I was away on vacation for 1 week. Came home and car was completely dead. Called insurance company to jump the battery. It worked and I used the car for the week. Brought it in for service at end of the week and to take care of the recall issue. They were baffled that my odometer was not working and registered zero miles. No one knew what to do. Apparently, the jumping of the battery caused the entire electrical cluster to malfunction.

After two weeks of not knowing how to fix it, they ended up having to order an entirely new cluster. I still don't have my car back and honestly, I don't want it back. They sold me a car with an unresolved issue that has apparently happened to other cars. This car is defective! It is under two years and sat for. most of pandemic so has about 6,700 miles on it and. they have to replace the entire electrical panel????

On top of this issue, the service and communication to me about my car has been absolutely horrible! No one seems to care. I have called customer support many times and I still don't get any help or explanation. I am passed around from one customer service rep to another. It has been THREE full weeks and I still don't have my car back AND no one can give me an estimate on time frame. If this happens in the future and the care is not under warranty, will I be responsible for the fix for a defective car?

• Car jumped 3/25/19
• Car jumped 4/2/19
• Car serviced 4/8/19. Battery “defective” and replaced
• Car jumped 6/10/19
• Dead battery by 8/9 (lock doors check)
• Called dealer 8/21. It’s “normal” for cars built since 2013 to have dead batteries after 5 days. I should buy a “trickle charger” from Amazon, and they can’t help install it.
• 8/25 Called customer service 8/25 and got a call back. Directed me to have it towed to the dealership.
• Replaced battery again. Not clear if problem was defective battery or not starting every week

The car starting to have issues where it wouldn't turn on. I figured it was the 12v battery so I jump started it and used a trickle charger to get the battery back to 100%. I figured the headlights were left on. About a few weeks later, it happened again. I did the same thing a few weeks later again. At this point, I was starting to get angry. I called Subaru of America and they told me that since the car was rarely driven with the gas engine on, that it wasn't charging the 12v battery.

I bought this car to keep it in EV mode as much as possible to save money. I have an electric car and had another plug-in hybrid. The 12v is charged when the car is plugged in with the 240v plug to prevent this issue. I found out what was causing the issue since the owner's manual states that leaving the car plugged in after it's fully charged might drain the battery. I unplug the car after it's fully charged instead of always plugging it in and I haven't had the issue any longer. The 12v battery is still discharged because of too many short drives so I have to trickle charge it every few months.

Another huge issue related to this is that to have the battery issue serviced by Subaru, I need to drive to a special dealership that is an hour away because it's a plug-in hybrid that isn't sold in Pennsylvania. This car is obviously made as a CARB compliance car. I bought my own battery tester to test it myself with no problems. The local dealership didn't want to service the car because of safety issues because they didn't have the expensive test equipment needed for the plug-in hybrid cars, but I was able to test it with no problems. It appears that the 12v battery is not trickle charged when the car is plugged in and charging. It does charge the 12v battery when the car is on and in EV mode at least.

I'm going to keep monitoring the 12v battery and to see if the 12 volt battery is already damaged because of being discharged so often. I'm going to try to see if I can have Subaru replace it for free, but I have to do a 2 hours round trip to New Jersey.

Subaru should do what Tesla, Chevy and Toyota (they partly own Subaru) did and trickle charge the 12v battery when the car is plugged in (DC to DC converter from traction battery) and this wouldn't be an issue. I'm angry that Subaru didn't engineer the car like that. I'm also angry that the dealership told me that I could have the car serviced locally, but I have to drive two cars to do so.