Is anyone else experiencing brake issues [failure]?

[nikwax]

Also:

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/edib.html


this is how Leaf does it, I'd be interested if other EVs were significantly different.

 

[brakefailure]

Having very similar or exact same problem in Southern California with my 2016 Spark EV. 4 times it has happened. It is currently in the shop being "fixed" for the 4th time.

Chevy/GM repurchased u/emailjillian's car the first time, and is discussing canceling the lease remainder on our car (given there are no 2017 Spark EVs to exchange). This sounds to me like "sweeping a known problem under the rug." Reading this thread, I am convinced more of that.

GM has a history of ignoring fatally dangerous issues until it is forced into the court room. This may be the appropriate time for a class-action suit. Anyone have insight on this?

 

[nikwax]

How can the brakes fail? How?

 

[NORTON]

How can the brakes fail? How?

I agree. HOW?

I haven't posted on this, waiting for the dust to clear, but every car design on earth has plain old Mechanical/Hydraulic Brakes as the built in backup. It is a legal requirement.
These dang new BEV's don't have an old fashioned Emergency Brake Lever, but there is the Electric Park Brake. (Not sure how that works if activated at speed. The roads are wet today. I'll try to test this today,, and not flat spot my rear tires if it just full-on or full-off)

MAYBE, if the power-assist/regen signal souce/ABS/Stability Control/Power Pack component that the actual Brake Pedal is connected to fails electrically,,, the driver is then expected to press harder to get Hydraulic un-assisted Brakes.
MAYBE, this last part is not taking place?

 

[nikwax]

How can the brakes fail? How?

I agree. HOW?

I haven't posted on this, waiting for the dust to clear, but every car design on earth has plain old Mechanical/Hydraulic Brakes as the built in backup. It is a legal requirement.
These dang new BEV's don't have an old fashioned Emergency Brake Lever, but there is the Electric Park Brake. (Not sure how that works if activated at speed. The roads are wet today. I'll try to test this today,, and not flat spot my rear tires if it just full-on or full-off)

MAYBE, if the power-assist/regen signal souce/ABS/Stability Control/Power Pack component that the actual Brake Pedal is connected to fails electrically,,, the driver is then expected to press harder to get Hydraulic un-assisted Brakes.
MAYBE, this last part is not taking place?

yep





Anyone remember the Audi 5000? All that runaway acceleration and "the harder I pressed on the brakes the faster the car went"?. Yeah.



Someone on one of these brake threads said "I had the brake pedal floored and nothing happened, and then I pushed harder and..." What is past "floored"? Fred Flintstone?

 

[brakefailure]

MAYBE, if the power-assist/regen signal souce/ABS/Stability Control/Power Pack component that the actual Brake Pedal is connected to fails electrically,,, the driver is then expected to press harder to get Hydraulic un-assisted Brakes.
MAYBE, this last part is not taking place?

Yes, this is what happens.

The brake issue has happened to me technically 5 times, and all were more or less exactly what u/emailjillianne described, with the exception of one time, that I didn't even consider of note, but it might help diagnose the issue. My initial post mentioned 4 times, because those were the ones while I was moving, and I tend to forget about the 5th. The 5th time, the car was stopped when the brakes went out.

After the fourth time, I was able to navigate the car to the side of the road and put it in park. I did this by switching the car to L mode to slow it down (every time has been in D mode, which is what I usually use), popping on the four-way flashers, and pushing down hard on the brake pedal to activate what seems to be the backup hydraulic brakes. It takes a good deal of effort, and the car takes a while to come to a stop, but then does (has each time).

I got to the side of the road, put it in park, and turned the car off. (Totally flat road.) When I restarted the car, with my foot on the brake, the warning lights were gone. But when I shifted the car to D, foot still on the pedal, the alarm lights came on again and the Brake Assist went out. The car lurched forward toward the car in front of me, and I switched to L and slammed down hard on the hydraulic brakes again to get it stopped.

So, that's something that can happen, too, it turns out.

Hope that helps inquiring minds.

Love,
Barney Rubble

 

[NORTON]

...The car lurched forward toward the car in front of me, and I switched to L and slammed down hard on the hydraulic brakes again to get it stopped.

So, that's something that can happen, too, it turns out.

Hope that helps inquiring minds.

Love,
Barney Rubble

"Lurched forward"?
This is new to this discussion and sounds very serious.
Tell us more about this.

And remember you have that Park Brake switch. I still need to test using that at a slow speed. And that Park Brake releases automatically after you apply some Go Pedal. That can feel like a lurch.

 

[brakefailure]

I'll describe it again in as much detail as I clearly remember, and maybe someone will see something new:

I had just gotten the car safely to the side of the road after the problem happened the fourth time. I knew that the car's sensors had reset one of the times prior, after being turned off and towed to the dealership. I thought I would try "rebooting" the system by turning the car off.

I put the car in park, turned the power off. I let it sit a few minutes.

I put my foot on the brake pedal, and pushed the power on button.

