2020 Honda Pilot Electrical System

CAR WILL RANDOMLY LOSE ALL POWER AS IF THE BATTERY IS DEAD AND THEN FLICKER AND COME BACK ON. NO WARNING LIGHTS OR CHECK ENGINE LIGHTS ARE ON. NOTHING HAS BEEN INSPECTED YET BUT THIS SAME PROBLEM WAS A PREVIOUS RECALL ON THIS MAKE AND MODEL

•What component or system failed or malfunctioned, and is it available for inspection upon request? The “smart” control module, part# 38320-TG7-L112-M1 was removed and inspected; obvious incomplete conformation coverage was discovered along with significant dendritic growth on an uncovered IC. Proper cleaning of the board alleviated the issue – for the time being at any rate. I am including pictures of the board and growth that clearly show this defect and its related consequences, but I can provide the part for inspection if it’s feasible timewise and if I haven’t sold the vehicle by that point. •How was your safety or the safety of others put at risk? The vehicle was rendered completely and utterly inoperable by this condition and additionally necessitated the removal of the battery to keep the car alarm from triggering randomly. If this condition manifests itself at the wrong time it could easily create a dangerous situation for myself, my family and others. •Has the problem been reproduced or confirmed by a dealer or independent service center? The diagnosis, research, documentation and associated repair were performed by an independent service technician. •Has the vehicle or component been inspected by the manufacturer, police, insurance representatives or others? This problem was reported to Honda USA in late March of 2025; no acceptable recourse was provided or offered. •Were there any warning lamps, messages or other symptoms of the problem prior to the failure, and when did they first appear? No. On Friday March 21st at approx. 6PM, the car alarm was triggered with no interaction whatsoever after the vehicle had sat for several hours. After disconnecting the battery for over an hour the problem immediately returned upon reconnection along with flashing dash & interior lights and clicking relays and/or components.

Car intermittently won’t start due to insufficient battery charge. Jump starting will start the car. Dealership testing of battery and charging system determined no issues. However, issue reoccurs. Suspect charging doesn’t occur until battery reaches a minimum voltage level which is currently set too low. Safety issue in that car starting is unreliable.

What component or system failed or malfunctioned, and is it available for inspection upon request? When calling the dealer they believe it is the “Smart Control unit.” How was your safety or the safety of others put at risk? My vehicle will not start most of the time…leaving me stranded when I have to go anywhere and I have to get out to take the battery terminal off and back on just to try to reset it long enough for it to try to start. Has the problem been reproduced or confirmed by a dealer or independent service center? No, from my understanding of reading other people having the same problem Honda knows it is a common issue and has not done anything about it. The dealer wants paid to do an inspection. I do not have the money they are asking for. I know inspections aren’t very expensive but most people (myself included) can’t afford even a simple inspection. Just to pay for the car takes all I have. Has the vehicle or component been inspected by the manufacturer, police, insurance representatives or others? No. Were there any warning lamps, messages or other symptoms of the problem prior to the failure, and when did they first appear? At first I noticed my car alarm would go off randomly and originally thought my doors weren’t being shut all the way however after making sure all doors were in fact shut it still went off. I was at work that night and had to keep going out to turn my alarm off…the next morning I go in to start my car and leave and it had trouble starting saying “keyless start system problem” after finally getting it started I drove to the gas station to get gas and turned off the engine as I was walking away I heard cracking noises and my car making the ding noise it makes when you turn it on ACC mode. When I came back to the car all the lights on the dash, radio screen, headlights, tail lights, and mirror lights (the ones that light up when a car is close) were flashing like crazy and still heard the crackling noise.

The contact owns a 2020 Honda Pilot. The contact stated while driving at an undisclosed speed, the vehicle started to lose automotive power, and failed to return to normal operation. The contact stated that several unknown warning lights were illuminated. The vehicle remained at the residence. A dealer was not contacted. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 70,000.

In April 2021 Honda issued a warranty extension due to loose connection in the MOSTbus network causing. Popping or crackling and Network Loss. My vehicle was checked and nothing done. Then in 2023 recall-Due to improperly designed and manufactured connectors, the Media-oriented system transport (MOST) communication coaxial cable counter may have a poor connection. My car was taken in for this recall and this “repair” had not been resolved.

The infotainment screen is turning off and says “Network Communication Lost. MOST Net Off”. This means the infotainment screen goes black, often for long periods before it cycles back on, making it difficult to use Navigation and the screen for reverse camera.

