Is anyone else experiencing brake issues [failure]?

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Joined
Jan 13, 2017
Messages
6
In short, we had a 2015 Chevy Spark EV with 3 brake failures. We just purchased a 2016 Chevy Spark EV a month ago and the brakes went out again. So this is 4 brake failures for us in a Chevy Spark EV. The tow truck who picked up our vehicle said he's towed a number of Spark EVs with the same issue. So beginning to wonder if this isn't a much larger issue but people haven't been posting online. Granted, the cars are only sold in 3 states so there aren't a great number of these cars on the road.
 
I found 7 other failures on the NHTSA's website. Please be sure to report yours!

Also, I found this terrifying video of brake failure of a Spark - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8oDB66k-48 - you can tell the brakes are depressed because the brake lights are on until impact. Note that GM told the driver it was due to her driving.
 
MBPdx said:
I found 7 other failures on the NHTSA's website. Please be sure to report yours!

Also, I found this terrifying video of brake failure of a Spark - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8oDB66k-48 - you can tell the brakes are depressed because the brake lights are on until impact. Note that GM told the driver it was due to her driving.
Judging by the white area below the rear bumper, it looks like this was a standard ICE Chevy Spark and not an EV. Regardless, this is scary!
 
emailjillianne said:
In short, we had a 2015 Chevy Spark EV with 3 brake failures. We just purchased a 2016 Chevy Spark EV a month ago and the brakes went out again. So this is 4 brake failures for us in a Chevy Spark EV. The tow truck who picked up our vehicle said he's towed a number of Spark EVs with the same issue. So beginning to wonder if this isn't a much larger issue but people haven't been posting online. Granted, the cars are only sold in 3 states so there aren't a great number of these cars on the road.

Can you give us any more details on the brake failures? Any dash lights? Are you able to "push through" the electronic portion of the brake pedal travel until the hydraulic friction brakes engage? What does the dealer say the cause is?

The electronic portion of the Spark EV (and Volt) braking system can behave oddly sometimes. Especially in low traction situations. And, customer add-on accessories (cell phone chargers, GPS units, HIDs, radar detectors, or anything else connected to the electrical system) have been known to cause interference/errors on the CAN bus that impact the brake computer. However, in all cases when that's been reported, the driver is still able to "push-through" the electronic portion of the brake pedal travel to engage the friction brakes. But, it does take some extra effort to do so. Failure of both channels of the hydraulic friction brakes is almost unheard of in any modern car.

I'd be amazed if I met a tow truck driver who knew the difference between a Spark and a Spark EV. The braking systems in each are completely different.

Since this problem followed you to a second car, I'm betting you have something plugged in that's causing CAN bus interference. Do you have anything connected that you moved from the old car to this one?
 
Can a Spark EV be put into N and turned off at speed?
This would allow the driver to experience No power steering and No power brakes.
No ABS or TC either, but it would be an opportunity to feel what the brakes feel like in the fail safe / 'push through' mode.

Also, the Park Brake: it is a electro-mechanical system that pulls the cables to the rear calipers the way a manual Emergency Brake Lever does.
Is it just Full ON or Full OFF? Or is it modulated when pulled at speed?
What happens if it is engaged at 20 mph? I assume the rears lock up. If done at high speed this will flat spot the rear tires and you will be in for a ride! But, you will come to a stop.

I may test these ideas after the current Ice Apocalypse.
 
I tend to agree with CCIE. Since the problem followed the driver to the new car, it could be something the driver is doing, whether that's plugging in some equipment that's causing interference or something else entirely. I'm not saying it's wrong necessarily, but it could be something that Chevy did not think of. You can't test for everything in the universe, and they have to make some assumptions.

Something I would check is el-cheapo Chinese electronics. For example, I was tearing my hair out by handful why MY design was throwing noise all over the spectrum from time to time. Noise was so large that it could only come from my device, so I thought. Only when I went to test it at another place did that stop, and I tracked it down to some Chinese made POS near the lab bench that was causing the problem. My speculation was that thing had bad solder joint that caused it to have small electric spark (like static) when the capacitor got charged high enough, throwing intense broadband power all over the spectrum. Lesson learned.

I'm not saying this is the cause of your problem, but it is a possibility. If the POS is causing short intense energy burst at just the right timing that happen to get picked up by the wires to clobber several related CAN messages, you can have noticeable issues. That won't show up every time since the the timing relationship isn't exact.

But it could also be that the problems are with both SparkEV, and you might be the unluckiest SparkEV driver in the world. Somebody has to be the unluckiest, you might be it.
 
