Accelerating without warning, brake failures and electrical faults: As driver of £80k Jaguar I-Pace tells of moment the EV went rogue on the M62, how the model has been …
Drivers of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles have revealed their concerns over the electric vehicles appearing to accelerate without warning and suffer brake failures.
Several owners have reported terrifying experiences with the luxury £80,000 model in Britain which has seen them crash into houses or drive off car parks.
The most recent saw driver Nathan Owen behind the wheel of an out-of-control I-Pace [3]which sped up to 100mph on the M62 in Greater Manchester without brakes.
Jaguar Land Rover is set to discontinue the car within months before it relaunches its EV lineup next year, having previously said the model would be improved.
Its boss Adrian Mardell revealed last August that the I-Pace is now mainly sold in the UK and mainland Europe to help ensure the firm can meet emissions targets.
This came after 26,000 I-Pace cars were recalled [4]in the UK last June due to a risk of the high-voltage battery catching fire, with all vehicles given a software update.
JLR insists it always investigates incidents, with all probes into ‘uncommanded acceleration’ having confirmed that a driver had applied the accelerator pedal.
But the latest occurrence on the M62 yesterday raises fresh questions over the cars, with JLR saying it is now investigating what happened as a priority.
Just last week, MailOnline revealed car makers from Mercedes-Benz to Ford are delaying or scrapping further EVs[5] as demand slows in Britain and abroad.
Last December, the I-Pace became the sixth biggest faller in value[6] of any EV during 2023, with the average used price dropping 40 per cent from £52,060 to £31,050.
Here are some of the acceleration incidents involving I-Pace cars in recent years:
EV ‘went rogue at 100mph on M62 then police rammed it’
A driver trapped behind the wheel of an out-of-control I-Pace cheated death as his car accelerated up to 100mph on the busy M62 motorway without brakes.
Nathan Owen, 31, was on his way back from his first day at a new job when his 2019 electric car started malfunctioning, sparking a huge police operation to bring his car to a stop on the M62 near Eccles in Greater Manchester after 35 minutes.
He claimed his car also went rogue last December, reaching 120mph – adding that Jaguar handed him his car back 24 hours after he had taken it in to be looked at.
Nathan Owen required a police convoy to bring him to a stop on the M62 motorway yesterday
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline about his latest run-in, the crisis support worker admitted: ‘In the back of my mind, I was thinking I’m going to end up crashing the car, I’m going to kill myself or I’m going to kill an innocent person on the roads.’
Mr Owen, originally from North Wales, added: ‘The car was in its own world – it just had no brakes. The worst thing about it is that it’s happened before.’
Dramatic pictures show the black Jaguar, worth up to £80,000 when new, wedged in between two Matrix patrol cruisers from Merseyside Police[7] on the eastbound carriageway between J11 for Birchwood and J12 for Eccles.
Jaguar Land Rover has confirmed it is investigating yesterday’s incident as a priority.
He eventually had to bang into the back of a police car so that his vehicle would stop moving
Still shaken up by the terrifying incident, Mr Owen told how he was driving home from his new job working as a crisis support worker with children in Ormskirk, Liverpool, when he tried to overtake another car at around 2.30pm.
‘The car literally just started speeding up,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t press the brakes. The speed was going towards about 100mph in the high 90s, going to 100. I thought this was a bit wrong.
‘It came up on the dashboard saying there was a battery malfunction in my car. I kept trying to press the brakes but nothing was happening. So the next thing I thought I should do was call 999 and tell them what was happening.’
Mr Owen, who now lives in Bolton, Greater Manchester, then spent the next 35 minute surrounded by at least eight vehicles from Merseyside Police and Greater Manchester Police as they escorted him down the busy motorway.
Mr Owen’s Jaguar is pictured at home. He said he will never get back into the vehicle
The police officer he was on the phone to told him to move into the hard shoulder with his hazards on and to try and stay away from other people and other cars. Mr Owen was terrified as he kept having to weave in and out of the hard shoulder and slow lane to avoid turn offs and junctions.
It was at this point that a convoy of police cars were formed around Mr Owen’s car, in front, behind, and alongside him. He was told to make his way to the fast lane and follow the police.