The contact owns a 2020 Honda Pilot. The contact stated that upon arriving at the destination and attempting to reverse into a parking space, the transmission failed to shift into reverse even though the gear shifter was in reverse. The vehicle failed to shift back into drive, prompting the contact to turn off and restart the vehicle. After restarting the vehicle, the vehicle returned to normal functionality and the contact continued driving the vehicle. While driving at an undisclosed speed, the vehicle inadvertently lost motive power and was unable to accelerate above 20 MPH. The contact was able to reach her destination and turned the vehicle off, after which the vehicle was unable to restart. The contact stated that several unknown warning lights were illuminated. The vehicle was towed to the dealer, who diagnosed a failure with the brake switch and possibly other faults with the electrical system. The vehicle was repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure but provided no assistance. The failure mileage was 52,000.

The vehicle has a defect with the radio/audio/bluetooth system making a crackling sound while operating the vehicle. The Honda dealer acknowledged that this is a recall issue, although no recall currently exists and as a result they replaced the FAKRA service cables. This did not solve the problem and it is one that is common to all Honda Pilots of this year. It is very distracting and cannot be stopped unless the vehicle is completely shut off.

Numerous times while stopped at a red light/stop sign/traffic, the auto idle stop feature will kick in, but then the car will not immediately restart. Most times if the car is then turned all the way off and put in park it will restart. Now two different times, it would not start back up at all causing to car to be stuck in the middle of the road and requiring it to be towed. Prior to the incident occurring there were no warning lights or error messages.

Last week, my wife was picking up our 2 year old son from daycare in our 2020 Honda Pilot. She secured him in his car seat and placed her purse with the Honda key fob on the back seat and closed the door. The car somehow locked itself between the time she closed the door and attempted opening the front door, leaving my son locked in the back seat. The key fob battery had just recently been replaced so we are certain this is not a matter of the key fob battery being low. We needed to call the fire department to come and emergency open the car for us. Today, we did have a second key fob made at Honda for our vehicle so that we have a spare in the event this happens again closer to home. We are hoping to be reimbursed for this cost and the "diagnosis" fee we are being told by Honda Customer Support we need to pay for in order to diagnose what the issue might be. This is a MAJOR safety concern that Honda needs to review IMMEDIATELY. The key was inside of the vehicle while the vehicle was not on or in motion.

There is an intermittent problem with loud crackling noises coming from the speakers. The information center is turned off, but the crackling continues. It is either an electrical malfunction or a short of some sort. It is a distraction when driving and therefor a safety issue. There is a recall open with regards to the MOST cable for the camera but the camera does not have audio so it doesn't make sense that these would be related. We do not have many miles on the car and the information center is used primarily for navigation. Shutting it down in traffic is a safety issue because the driver is distracted. If this is an electrical short then there could also be a fire issue.

Audio problem and the screen dashboard doesn’t work no connection Bluetooth we stop on the road trying to turn off the car but when we started we have same problem … I have videos I can’t upload

I pulled into my garage to turn off my 2020 Honda Pilot. I put my car in Park and set the Parking Break. I pushed the On/Off button of my car to turn off the ignition. The car failed to turn off. The electrical systems (radio, heating/AC displays) inside the vehicle turned off, but the engine continued to run. The error message "auto engine idle stop system problem" flashed on the dash. I tried multiple attempts to turn my car off. As I write this my car is sitting outside on my driveway, with the hopes my car will turn off. I have had previous issues with the auto on/off capability of my vehicle, to where the car would auto turn off and fail to turn back on. To combat this issue I always disabled the auto on/off capability of the vehicle. This car has had issue after issue from when I purchased the vehicle in August of 2020. My car has been at the dealership many times for different electrical issues. This car has been anything but reliable. This is a safety problem, due to not being able to turn off a running vehicle. This vehicle has not been inspected for this issue, but has been inspected my the dealership for previous electrical issues. There were no warning lamps, messages or other symptoms prior to the problem.

Electrical components for navigation, hand free devices, back Up camera & radio have an advisory from HONDA. Can has been into dealership multiple times claiming to be “fixed” but when delivered it is not. Wiring harness for radio is on back order for 5+ months, but dealership is unsure if this will correct the problem. Another concern is that 60,000 warranty is within 10,000 miles of expiring.

The contact owns a 2020 Honda Pilot. The contact stated that while stopped at a red light, the Auto START/STOP feature activated; however, after releasing the brake pedal, the engine failed to restart. Additionally, the transmission had erroneously shifted into neural. The contact stated that the vehicle was turned off and shifted into park before pressing the START/STOP button to restart the vehicle. The failure had occurred on several occasions. The vehicle was taken to the local dealer who performed a software update, but the failure persisted. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 20,000.