With all the redundancy built into modern braking systems it is hard to totally lose all braking power, some types of failure may cause the loss of power assistance making the braking require much more pedal effort, other failures may cause the loss of braking on just two wheels (depending on the design this could be both front brakes or both rear brakes or on a diagonal in some designs) this could more than double the stopping distance in some instances if both front brakes were out. However, total braking power loss normally requires the unlikely simultaneous failure of multiple components. On some car designs a disparity in the wheel diameters of > 3% between the front and rear compared to the programmed values from the factory can cause problems with ABS brakes and traction control systems. This is because if a wheel appears to be rotating too slowly (or too fast) for the vehicle speed it may be perceived by the car to be slipping when it is not. Since Spark EVs are designed to work with different wheel sizes front (22.74) and rear (23.46) if they are inappropriately rotated it may be possible to cause problems such as ABS inactivation (so they just work like non-ABSs brakes) or the ABS cutting in when it shouldn’t increasing stopping distances. Were there any trouble codes tripped during the brake failures you experienced?
 
MBPdx said:
I found 7 other failures on the NHTSA's website. Please be sure to report yours!

Also, I found this terrifying video of brake failure of a Spark - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8oDB66k-48 - you can tell the brakes are depressed because the brake lights are on until impact. Note that GM told the driver it was due to her driving.


Sorry, I call BS on this. Explain to us how post 1965 hydraulic brakes on a petrol car can experience a 100% failure? Someone would have to saw through all of the the brake lines for that to happen.


Also, this video is a Spark non-EV. Zero to do with our cars.
 
nikwax said:
I found one report of failing brakes on a 2016 Spark EV, filed by Toby N. of Portland Oregon. None for 2015 or 2014.
sounds like when i get my sparky at the end of the week i shouldnt worry so much. would u agree.
 
evboy said:
nikwax said:
I found one report of failing brakes on a 2016 Spark EV, filed by Toby N. of Portland Oregon. None for 2015 or 2014.
sounds like when i get my sparky at the end of the week i shouldnt worry so much. would u agree.

Just look forward to enjoying some very affordable, environmentally friendly performance.
 
Sorry for the delay guys. I thought the system sent a note when someone replied to your post. So here's some more details about what's happening:

1) The brake failure has occurred two times when my husband was driving the car and twice when I was driving the car(s). So that eliminates some sort of driver-bias.

2) In each of the instances there was a "service StabiliTrac" warning followed immediately by a "service Brake Assist" warning. Then immediately after the warnings the brakes go out (it's possible the brakes go out simultaneously with the warnings but it's hard to tell).

3) The brake pedal goes all the way to the floor. It doesn't appear that it has any braking capacity. Possibly it does and you just have to push harder? My husband is large and muscular and he said the same thing - so who knows. The dealer assistant service manager did note that the brake pedal went to the floor when he was trying to move the vehicle. His words.

4) All the instances were while we were in motion. 3 times on city streets and one time on a highway. When it happened to me the first time (on our 2015 Spark EV) I was on a slight incline and there wasn't much traffic so I was able to safely negotiate the car into a parking lot and stop by hitting the curb. The second time it went out while I was going down a hill but there was an equal uphill portion immediately following allowing me to slow and negotiate over to the side. Luckily there was no one in front of me - it's usually a busy area. And of course, 3 out of the 4 times we've had kids in the car. Scary.

5) It's possibly my husband had a cell phone charging while he was driving. That would be the only "after-market accessory." I'm almost positive I didn't have anything plugged in. We had only driven the new car (2016 Spark EV) a few times!

6) The dealer doesn't seem to have a good idea of what's happening. Each time my husband and I ask for an explanation and it seems like they're just replacing a bunch of parts and hoping that it won't happen again.

7) Responding to a previous poster who thought the tow truck driver might not be able to identify an EV. Our car was the first car at Wentworth with this failure they said. When we dropped off our vehicle this week, they said they've seen 3 other vehicles have the same failure since our original one. And I've actually been in contact with two other people in the Portland-area with Chevy Spark EV's in for service at Wentworth for the same reason! (brake failure) So with these two individuals (I don't have permission to list their names), plus the Toby N. someone found and our two vehicles, that's five (5) Spark EV's that have experienced brake failure. And that's just in Portland, at the same dealership.

8) Also if one does some digging on the Chevy Volt forum like this one, you'll see a number of people who identify the same warning lights and brake failure. So it seems like it is a Chevy EV issue. I hope the Bolt (latest Chevy EV) has different braking mechanisms! We have two family members who also have a Spark EV and we're really nervous about them driving now..

That's what I know so far! What we do know for sure is that 4 brake failures is pushing our luck - no one was seriously hurt. We won't be getting back in that vehicle. After the last one, I had a panic attack in the car (after it was stopped). I could not believe this was happening again. Yet we don't feel ethical about selling the car since we've had 3 brake failures on our previous Spark EV and one on our new Spark EV. But we have 30 months left on our lease. And when we return it, the car will likely get auctioned off to another unsuspecting consumer.
 
