NHTSA Complaint #11474347 — 2017 HONDA PILOT

The Auto Start/Stop feature on my 2017 Honda Pilot has had issues for the last 2 year. It started with the engine occasionally "hesitating" to restart after I held the brake pedal down at a stop light. As it started to happen more frequently, I took it to my Honda dealer and they told me that they could not recreate the issue and thus could not diagnose and fix it. Within the last 6 months, the issue has become more and more frequent and severe to the point that I have been worried about the car not restarting and have been manually turning off the Auto Start/Stop feature when I drive the vehicle. It does seem to occur more frequently in hot weather when I running the A/C and there is more of load on the engine and system. On July 16, 2022, I forgot to turn off the Auto Start/Stop feature, and at the first stoplight that I stopped at, the feature turned on, shut off my engine and then failed to restart. I had to put the car in Park and then it took me a few moments to get the car to re-start. The vehicle was very slow to respond, as I was afraid of the car not restarting at all. After a couple of minutes the car did restart. I turned off the Auto Start/Stop feature and did not have any further issues on my drive home. After the failure to restart from the Auto feature, my dashboard told me to put the car in park and restart. I do not recall if any other warning lights appeared, as I was franticly trying to get car restarted in the middle of traffic and cars honking at me. Once the car restarted all warning lights disappeared. Upon returning home that day, I Googled the issue before making an appointment with my dealer again. I became aware of NTHSA's investigation into this issue. From my experience, Honda should recall these vehicles and fix the issue. Someone could have hit me from behind at speed, as it was a green light and not everyone is always fully paying attention, or has poor depth perception.