The power came on, the car was still in P. Everything was normally displaying on the dash, and there was a normal level of resistance from the brake pedal. As far as I could see, the car's sensors and alarms had reset.

I do not recall whether I took my foot off the brake pedal at that point. Probably not, as I usually would just shift to D from here, as per normal in a car. (You put your foot on the brake before shifting into gear.)

Here's where it gets interesting: Once I had shifted into D and while my foot was still on the brake pedal, the StabiliTrak/Brake Assist warnings came on, and the brake pedal ceased to have normal resistance.

What I mean by this is, the power brakes seemed to be out. The car no longer being held back by the power brakes, the same level of pressure of my foot was no longer sufficient to keep the car from moving forward. It began moving forward toward the car that was parked in front of me. I immediately slammed on the brakes hard and was able to get the car under control and into a stop using what we've all described as being the backup non-power brake system.

That help?

 

[Arktctr]

I was hesitant to reply but back in November 2015 I experienced brake failure after a side impact collision. I was t boned, hit the brakes but nothing happened and I ended up continuing on to hit the curb after the impact despite fully depressing the brake pedal...the issue was investigated and nothing was found but it was surprising nonetheless...

 

[twinsemi]

Let's get this one going again. My Spark is now in the shop for the second time with the same problem as emailjillianne has painfully described. This has happened with multiple drivers, there are no additional electronics short of a USB memory stick for music and a cigarette adapter to USB charging port plugged in at the rear console. Over a year ago the same thing happened. At that time, I was under the impression that the ABS module (located in the left front corner) had been the victim of latent collision damage from a LEAF driver who ran a red light and crunched the front end of my Spark about 6 months prior. Now, I am not so sure, especially after reading this thread.
In my experience with this situation, the message sequence is the same, regen braking is gone, I can still brake without any power assist, and after stopping the car and turning it off and then back on again, I can proceed normally. The time that it takes before recurring can be anywhere from 1 month to 1 minute. Yes I have been living with this for some time, and no I have not hit anything. I do have another Chevy. It has no power assist for the brakes, and I learned to drive on cars without. I also have many times coasted down hills with the engine off on automatic tranny cars so that I have plenty of experience with trying to push myself into the back seat. So I have not been particularly freaked out personally. But. . . . My wife drove the car last week for a small errand (it is my daily commute vehicle with over 31K on it now) and was not happy when it happened twice to her.
So the car is now at the dealer's shop in SJ again and waiting on a new ABS module. The technically correct name for the part is the BPMV in Chevy parts language. While they say that the part will arrive this week, last time (Oct 2016) it was serviced they had it for 4 weeks because the replacement was also bad, and then the GM technical staff had to get involved. Fingers and toes crossed.
While this is a big PITA for me now, when the BPMV fails next time (and if you say it won't happen again you will be dead to me) it will be out of warranty. This is a $2K part, and I don't think that includes labor. How can we incentivize GM to real action on this?

 

[MBPdx]

Ok, this is me - http://mychevysparkev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4738

First, I watched this thread with horror last year when a lot of folks on here jumped on Jillianne for not having an adequate explanation for them the failure and that the video from South Korea wasn't valid because it was an ICE car. That kinda bummed me out that some of you would invalidate her experience like that.

So I had the same issue, linked above. What the dealer told me was that the master cylinder pressure switch had ruptured AND the brake master cylinder had failed. They replaced both and said they pressure tested them. So this failure could certainly happen in an ICE car without regen braking.

I embarked on a long research process of searching the NHTSA's database for reports of brake failure for the Spark EV and other EV and ICE GM cars that share the same brake system. I found plenty of them. I also tried looking through the Fatality Reporting System, and while there were fatalities, quite often in the absence of a survivor it appears like it's hard to say more than "the car went off the road and hit a tree and everyone died."

I was unsuccessful getting either the dealer, Wentworth Chevy, or the GM executive team to take any responsibility or buy back the car. They all said "we don't buy back cars, but hey if you want a NEW Chevy we'd be happy to buy your Spark back and lease you a new one!" The dealer also refused to provide any of the paperwork about the half-a-dozen times I brought my car in for the parking brake locking up one of the rear wheels and causing the wheel to get red hot and the car to vibrate heavily.

So I just waited out the last 6 months of my lease and returned the POS.

So my advice is to e-mail all of the executives at GM directly and someone from their team will get back to you. Good luck.

 

[CCIE]

I remember this thread. It smelled like BS then, and still does.

To recap, the OP claimed she had two Spark EVs that both exhibited the same brake issues. The odds of that are insanely long, unless the OP was installing something in both cars that was causing CAN bus interference. She wouldn’t admit to that, but it’s the only realistic explanation.

This latest claim is more believable. Parts do break on all cars. Though, I’d be surprised if the master cylinder actually failed in a way to compromised both hydraulic brake channels. So, likely the front or rear brakes were still functional.

Understandable that GM would not buyback the car since they were able to fix it by changing the master cylinder.

