Hi all,
Firstly, not my car, but one my Father got recently. He's had Jazz's for many years now, bu this is his first hybrid.
It's been an interesting time getting used to this car. On the positive side it feels solidly built, is responsive when it needs to be and genuinely returns approximately 50% more MPG vs his prior Jazz - a 2018 petrol model - while doing the exact same daily drive he has for years. These are all good things.
The less positive things, aka the "quirks" in the title have me concerned though, I'll go through them here.
Firstly, the active lane assist system, I'd have to go as far to say that it's potentially dangerous. My dad's never used a system like this before, but understood the basics. I.e. the car "sees" if you drift out of lane and warns you. However, where we live it's all narrow roads and single-track lanes and the Jazz simply cannot cope with these. When driving straight and normal down one of the average country roads here, the lane assist system would regularly stiffen the steering suddenly causing the car to pull to one side. It would then be far more difficult to counter-steer to correct this. It obviously thought the car was drifting out of lane, but that's simply not the case at all. It's just a narrow - in some places single-lane - country road. This occurred a number of times and is "working as intended" according to the Honda dealership. Needless to say, my Dad disables this system each time he starts the vehicle now. It's dangerous on unmarked roads / those without clear white lines showing the edge of the highway.
The second quirk, which the dealership refuse to say what they did to fix, was when the economy plummeted for a few days and the car never switched off the engine as it had before. After initially being fobbed off that this was "normal" (it really isn't) they eventually agreed to see the car and they fixed the issue. I suspect it was a software issue, but they'd not tell us despite asking. It's not done it again since.
The third major quirk is one that happened today, as it almost caused a crash. My father was driving home through the village - he usual daily route home - and was rounding a corner near the bus stop. The car suddenly stiffened the steering making getting around the corner VERY hard, as the car tried to go straight. My dad managed to regain control and get home, but he was understandably shaken up by this.
On further inspection, when he got back, the car had put up a tyre pressure warning - I understand the Honda system uses speed differential between left / right wheels to determine a pressure difference, just like my Mercedes does. Now, I went around and checked all the tyre pressures and, yes, the driver's side rear was a little lower than the passenger side, so I of course corrected this and reset the system. My question is, should / would this trigger the stiffening of the steering like this? It's my only guess on what might have set it off, but I'm not sure. Regardless, the stiffening of the steering like that was far more dangerous that a slightly soft tyre.
There's one bonus quirk that I suspect might be a software bug or something. While going through things with my Dad, the interface became totally unresponsive to certain inputs. i.e. the "Home" button did nothing, not bringing up the menu as it should and the scroll wheel didn't scroll and pressing it did nothing. After the classic "turn it off and back on again" it worked fine. However, my dad reported he'd had this a few times.
The problem with many of these quirks, when reported to the dealer, they respond with "we couldn't find a problem" when they mean "we couldn't find THE problem" as there are real issues here.
Now, I can't believe for a minute that these issues - mainly the steering one - is normal. Honda's are usually pretty well sorted cars and the thing is only a couple of months old. So, I'm hoping to hear from other owners here to see if they've experienced anything similar.
Thanks.
