You can also restart by shifting to N while rolling down the road, F16BMATHIS. Pulling over and placing in P is not required.

 

After reading your post, it still sounds like you pressed the power button instead of the drive mode button. Steverino's tip is helpful if this occurs again.

 

It does sound like I pressed the power button, I'd even say I must have, but why did it shut off right after I re-started it? No button pushing there...

 

Yes, you can Re-Start in neutral, after a power down (intended or inadvertent) but you cannot get Propulsion power again until cycling the shifter thru Park. Neutral does Not work, you Must come to a stop and put it into park. That's how it works in my 2013 anyhow.

And yes, two quick presses of the power button does shut it off. There must be a hundred threads about that on here, or more..

 

Yes, you can Re-Start in neutral, after a power down (intended or inadvertent) but you cannot get Propulsion power again until cycling the shifter thru Park. Neutral does Not work, you Must come to a stop and put it into park. That's how it works in my 2013 anyhow.

I haven't tried it, but that is contrary to the owners manual on page 9-18:

Restarting Procedure
If the vehicle must be restarted while it is still moving, move the shift lever to N (Neutral) and press the POWER button twice without pressing the brake pedal. The propulsion system will not restart in any other position.

(Notice that if you simply push the shift lever forward without pressing the button on the lever, it will go to N and stop there.) There isn't any mention there that this starts the car, but won't allow you to get any propulsion power. Does your car not work the way the manual says it should? Have you had a dealer check it? I have seen video of someone else on this forum demonstrating this restarting procedure while rolling in a parking lot, and it looked like it worked for him the way the manual says it does.

 

Did you have you OBDII reader connected this time as well? I can attest that it can certainly wreck havoc with the Volt. I've had three separate issues where I need to do a reset.

 

I have not connected the bluetooth ODBII reader since it killed the Volt. It kills 2013 Chevy Camaro's too!

 

...off the motor by pushing the power button. It brought up a screen which said to turn the car off, press the power button again. So I thought maybe I pressed the power button twice when I was going into sport mode, so I waited for the message to go away, then I pressed the power button twice really quick like I do when going to sport mode, and nothing happened. No display and the power didn't power off.
.....

everything that you have noted is consistant with what the others have said- except this test, and I belive from your 35mph test after this, that this "really quick like" did not hold the power button in long enough to get past the "debounce" logic, which requires that a button connection have some minimum length of continuous bottomed-out connection before it can be considered "pressed", for the power button I think, from personal experience only, that the debounce time is at least a couple of tenths of a second. Pushing too fast for this, would be consistant with your justifiable level of tension/stress at that moment...

 

I have only done the accidental shutdown once. To prevent accidental presses of the power button, I have a small, clear, self-stick silicone drawer/door bumper on mine. Very easy to feel the "bump", even if wearing gloves.

 

Sorry for the scary experience, but folks who sometime post here propensity to create the sensational, misleading, bait-click headlines (that haters would love to re-use inaccurately to paint the car as dangerous) continues to perplex me.

When the headline should be "I accidentally shut off my Volt on the highway at 65 mph!"

Yes, the design/button placement could have been been better, but Volt did not shut off, you shut it off. Let's lay the responsibility squarely with the driver, and perhaps a touch with design team, but not the car and its systems.

 

Sorry for the scary experience, but folks who sometime post here propensity to create the sensational, misleading, bait-click headlines (that haters would love to re-use inaccurately to paint the car as dangerous) continues to perplex me.

When the headline should be "I accidentally shut off my Volt on the highway at 65 mph!"

Yes, the design/button placement could have been been better, but Volt did not shut off, you shut it off. Let's lay the responsibility squarely with the driver, and perhaps a touch with design team, but not the car and its systems.

Agreed...

 

I have restarted in netural and was able to continue driving without going in to park.

 

So... what happened? I'd take it to the dealer, but I suspect like when I had the bluetooth ODBII reader connected and the car died, they'll keep it for a week then tell me they don't know what happened while I'm stuck driving a gas guzzling rental.

You hit the biggest bug with this car: Mistaking the power button for the Drive Mode button. Tapping it quickly twice while the car is in motion will indeed shut it down. Then all your mental alarms go off, so you're flustered, and nothing works right. Not only does the car shut down, it turns the headlights OFF immediately!!! One of these days, that is going to cause a bad accident. (Some years ago, I gave a ride to two guys whose headlights shut down, they missed a turn, and ended up in a creek. Fortunately they weren't hurt.)

What you can do to get it going without stopping is this:
1. shift to neutral
2. press the power button.
3. wait half a second.
4. press the power button again.
5. Finally, shift back to D.

It is pretty crazy that tapping the power button twice quickly will shut it down, but then to restart while the car is in motion, you have to tap, ...wait.... then tap again.

I think the engineers were way more worried about the runaway vehicle problem that has dogged Toyota, and somehow missed the idea of people accidentally shutting down, and needing to restart.

Of course, this would all be fixed if the NHTSA would require car manufacturers to provide a rotating toggle switch to turn the car off and on. The PC computer inspired "Press the start button to stop" is downright dangerous in a car.

