Honda Accords and CR-Vs Parasitic Battery Draining Class Action

Certain Honda CR-V and Honda Accord vehicles suffer from “parasitic draining,” the complaint for this class action alleges, compromising the vehicles’ safety. What is parasitic draining? The complaint says it “occurs when electrical components in a vehicle fail to shut down once the vehicle is parked and turned off, which in turn allows the components to continue consuming power from the battery[.]”

The class for this action is all persons in the US and its territories who are current or former owners or lessees of a 2017-2019 Honda CR-V or 2016-2019 Honda Accord. In addition or in the alternative, the complaint proposes a California Class of all such people in the state of California.

Batteries provide power to sparkplugs and starters. However, they are also used to provide power to hazard lights and other safety features that should operate when the engine is off.

When a vehicle suffers from parasitic draining, it may not start. The complaint alleges, “If not properly repaired, parasitic draining results in the premature obsolescence of the vehicle’s battery and various related component failures.”

The damage caused by this continual draining does not give any warning of failures. The complaint claims it “creat[es] the risk of vehicles stopping while being driven, and threaten[s] to cause and/or caus[es] federally mandated safety features such as emergency hazard lights and headlights to fail. Prolonged and recurrent battery depletion results in the overuse of the vehicle’s alternator (which is used to replenish the battery when the engine is on) and can cause the vehicle’s engine to stall.”

The complaint alleges that Honda knew about the parasitic draining problem even before the vehicles at issue in this case were put on sale, yet it has not warned customers, nor has it come up with a fix for the problem. According to the complaint, it has simply gone on knowingly to sell over two million of the vehicles at issue in this case.

It has instructed its dealerships to update the vehicles’ software or replace dead batteries when necessary, the complaint claims, but it says this is only a temporary fix because the draining and excess wear will continue.

The CR-V has been Honda’s bestselling vehicle in the US for eight years now, while the Accord has been its third bestselling vehicle in 2019 and 2020. The complaint alleges that Honda become a major player in the US auto market “based on its assurances to consumers of care, durability, and quality.”

The complaint quotes a number of online postings about the problem, including one that says, “I shouldn’t have to recreate the scene from Apollo 13 where they’re working to boot up the lunar module in just the right sequence so as to not overload the batteries—it’s an automobile, not a trip to space.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Automobile
Tags: Battery System, Defective Automobile