NHTSA complaint #11502833

Owner complaint summary

While driving down a 4 lane major highway where the posted speed limit is 70 mph, the vehicle suddenly flashed "Service Charging System" with the check engine icon came on and the propulsion on the vehicle ceased funtioning. The D for drive was flashing as well. As a hybrid vehicle, the car should transition to gas without incident, but it doesn't. Instead it cut power to the engine leaving me, the driver, scrambling to find a safe location to get off the road, which is not always feasible or safe, endangering everyone in the vehicle and on the road if others are not paying attention to the sudden loss of power and propulsion of the vehicle in front of them. Thankfully, I was able to safely get off the road as a result of some helpful semi's, but not everyone may be in such a situation. Should this happen to someone else who regularly drives across a bridge, for instance, could possibly cause an accident by being unable to pull off at a designated area. I was able to engage the gas engine by turning it off and back on after stopping, but it did not store the "service charging system" error. This was determined when dropping it off at the Chrysler dealership. There are a few stored error codes including a "low voltage differential signal" which also occurred last year when they said they replaced a part in relation to the heating/cooling battery fault on the high-voltage batteries (less than 6 months old at the time) and similar to the recall on the older models. Making this the second time in the shop for a battery issue. Should a connection between the battery faults and the Body Control Module or PCM (not sure what that one stands for), they were parts also replaced within the first month of the vehicle. The vehicle is currently at the dealership for review. There were no other warnings or messages prior to the failure. Pictures of the error as I saw them after safely stopping are provided. Never have I had a car just stop functioning and this is entremely unsafe.