Here's a 9-page discussion started back in November: My Letter to the NHTSA about pushbutton ignitions...

 

I did a test of this procedure the other day ON PURPOSE, and I hit the power button twice to restart and it restarted and then shut off. I pushed it one more time and it started. Are you positive it's a two button press to restart? I think it's a one button press, but I'm not 100% on that, since that day I had to hit it a third time before continuing on.

 

design turkey

yea, this is definitely what I would call a design turkey...reminds me of the desktop power macs in the early 90's that had a dos compatibility mode on them: their power buttons were right below the floppy drive. If you are a mac user, you know macs don't have eject buttons, you used finder to drag the disk the to trash to eject it. But if you were running the mac in dos mode, a pc users first instinct to get their disk back was to hit that button right under the disk drive, powering off the system. Ooops.

I'll keep this in mind when I go for the blind double tap for sport mode from now on in my volt!

 

I'll keep this in mind when I go for the blind double tap for sport mode from now on in my volt!

Yeah, but it still might happen to you. Last time I did it, I was going for Mountain Mode on a long trip. The system always reverts to Normal each time you shut down and restart, and I had done that. I was pulling out of a store's parking lot in Death Valley -- hundreds of miles from any charging station, and with mountain grades to climb. So I really needed to keep it in Mountain Mode to preserve some charge. I was just talking away to my passenger, remembered I needed to switch modes, so hit THAT button three times. OOPS!! Three times shuts down the Volt, too.

Fortunately, I was in a parking lot, so no problem.

 

So... what happened? I'd take it to the dealer, but I suspect like when I had the bluetooth ODBII reader connected and the car died, they'll keep it for a week then tell me they don't know what happened while I'm stuck driving a gas guzzling rental.

If you had an ODBII scanner plugged in while it happened... It may well be the ODBII device causing your issue. Some ODBII devices are NOT compatible with GM ODBII scheme.

 

Evening Everyone,

The Volt is not designed to have any non-GM device connected to either OBD port on the vehicle while driving. Any damage or problem caused by an aftermarket device in the OBD port will not be honored by your GM warranty. The networks accessible by the ports carry critical safety information at high speed between the control modules on the vehicle.

-Ian Chevrolet EV Customer Service

 

The Volt is not designed to have any non-GM device connected to either OBD port on the vehicle while driving. Any damage or problem caused by an aftermarket device in the OBD port will not be honored by your GM warranty. The networks accessible by the ports carry critical safety information at high speed between the control modules on the vehicle.

Hi Ian,

That's the second time I've seen you post such language on the use of 3rd party items with the Volt. I know your language explicitly calls out the required link between any damage and the denial of a warranty claim, but people could misunderstand. Statutory warranty regulations require that the manufacturer cannot deny a warranty claim unless they (the manufacturer) proves that the third party device actually caused the problem being claimed under the warranty.

People should be clear. You can use a third party OBD reader and it does not void your warranty in any way whatsoever. If it causes damage, then that damage is not covered by the warranty. But it would be up to GM to prove that it caused the damage.

 

As practice (in case I ever have to do it in an emergency), I also tried shutting down the car (2012 model) while driving. Unfortunately, I was unable to get it to re-start by shifting to neutral and pressing the power button twice (per the owner's manual). I also had to pull over and horse around with it for 5 minutes to get it to start. I think it went into "Service Only Mode" at one point (but it never indicated why it refused to re-start).

After that experience, I think I would prefer a guarded toggle switch: OFF and ON (and a menu item for service-only mode). All of these double-clicks and long-presses are fine for smartphones, but when safety is involved on the road, I want my vehicle's primary controls to be straight-forward and intuitive.

 

I have suggested more than once we need a "What to do on DAY two with your new VOLT" and testing and learning the emergency stop feature needs to be at the top of the list.

I put my hand on the wall in a LARGE computer room once and shut the whole place down.
I suggested a PULL switch and not a push switch with a big sign by the button.

The fire chief said in an emergency people don't read signs of do much thinking - they want to push or hits things.

NOW - to get the car restarted while moving did work BUT there may be a delay or you may have to re-activated the headlights.

Find a safe place and test

 

The Volt does have an unfortunate button placement (and operation sequence) of the main power button & mode selector. Many others have reported reaching down to change into sport mode and accidentally shutting the car off by mistake. It's just an unfortunate design layout that will never change on your existing Volt.

I really don't understand the preoccupation with sport mode. You get the same effect just pressing your foot down a bit harder on the accelerator pedal. Sport mode does NOT add horsepower... It just remaps the accelerator response. 0-60 time is identical in Sport vs Normal. (Only the pedal position changes.)

My advise... just ignore the mode selector and exercise your right foot a bit more.

 

Better than that, start with sport mode as default. Sport mode does also give quicker throttle response. In Grandma mode, sure you can get acceleration by pushing down further, but there's a delay. Sport just goes!

 

Program your brain to select Sport mode only while the car is not moving

 

So you cannot manually enter a phone number while moving but you can shut down the car at highway speeds fairly easily?

Simple solution would be to require a push-and-hold - even for a second or two - for the car to shut down. Like a laptop power button. You would never do that accidentally. Or perhaps a multi-second hold only while the car is in motion...