We had the recall repair done for the crackling speakers issue but it started again and is worse. The crackling sounds like rocks hitting the windshield and scares the heck out of everyone in the vehicle. Now when it does this we also get a network failure notice on the infotainment screen and then the infotainment system shuts down. Sure wouldn't expect these issues with a $50 K dollar vehicle barely over 3 years old with only 24 K miles on it. This has happened 4 times since it started again. That's 4 times in the past 3 weeks.

We purchased our 2020 Honda Pilot in January 2020. Shortly we heard popping sounds in the windshield. It became more frequent so we called our local Honda service and they didn’t know what was wrong. Later we called another Honda service and they knew what was wrong. We took our car in and they replaced some part in the radio electrical unit. It lasted a year and started doing the same thing again. Popping sounds and our display network would black out the whole screen as before. We lose our gps and backup camera and also no radio. We called Honda and they said it was the wiring harness and we would have to pay for it ourselves. There have been law suits filed against Honda for this very thing. Other owners have had the same problem we are still having. The popping sounds are very distracting while driving. Honda said it was out of warranty even though it’s the same problem we started having soon after buying our car which was brand new.

The entire infotainment screen shuts off, screen goes dark. So far it turns back on with no issues. The problem is intermittent. The USB phone connection also intermittently looses the connection. Sometimes it reconnects, other times I have to disconnect the phone and reconnect. I have changed the usb wire...same problem

I received a recall notice from NHTSA about my Pilot. The MOST cable connected needs to be replaced. I am writing because I have contacted two different dealerships. They are unable to address the defect until January 2024 or April 2024 respectively. You letter said that if the repair could not be done within 60 days of receiving the letter, to contact the NHTSA. The second dealership informed me that they only schedule one recall appointment per week, and that was why they can't fix it until April of next year. Please advise what I should do.

The Auto Engine Idle function has been problematic for a while now, causing the engine to stall. It seems to have gotten progressively worse and now happens whenever I forget to disengage the Auto Engine Idle. One time in the spring of 2021, my husband had pulled into the intersection and was waiting for the chance to turn, only to find the engine stall and not respond to anything. It took a good almost two minutes of turning off the engine and trying to push the power button back on. It finally did turn on so we did not need a tow, but it was extremely scary to be in the middle of an intersection with a stalled engine. Subsequently the engine stalled a couple of times, briefly flashing an error message on the dashboard before shifting into Neutral on its own and then indicating to shift into Park. I have had the diagnostic test ($99) done at the Honda dealership (Dublin, OH) and was told that they could not replicate the engine stall and that there were no error records recorded in the engine log. A few times, the engine seemed to hesitate like it was on its way to stalling after being in Auto Idle Engine mode, but would start up when I released the brake. Today the engine stalled again when I was at a red light, briefly displaying an error mode and then shifting into Neutral on its own again. I had to power off the car, and try the engine start push button a few times before it finally powered on. I am constantly worried about the engine stalling, which is not a pleasant experience. It is scary to think the engine could stall while driving the kids somewhere.

When stopped at a red light, the car went into idle stop mode. When I released the brake, the car did not restart. The electrical flashed. An error message was displayed to put the car in park, press the brake and engine restart button. That did not resolve the problem. The car would not start. We could not shift it from park to move it. I was in the traffic lane on the down side of an overpass with limited visibility behind me. I was concerned about getting rear ended. The car had to be towed and the battery replaced. The original Honda dealership performs all routine maintenance with the most recent service in June 2022. There has been no prior indication that the battery was weak or needed to be replaced.

Issues with infotainment system, a continuous crackling sound, sounds like electric spark. This occurs for several days and now the system is not working and this affects the operation of backup camera.

The contact owns a 2020 Honda Pilot. The contact stated that the vehicle was experiencing hard starts. Additionally, the contact stated that the Auto START/STOP function failed to engage automatically while attempting to drive from a complete stop. There were no warning lights illuminated. The contact stated that the failure recurred and the vehicle turned off while at a complete stop. The contact was able to restart the vehicle. The vehicle was taken to the dealer where the battery was replaced; however, the failure persisted. Additionally, the contact stated while driving through an intersection, the vehicle stalled. The contact was able to restart the vehicle after several attempts. The vehicle was taken to the local dealer where it was diagnosed that the battery needed to be replaced. The vehicle was repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 30,000.

When the 2020 Honda Pilot sits for over 3-6 days, the battery goes dead. I have brought it to the Honda Dealership and they have checked out the battery and alternator and say it's working properly. I have jumped the Honda Pilot 6 times because of a dead battery and had the battery replaced once. Never had a vehicle ever do this before. Very dangerous for anyone parking and flying from an airport. Unbelievable!!!!!! This has been going on since we purchased NEW!