Why the horn warning?

wywa · Aug 8, 2016

Charging my 2014 for the first time today I found that the horn will blast when I get out of the car and close the door. Ok, I thought maybe I should not get in the car at all to charge but then realised I need to switch to 12 amps each time from within the car. So how to avoid the horn blasts? College students will be moving in soon and the horn will disturb them as the garage adjoins one of the bedrooms. P.S. I haven't found the Manual yet.
Thanx.
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MrDRMorgan · Aug 9, 2016

wywa said:
Charging my 2014 for the first time today I found that the horn will blast when I get out of the car and close the door. Ok, I thought maybe I should not get in the car at all to charge but then realised I need to switch to 12 amps each time from within the car. So how to avoid the horn blasts? College students will be moving in soon and the horn will disturb them as the garage adjoins one of the bedrooms. P.S. I haven't found the Manual yet.
Thanx.
--

Here is where to find the manual: http://www.chevrolet.com/content/dam/Chevrolet/northamerica/usa/nscwebsite/en/Home/Ownership/Manuals%20and%20Videos/02_pdf/2k14spark_ev.pdf

fr100 · Aug 11, 2016

Did you leave while the car was still powered on or did you try to lock the doors with the key still inside? The car doesn't like either of those things.

NorthernSpark · Aug 12, 2016

I think it's important to distinguish whether it's the 'chirping horn' (it's actually the same as the pedestrian warning sound that comes if you pull up on the turn signal stalk), or the full-blown horn. It took me a few days to figure out what I was doing wrong, but if the car is locked and plugged in, and you unplug it without unlocking the doors, the full horn will sound.

The chirping horn will come on if the car is powered on and you get out of it (assuming the key is in your pocket). It will also come on if the car is powered off but it detects you leaving the key in the car (one time it had fallen out of my pocket onto the seat, I got out of the car and closed the door before I noticed).

cwerdna · Aug 12, 2016

NorthernSpark said:
It took me a few days to figure out what I was doing wrong, but if the car is locked and plugged in, and you unplug it without unlocking the doors, the full horn will sound.

To disable that, you need to disable power loss alert and cord theft alert. It sounds about 10 seconds after the unplug.

It's ridiculous that GM makes these enabled by default on their EVs and PHEVs. It's not conducive to plug sharing and I've met numerous Volt folks who didn't know it could be disabled or they claim "theirs doesn't do it", until we test it. We have a mystery Spark EV at work who doesn't have their honk alarms disabled. By mystery, they haven't added their license plate and owner info to an internal spreadsheet we have.

I know of no other EV/PHEV maker that has such honk alarms at all or at least enabled by default.