Some of the user interaction decisions on this car are a head scratcher.

 

Oh, push and hold works too (I'm told - I haven't tried it.) But GM's studies said that the average panicked user with a runaway car won't remember to try that - but they will punch the power button repeatedly. So they made the car work the way the user expected it to.

The only bad decision here was putting the mode and power buttons fairly close and making the most commonly used mode choice require the same number of hits as the shutdown. Personally I'd rather have Sport separated from the others and made persistent anyway.

 

My solution is cheap, easy, and effective. A small, self stick bump on the button: http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread.../showthread.php?73146-Accidentally-hitting-the-power-button&p=950770#post950770

 

My solution is simple: buy a Cadillac ELR. No way to hit the power button by accident when switching modes in that car. Isn't the peace of mind worth an extra $40,000?

 

They definitely learned from that mistake. I don't think it is possible to have those buttons further apart and yet both be in reach with the driver's right hand

I am sure this will be updated in Volt 2.0 as well.

 

I'd like to find a 'lift to access cover' for this size of switch.

Some aircraft have safety covers for safety sensitive switches like this.

Boeing 767/757's had safety covered switches for the Electronic Engine Control. They were mounted right below the throttles with other 'Start-Enrich' switches.
Still, a new copilot managed to open both covers and and pushed both switches at the same time, shutting down both engines on climbout from LAX.
The pilot was able to push them back in and restart both engines before tasting salt water!!! This produced an AD to move those switches to the overhead panel. I would love to hear the CVR recording of that 'incident' !!

 

I read this technique here in the forums and I use it ever since.

Here's how Steve-o described it back in September:

09-13-2013, 11:23 AM
This is a good suggestion I saw on gm-volt.com a while back: put your hand (all four fingers, palm facing left) in the opening the shift lever parks in and slide it to the top. Then press the drive mode button with your thumb. Using this technique it is nearly impossible to press the power button by accident.

This is the way I do it all the time now. It is also good to practice the emergency restart while rolling on a deserted street or empty parking lot. It is possible to turn off any car accidentally, although less likely with the key inserted in the steering column, and you have to go through similar gyrations to restart it on the highway if that happens, or if the car stalls while moving. In manual transmission days, it was just put it in gear and pop the clutch.

 

I gotta try that again. I thought I had put it in nuetral and tried to start it, but I'm also pretty sure I didn't hit the power button either. AND when I did get it started, it shut down again a few feet later, without any button pushing, so...

 

First, after the car has shut down, and still while rolling down the road, if you can think to put it in neutral, then press the power button twice (you MUST pause between presses), then shift to D, the Volt will power up and take off again. I've tried this, and it works. But it doesn't work sometimes if you do the steps too quickly. I've tried it over and over, and this is the sequence I've tried to practice and memorize: Neutral -- Press -- Press -- Drive

If I restarted, and it rolled a few feet and shut down again, I think I would stop and call OnStar and ask for the codes.

Edit: Oh... if you put it in neutral while rolling, then pressed the power button multiple times: the car will turn ON on the second press, OFF on the third!!!

as an aside: I get frustrated watching people clicking their mouse multiple times when I am trying to tell them to do something on their computer. They will start clicking too many times, without waiting for the computer to respond to the first, and everything goes haywire. This might be a similar situation.

 

As another poster mentioned, why don't cars have safety covers on switches that do generally undesirable things? Anything capable of shutting down a vehicle on a highway should be a multistep control - either a push in and turn or a switch behind a cover. Airplanes have done this for years - not just engine stop switches, but weapons arming on military aircraft as well - anything that could be a major problem is covered in some way, and the covers are made to feel different, too.

 

This is supposed to be a panic switch for the driver to use in a critical moment, when everything is going wrong - and some of them aren't that competent to begin with. I can easily picture GM getting into trouble with people because they couldn't figure out the safety switch during the moment of panic while not thinking straight. Better a dozen accidental shutdowns than one that couldn't shutdown when they truly needed to...

 

Saghost makes a good point about panic situation for drivers who have not spent hundreds of hours in a simulator practicing emergency response actions.

Another reason is that this is not a switch that does "generally undesirable things." For every drive of the Volt you need to use it twice, once to turn the car on and once to turn it off. It is therefore very different than arming weapons or pulling the extinguisher on a jet engine.

Personally, I think if they just had an alarm sound and a dash notification during the wait until shut down while moving it would be enough for those *not* in a panic/emergency situation to respond and avoid an unintended shutdown.

 

There you go! Have a big red "Fire Handle" in the center near the shifter. Pull it up and you shut down the propulsion; pull it up and rotate it, and you fire the squibs for the battery and engine compartment fire extinguishers!

 

There's a DIC message, and I believe a beep. Maybe they could make the beep more intrusive, I suppose.

 

The problem is that the driver intends to do a double-press of the Mode button, so s/he doesn't pause between presses. After the first press, the message appears on the DIC, and by the time the driver realizes that s/he is pushing the wrong button, s/he has already pressed it a second time, the message on the DIC disappears, and the car goes dark.