2013 C-Max will intermittenly "instantly" power down.

[Edgar]

This issue has been on and off since I got the car, but has become a more frequent weekly occurance now. The issue is when I park the car and power it off, instead of going through the motions of showing your driving summary and doing that soft shutdown before actually turning off it immediately powers off, the screen goes black and the car is unresponsive, it will not turn on immediately, if I give it some time it will then power back on. But it doesn't respond to any input.

 

Could just be in my head, but I feel like if I bring the key fob to the steering column when trying to get it back on, it seems to be more successful, does the C-Max just instantly shut off if you hit the power button and it doesn't sense the fob nearby, or is there something more to this?

 

At the same time, I'm about to unlock/lock the car from a great distance using the keys, so its not like the batteries are low.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Edgar

[plus 3 golfer]

Check the voltage of your 12 V battery especially when this happens. How long have you owned the car? Do you know if the battery was ever replaced? There is an algorithm that monitors battery age and state of charge of the battery and if certain condition are met will shut down stuff. The best example is the radio. Try this: leave radio on, shut down car, do not open door, and time how long radio will stay on before it shuts down to save power. With a new charged battery and the battery age reset, it will take 10 minutes exactly. As the battery ages, the algorithm computes the losses in the 12 V battery for use in the charging and calculating the SOC. There is a battery age reset that should be done each time the battery is replaced that zeroes out the battery losses. Don’t know what might happen if never reset from new as the losses might be more than the capacity of the battery.

 

So, first make sure your 12V battery is good and battery age was reset.