Thank you for the update. I am very curious about these brake failures:

What driving mode the car was in: D or L?
Was there any trend with respect to driving mode?
Do each of you normally drive in one mode or the other?
What you describe is a failure of both the regenerative braking and hydraulic friction brakes. Is that correct?
Did you try to use the emergency brake during any of the failures? If so, did that also fail?
 
It's just too coincidental that the problem followed you between two Spark EVs. If the only third-party accessory you ever have installed in the car is a cell phone charger, I'd pull it out of there.

As for reports on the Volt forum, I've been a member there for 10 years and read it almost daily. Every time there is a report like this about brake failure, it's been an issue with a third party accessory causing CAN bus interference. And, just like this case, the brakes didn't fail completely they're just in manual mode (pedal drops till you're manually activating the friction brakes). I understand that's scary and requires more effort to stop, but it's not complete brake failure.

If five people at your dealer have had brake issues, you should all open NHTSA cases and all call GM to complain. That's would be an unheard of number of braking issues with a single car model in a small area. Did you buy both cars from the same dealer? Did they install any dealer add-on accessories in both cars (car alarm, LoJack, backup camera, or anything else weird that the car didn't come from the factory with)? Not to harp on it, but interference from aftermarket electronics is always the cause of these braking issues.

I hope the dealer is able to determine what the issue is and get you back on the road and feeling confident in your Spark EV.
 
Zoomit said:
Thank you for the update. I am very curious about these brake failures:

What driving mode the car was in: D or L?
Was there any trend with respect to driving mode?
Do each of you normally drive in one mode or the other?
What you describe is a failure of both the regenerative braking and hydraulic friction brakes. Is that correct?
Did you try to use the emergency brake during any of the failures? If so, did that also fail?

Answers to your questions:
- We were in Drive (D) each of the times. We rarely use the Low (L) mode.
- I don't remember seeing the green swirl going on the dashboard indicating regenerative braking at the time of brake failure but it all happened too fast to be sure.
- No, my husband and I both did not use the emergency brake during the failure. If is was a large level like more standard in gas cars we might have grabbed for it. But during the emergency we were just focused on steering the car to a safe location and not looking down to find the parking brake.
 
CCIE said:
It's just too coincidental that the problem followed you between two Spark EVs. If the only third-party accessory you ever have installed in the car is a cell phone charger, I'd pull it out of there.

As for reports on the Volt forum, I've been a member there for 10 years and read it almost daily. Every time there is a report like this about brake failure, it's been an issue with a third party accessory causing CAN bus interference. And, just like this case, the brakes didn't fail completely they're just in manual mode (pedal drops till you're manually activating the friction brakes). I understand that's scary and requires more effort to stop, but it's not complete brake failure.

If five people at your dealer have had brake issues, you should all open NHTSA cases and all call GM to complain. That's would be an unheard of number of braking issues with a single car model in a small area. Did you buy both cars from the same dealer? Did they install any dealer add-on accessories in both cars (car alarm, LoJack, backup camera, or anything else weird that the car didn't come from the factory with)? Not to harp on it, but interference from aftermarket electronics is always the cause of these braking issues.

I hope the dealer is able to determine what the issue is and get you back on the road and feeling confident in your Spark EV.

Answers to your questions:
- I did not have any aftermarket accessory plugged into the car when the failure happened to me. And no dealer-add ons in the car.
- We thought we just had a lemon so we hadn't filed any reports online. But now that it's happened to a second car, I've filed reports with NHTSA on all the occasions. With the first car, GM repurchased it. I've called GM to complain about the second car and they won't repurchase it until it happens again. They won't take into account that it's happened 3 times on our previous Spark EV just last year.
- Yes, the other two people that I've been in contact with all purchased their car from Wentworth. We purchased our first car from Wentworth but assumed a lease on the second one since there weren't any Spark EVs available within 500 miles from us once we got the official ok from Chevy that they would repurchase our vehicle (late Nov). It was purchased from Capital in Salem but it at Wentworth being "repaired" right now since that is the closest dealership to us.
- I'm not sure what the technical term for the type of brake loss we have experienced but it has been very very difficult to stop and we would have been in an accident each time if it occurred when there were more cars around. That is luck - every time it happens, there are few cars around (in a big City).

I know it seems really hard to swallow. But it has indeed happened. The sales manager at Wentworth said, in response to my comment about it seeming so unlikely that we'd get two vehicles that have experience it, "how do some people get hit by lightening twice?" I spoke with the assistant service manager about it being something specific to us- like us parking on a hill - and he didn't think it was related to something like that.

We want so badly to love our Spark! It drives so wonderful and is so affordable.
 
Has anyone tried braking with the car turned off? That would illustrate the function of the hydraulic brakes. I assume it would be large amount of pressure on the pedal as with conventional cars without power assist.
 
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