 

[twinsemi]

To CCIE,
This is certainly not a hydraulic failure that I have been seeing here. This is very likely some combination of electrical and software issue. The brakes are fine. The computer in the module (or one that controls the module like in TRON) has decided that the system controlling the brake power assist will shut down because it has determined through it own masterful decision making powers that the stability control is compromised and the driver must be made aware that dealer service is required immediately. Reset (power cycled) the system and it works fine.

 

[CCIE]

To CCIE,
This is certainly not a hydraulic failure that I have been seeing here. This is very likely some combination of electrical and software issue. The brakes are fine. The computer in the module (or one that controls the module like in TRON) has decided that the system controlling the brake power assist will shut down because it has determined through it own masterful decision making powers that the stability control is compromised and the driver must be made aware that dealer service is required immediately. Reset (power cycled) the system and it works fine.

You have a car with collision history and say you have a 12V->5V USB adapter plugged in. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that adapter is causing electrical interference, so I'd start by removing it. If the issue recurs, then you likely have a sporadic computer or wiring issue as a result of the collision. You're at the mercy of the dealer to figure it out.

We all have roughly the same firmware installed, and 99.9% of us have no braking issue, so it's unlikely that it's a software issue.

My main point in all of my posts in this thread is that a complete failure of the hydraulic braking system in any modern cars is unheard of and almost impossible. So, while the brakes may have been harder to use, no one posting here actually lost their brakes.

 

[IllinoisSpark15]

Count me as one of the unlucky ones. My Spark EV '14 is at the dealership being diagnosed for this issue. Exactly as emailj described. Service stabilitrac comes on the diagnostics screen below the speedometer. Then the abs goes out (dash light illuminates), then the red brake dash light becomes lit. This happened when I was on the tollway, driving about 60mph, in D. I do not drive in L. After a few minutes of driving like this, the brake pedal felt soft when depressed, and then all power braking was gone and I had to press the pedal extremely hard to action any braking at all. I took a picture once I reached the dealership.

Also, the reports from other affected owners about turning off the car, then back on, actually does reset whatever issue this is. But after a couple of additional miles of driving, the issue reoccurs. This is very dangerous. I'll post what my dealership says when I hear more. I just brought it in today right before closing, so it may be next week before I hear something.

I don't know how to add the picture inline, so I'll provide a link.

Picture
https://photos.app.goo.gl/31PPKdAUaukQ5mi03

 

[Chris101]

^ wow! Thank you for sharing.


This is clearly beyond an isolated incident or 2!


What the heck is going on here? This is not good

 

[NORTON]

.... and then all power braking was gone and I had to press the pedal extremely hard to action any braking at all. ...
... I'll post what my dealership says when I hear more. ....

Thanks for following up on this dangerous situation.

I always assumed the basic mechanical/hydraulic brakes were there when all the power systems fail. On every car.
It's a federal requirement. I don't think any manufacturer has true 'Brake by Wire'.

What may not be clear to the Federalies is: What is "Extremely Hard" brake pedal pressure. Is there a spec for how much a person has to press when SHTF?

Can this be tested by a long press of the Blue Power Button while driving? A total power down while in motion?
I believe there is a hydraulic accumulator in the system that may provide power brakes for a few applications.
Don't try this at home. Leave this testing to professional fools....

Also,,, Is a gasser Spark any different? Lots of gassers no longer use that big ol' vacuum brake booster....

 

[IllinoisSpark15]

Those are very good questions, Norton. I'm honestly not qualified to answer them. But, I will share any information gleaned from this incident that the dealership tells me.

 

[IllinoisSpark15]

Update:
Two components have failed and need to be replaced that affected the braking system.

Parts and numbers:
Brake Pressure Modulator Valve #23283683
Electronic Brake Control Module #23154359

They are very costly, just these two parts cost~$1700.
$2600 w/labor. Ouch!

They also confirmed that there have been other Spark repairs for this issue. They didn't give me a number of how many, but said it was listed in the troubleshooting guide they utilize when diagnosing vehicle issues.

Additionally, the parts are not considered part of the electrical system components nor the power train. As such, it is not covered under those warranties. The vehicle's 3 year bumper-to-bumper warranty ended mid-2017. So I'm stuck with the bill.

I hope this information helps clarify some of the particulars for this issue.

 

[MrDRMorgan]

Update:
Two components have failed and need to be replaced that affected the braking system.

Parts and numbers:
Brake Pressure Modulator Valve #23283683
Electronic Brake Control Module #23154359

They are very costly, just these two parts cost~$1700.
$2600 w/labor. Ouch!

They also confirmed that there have been other Spark repairs for this issue. They didn't give me a number of how many, but said it was listed in the troubleshooting guide they utilize when diagnosing vehicle issues.

Additionally, the parts are not considered part of the electrical system components nor the power train. As such, it is not covered under those warranties. The vehicle's 3 year bumper-to-bumper warranty ended mid-2017. So I'm stuck with the bill.

I hope this information helps clarify some of the particulars for this issue.

Thank you very much for posting this information and the photo of your dash screen when the problem occurred. I will show this to my wife so she is aware too.