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I experienced a weird behavior by my Karma today that was described by a couple of other folks on the forums.
Driving in Stealth mode with a fully-charged battery, the ICE came on. This, by itself, is not that unusual. If I drive my car on battery-only for a couple of days, the ICE turns on for a few minutes and then turns itself off again after a short while. But this time, whenever I stopped at a red light, the ICE would turn itself off, then back on again repeatedly. I tried switching into Sport and back out, and even turned the car off and back on again at a red light (could not safely do a soft or hard reset) to no avail. The ICE kept running in Stealth mode until I got to my office about 50 minutes later. Again, switching in and out of Sport had no effect. As a result, I pulled into my office with 26 miles left on the E-Range indicator. There was no CEL/MIL or any other indication of distress from the car at any time during the drive.
The primary issue seems to be that the computer wants to run the ICE in Stealth mode when it is not needed. This seems to lead to a conflict between the part of software that keeps the ICE running to warm up the car and to optimize the emissions profile and a different part of the software that operates the start-stop feature that kicks in after the engine is warmed up to save fuel.
I am hoping that after the car has been off for several hours, it will go back to normal operations. I am assuming this is a pure software issue, but if those more knowledgable than me can shed more light on this behavior, it would be appreciated since I don't think this is a problem unique to my car.
Update: Took my car out at lunchtime and it worked perfectly: No ICE activation, no hiccups, etc.
Driving in Stealth mode with a fully-charged battery, the ICE came on. This, by itself, is not that unusual. If I drive my car on battery-only for a couple of days, the ICE turns on for a few minutes and then turns itself off again after a short while. But this time, whenever I stopped at a red light, the ICE would turn itself off, then back on again repeatedly. I tried switching into Sport and back out, and even turned the car off and back on again at a red light (could not safely do a soft or hard reset) to no avail. The ICE kept running in Stealth mode until I got to my office about 50 minutes later. Again, switching in and out of Sport had no effect. As a result, I pulled into my office with 26 miles left on the E-Range indicator. There was no CEL/MIL or any other indication of distress from the car at any time during the drive.
The primary issue seems to be that the computer wants to run the ICE in Stealth mode when it is not needed. This seems to lead to a conflict between the part of software that keeps the ICE running to warm up the car and to optimize the emissions profile and a different part of the software that operates the start-stop feature that kicks in after the engine is warmed up to save fuel.
I am hoping that after the car has been off for several hours, it will go back to normal operations. I am assuming this is a pure software issue, but if those more knowledgable than me can shed more light on this behavior, it would be appreciated since I don't think this is a problem unique to my car.
Update: Took my car out at lunchtime and it worked perfectly: No ICE activation, no hiccups, etc.