The Non-Financial Ledger
There’s a certain kind of dread that belongs specifically to car trouble. It hits you in the stomach the moment the engine does nothing when you turn the key. I know because I have dealt with this myself >.< Your plans collapse. Your safety is suddenly uncertain. You are dependent on strangers, on tow trucks, on dealership service desks staffed by people who are about to tell you nothing is wrong.
Now imagine that dread is not a random misfortune. It is something a corporation knew would happen to you before you ever signed the paperwork. It is something they decided not to tell you because telling you might have cost them a sale.
A retired woman driving a Subaru Impreza went through three batteries in two years. She now attaches a Battery Tender to the car every time she parks it in her garage, because she cannot trust the vehicle she paid for to start when she needs it. She described having to manage this routine as a condition of basic transportation. She called herself “a senior woman.” She did not buy a car to perform maintenance rituals in her garage. She bought it to go places.
A 70-year-old couple in a 2021 Outback described living in a state of “emotional tension every time we have driven the vehicle, dreading it would not start when we needed the vehicle the most.” Their first battery failure happened the morning of a medical appointment. Their second battery failure also happened the morning of a medical appointment. Their service representative told them the new battery would fix the problem and did not replace the Data Communication Module, the component Subaru’s own internal bulletins identified as a cause of the drain. Their vehicle’s new battery did not carry a normal warranty because it was installed under the original warranty, which was about to expire. They were left exposed.
A driver in Houston was operating his vehicle in city traffic when it unexpectedly shut down completely, blocking traffic, with no ability to restart. He was towed to a dealership and paid $434.88 out of pocket. He drives the vehicle daily for work.
A person filed a NHTSA complaint about their 2021 Outback failing in the left lane of the Harlem River Drive in New York City at night, after the Auto Stop/Start system killed the engine. They waited 45 minutes for a tow truck in an unlit, high-speed highway lane, surrounded by near-miss collisions. The person filing the complaint identified themselves as having 40 years of experience investigating fatal motor vehicle crashes. Their assessment: the defect presented a high risk of serious injury to highway users.
A family drove their Ascent to a campsite with no cell signal. The battery died while they were unloading. They were stranded in a remote location with no way to call for help.
A 67-year-old was stranded on a Jeep road in 100-degree desert heat with spotty cell service when their Outback Wilderness failed. They noted it was marketed as an outdoor-adventure vehicle. They had water. They noted that a six-mile walk back to civilization would not have been easy at their age.
A 2022 Subaru Impreza caught fire. The fire inspector attributed it to a defective car battery. The vehicle was a total loss. The family members inside escaped. Subaru offered them $2,000 toward the purchase of a new Subaru.
These are not edge cases. These are the people Subaru’s warranty department was hearing from for years, documenting in warranty claims, and logging in replacement parts databases while continuing to sell the same vehicle with the same defect. The system worked exactly as designed for Subaru. For the people in these stories, it did not work at all.
In Their Own Words: The Paper Trail
These are direct quotes from the class action complaint filed in federal court and from Subaru’s own Technical Service Bulletins entered into the record. They are reproduced exactly as sourced.
“In November 2022 and April 2023, Subaru issued TSB, Number 15-308-23. This Service Information Bulletin announces important diagnostic information to utilize when the Data Communication Module (‘DCM’) is being tested as a dark current/standby current source. According to the TSB, the DCM is constantly searching for a network to attach to when it first starts or is in an area of poor coverage. The low signal will cause the DCM to always be awake and seeking a network connection for up to 14 days until the DCM hibernates. An excessive amount of current drain on the battery will cause it to discharge and may lead to a no-start condition.”
- This is Subaru’s own internal documentation confirming its telematics module, the DCM, stays active for up to 14 days after the vehicle is shut off, draining the battery the entire time. This is not an allegation by plaintiffs. Subaru published this finding to its own service technicians.
- The phrase “may lead to a no-start condition” is corporate language for “will leave you stranded.” The TSB was issued in late 2022 and again in 2023; the Class Vehicles were already being sold with this hardware before those dates.
“Subaru has been aware of the Electrical System Sleep-State Defect since at least 2014, when it began issuing a series of technical service bulletins to its dealerships and service technicians relating to problems associated with the Defect in earlier model years of its vehicles.”
- The complaint places Subaru’s knowledge of the defect at a minimum of 12 years before this lawsuit was filed. None of the Class Vehicles on sale today were manufactured before Subaru had this knowledge.
- TSBs take months to produce — they require consumer complaints to accumulate, internal investigation, sourcing of a diagnostic procedure, and publication. The 2014 date is a floor, not a ceiling, on when Subaru first understood the problem.
“In response to these known issues, Subaru previously issued warranty extensions for earlier models covering the DCM for up to eight (8) years or 100,000 to 150,000 miles, for MY 2016-2018 Crosstrek, MY 2016-2018 Forester, MY 2016-2018 Impreza, MY 2016-2019 Legacy, MY 2016-2019 Outback, MY 2017-2021 WRX and has authorized repairs including reprogramming, bypassing, or replacement of the DCM, as well as battery replacement where excessive current draw is confirmed. Subaru has not done the same for the Class Vehicles.”
- Subaru acknowledged the defect was serious enough to warrant an 8-year extended warranty covering DCM repairs for earlier model years. Then it sold the same defect into a new generation of vehicles and declined to extend those same protections.
- The gap in treatment between older and newer model owners is documented and deliberate. Subaru knows what the fix requires and chose not to apply it to current owners.
“Subaru has also developed and deployed interim measures, including ‘bypass’ devices designed to disable or circumvent the DCM, further evidencing that the root cause of the battery drain lies in the design, manufacturing and operation of the electrical system rather than in normal battery wear or consumer usage.”
- Subaru built a device to physically disable the DCM because the DCM cannot be made to work correctly. This is the company confirming in hardware form that the defect is real, that it originates in the system design, and that it cannot be fixed with a software update or a battery swap.
- Yet when customers brought their vehicles in, Subaru’s representatives told them their batteries were “performing normally.” Both things cannot be true simultaneously.
“When Plaintiffs and Class Members requested warranty service, Subaru representatives informed them that the battery was functioning normally and only needed to be recharged. On the few occasions when Subaru agreed to do more than recharge the battery, it simply replaced the battery without addressing the underlying cause of the parasitic battery drain due to the Defect.”
- This describes a deliberate pattern, confirmed across multiple plaintiffs in multiple states: deny the defect exists at the service desk, then at most replace the battery with an identical battery that will fail for identical reasons.
- Replacing the battery without fixing the electrical drain is the equivalent of refilling a bucket with a hole in it. Subaru’s engineers knew this. The warranty department processed the claims anyway.
“In June 2014, Subaru issued TSB, Number 07-85-14 for ‘Parasitic Battery Draw’ in response to ‘[c]ustomer concerns of batteries going dead over a period of time . . . .’ This TSB applied to ‘All Models’ and directs service technicians to measure the current draw and determine if a vehicle was ‘exhibiting an unusual current draw.'”
- The coverage of this 2014 bulletin is “All Models.” This is not a vehicle-specific anomaly. Subaru itself categorized parasitic battery draw as a company-wide issue spanning every vehicle it made at the time.
- The bulletin instructs technicians to measure current draw and determine if it is unusual — a procedure that, if faithfully executed at any dealership, would confirm the defect exists. The complaint documents that dealerships repeatedly told owners nothing was wrong.
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