2006 r500 throttle would not depress. Car looses power (all while driveing)

Friends wife was driving there R500 and it stated to loose power and she could not depress the peddle. The vehicle rolled to a stop. It was on a very bad place (Storo drive for those that know Boston) and she had her twins with her (both 3 years old) so she was a tad upset and does not remember if the car actually shut off or if it just lost power. She did not that the AC and the radio turned off. Eventually she got it started and drive it home. This has happened 3x. After the 2nd time they took it to the dealer and they said it was the batteries (yes there are two of them) and charged them $2500 to change the batteries.

Obviously they are really annoyed that the $2500 seems to have cured the problem. I pulled the codes with my OBD2 scanner and there were non.

Anyone have any clue as to what this is all about?

Thanks!!!

What's an R500?

Not knowing that, I'll suggest she could, in fact, depress the pedal, but there was no response. If she actually couldn't depress the pedal, its a simple mechanical situation.

She needs to provide as many facts as possible to whomever is going to be looking at it.

If the charging system starts to die then the vehicle will go into load shedding mode, basically it cuts accessories off in an attempt to keep the vehicle mobile as long as possible.

Faulty batteries CAN cause this to start to happen. It's usually only the main battery, not the starter battery (a cool system IMO) that fails.

I was afraid it might be something like that...

I am ducking and weaving working on this one. An S80 Volvo electrical problem that I was working on a while back seems like a walk in the park compared to the electronics in this thing. Would it cause the throttle to not be able to be operated. As in she could not press it down at all?

Streetwiseguy wrote: What's an R500? Not knowing that, I'll suggest she could, in fact, depress the pedal, but there was no response. If she actually couldn't depress the pedal, its a simple mechanical situation. She needs to provide as many facts as possible to whomever is going to be looking at it.

She did provide the facts. She could not press the peddle down. Since I think this is a fly by wire throttle. I am betting that there is something more to this or there is some safety feature that kicked in. There are no floor mats to get in the way and the condition seemed to repair its self after she sat for a while and was finally able to get the car started (I am not sure if it died before or after she was not able to depress the throttle)

I told them to call the dealer again.

They are a bit annoyed with the dealer as every time they go there they are being up sold in to another car but in a 3 month period the amount they have been offered for a trade in had change by almost 7K s they are like WTF with the dealer at the moment. they don't want to get rid of the car they want it fixed (it has less then 60k on it). They are feeling like if the dealer put effort in to fixing it it would be fixed instead the dealer seems not to be interested in fixing it and just getting them to trade it in on a new car. In short I can see there relationship with the dealer crashing an burning over this and the sad part is that they will be purchasing another car in the next year or two but probably not form this dealer now.

dean1484 wrote: Obviously they are really annoyed that the $2500 seems to have cured the problem. I pulled the codes with my OBD2 scanner and there were non.

So is the problem still happening or has it been cured?

$2500 for two batteries?

Swank Force One wrote: $2500 for two batteries?

That's what I said. Last time I paid that much for batteries it was 5 of em and they had cars wrapped around them.

Foot pedal not depressing ? No electricity involve there.

iceracer wrote: Foot pedal not depressing ? No electricity involve there.

Agreed; no pedal movement = something mechanical, maybe a broken throttle pot, methinks (admittedly knowing nothing about the R500). Now, if she could depress the pedal and it just didn't do anything, yeah, that sounds like a more typical DBW issue; if it was in load shedding mode that would also point to electrical issues.

I can't imagine that even a German would design a feature that would prevent the movement of the gas pedal. There has to be something blocking the travel, or the potentiometer is somehow coming apart, but I'd be amazed if that didn't set a bunch of codes.

The reason I mentioned "facts" is because a great many people have no idea at all what their car is doing. We have no-start cars towed in regularly where the owner cannot tell us whether the starter was engaged and turning the engine. "Was it going 'aruh-aruh-aruh'?" "Uhmmmm...I dunno."

Really.

I actually spent a bit of time picking her brain about what exactly was going on. The only thing she is fuzzy on is when exactly the car stopped running as you can not hear it when it is running and she had two 3 year old twins with her and traffic going by her at a high rate of speed and there was no break down lane. But she was very clear in that it lost power but continued to move under its own power just that she could not give it any throttle because she could not depress the throttle. She did say that both the radio and the AC stopped working when this happened as well. I have yet to here what the dealer said today. Her husband was going to go back to them today.

Swank Force One wrote: $2500 for two batteries?

That does seem a little excessive unless it includes labor/tow/diagnostics. The batteries themselves shouldn't run more than $600-800 each.

Even if she couldn't press the throttle, she should have been able to slowly creep forward in drive or reverse.