NHTSA Complaint #11539645 — 2014 HONDA ODYSSEY

. We were driving on a freeway in rural Minnesota at around 70 mph when the tire pressure monitor lit up. There were no warning lights before that.We started to slow down and suddenly the dashboard lit up with multiple warning lights and the engine stuttered and quit. Fortunately we were going downhill and managed to coast onto an exit (without benefit of power steering or power brakes) and coasted onto the ramp shoulder. After we stopped, the battery seemed to have power; the starter motor would begin to operate but it would stop in less than a second, the car would not restart and the dashboard showed warnings about the ESC and ABS in addition to other warnings. When a tow truck finally arrived, we described the symptoms and the tow truck driver instantly said "It's the alternator". He connected a measuring device to the battery, the car started and ran briefly and he confirmed that the problem was a defective alternator. The dealer replaced the alternator fixing the problem. No other repair was needed. Clearly the alternator failure glitched the computer and caused the car to shut down. The fact that the tow truck driver instantly identified the problem from our verbal description is evidence that this is a rather common problem--even if it is not frequently reported. The catastrophic alternator failure in our Honda Odyssey could have caused a very serious accident. We were very lucky that we were able to coast to a safe place. Every car should be fail-safe in case of an alternator failure! I have experienced two other on-the-road alternator failures in the past. In both cases I received a red warning light and the car continued to operate on existing battery charge until I reached a safe place.