns you are unable to tell if the vehicle is in neutral, drive, reverse, park, etc. - I experienced a case where the vehicle was in the Run position and the power windows would not open. When it was in the Off position, the windows would open. Perhaps this is intended behavior. - The seatbelt light will stay on even though all passengers in the vehicle are buckled in. It is unclear if this is part of the same issue, but it seems to be. - Systems compromised: Steering, braking, power/engine, seatbelts, etc. Examples of Incidents: - Driving in neighborhood (Safe Location) - Driving at highway speed (Unsafe Occurrence) - Driving on an off-road trail (thankfully with others) (Unsafe Occurrence) - Driving at highway speed - We almost crashed twice trying to get off the hwy. (Unsafe Occurrence) Compounding Safety Issues: - Roadside Assistance didn’t show up after ~7 hours waiting. - FCA’s utter confidence in the repair process is scary to me. - Confidence apparently based on recent software updates to the system, which was installed in a prior visit. The FCA rep wasn’t initially aware the vehicle was back in for service 2 days after installing the latest firmware. - Lack of ability to update software OTA (over the air).