Officers closed off two lanes of the four-lane motorway so that they could bring him to a stop as safely as possible and rescue him.
Mr Owen continued: ‘It was just scary I was just hitting the back of this police officer. I was hitting them at about 90mphs.
Dramatic pictures show the black Jaguar I-Pace wedged in between two police cars
‘I was still talking to the operator, and I was worried. I was thinking I could potentially kill myself hitting this police officer at 90, or I could kill him if he loses control.’
He said that every time he was hitting the police vehicle, the car was swaying side to side.
‘The police officers said they never come across this before and coming down the hard shoulder and the police being behind me, it was like something out a film,’ he added.
‘It was horrible, I was in the fast lane, police car right in front of me, cars alongside me, normal passengers were just staring at me.
Police swarmed the motorway to save the driver after the Jaguar I-Pace would not slow down
‘I felt like a criminal like in a big police chase, that’s how it felt. It felt like Grand Theft Auto.’
Mr Owen’s car was finally able to be brought to a stop when the miles on his electric car started running out.
He explained: ‘I had 10 miles, 5 miles and then it said on the screen zero miles stop the car and then the car started gently slowing down and going to zero.
‘The police were saying on the phone they are going to drive off a bit further and they will stop and then I can roll into the back of the police car and stop the vehicle.
A picture of when Mr Owen’s car finally came to a stop when it lost control last December
‘I went into their car a few times, that was what was panicking me the most, I’ve never done that kind of before, I’ve never had a crash before. Hitting the back of the police car, I was panicking about myself and the police officer in case I hit him too hard or he loses control.’
When the car finally stopped, the police officers came to the side of his door but he said he was just ‘froze in the position of holding the steering wheel’. ‘The police were trying to talk to me but I just couldn’t do it,’ he added.
Mr Owen revealed to MailOnline that a similar incident happened to him on December 23.
He recalled: ‘I was driving at 3am in the morning after I finished one of my previous jobs, it happened exactly the same, I had no control of the vehicle. At the time, it did speed up to about 120mph, so it was going pretty quick.
‘I ended up phoning the police, the same how I did with this one. I managed to get the car into neutral after me pressing the buttons on the side of the I-Pace.
The Jaguar I-Pace owned by Mr Owen is pictured before the terrifying incident he endured
‘It didn’t work this time but last time I managed to get it in neutral so the car ended up stopping with the help of the police in front of me and behind me slowing down as well.
‘The car then got recovered to Jaguar Land Rover in Bolton and within 24 hours I got a phone call saying they looked over the car and the cars fine and I should pick it up.’
Mr Owen said he has also had another incident where his battery died while he was on the motorway last April – just a month after he bought the vehicle.
‘I was driving the vehicle and I had about 100 miles still left and I was literally just driving about 20 miles and I lost pretty much all that charge and car stopped in motorway and I got recovered – it took about 8 hours to recover the vehicle,’ he said.
‘Everything literally just shuts off. The wheels clamp up because its electric, I can’t take the handbrake off.’
Nathan Owen (pictured), 31, was driving when his 2019 electric car started malfunctioning
Mr Owen said that he would definitely not be getting a Jaguar or an electric car again.
He added: ‘I just know I’ll never be getting into this car again. I just wish that I would have got help with it the first time I had the problems, and I didn’t just get given back the car.’
A Jaguar Land Rover spokeswoman said: ‘We are aware of an incident involving a Jaguar I-PACE on the M62 on the afternoon of March 6. An investigation is underway into the cause of the incident.’
A Cheshire Constabulary spokesman told MailOnline: ‘At around 2.15pm on Wednesday 6 March, police were contacted by the driver of a Jaguar I-Pace who reported that there was a fault with his vehicle, and he was unable to brake.
‘The driver told police that he was travelling on the M58 in Merseyside.
‘Officers attended the scene and escorted the vehicle as it travelled onto the M57 and then M62 towards Manchester.
‘Once on the M62, officers from Cheshire Police, Merseyside Police and Greater Manchester worked together to stop all other traffic, they then used a police car to help bring the car to a stop at around 2.40pm, between junctions 10 and 11 of the M62 eastbound.’
Car zooms past pram before smashing into front of a house
In one of the most shocking incidents involving an I-Pace, CCTV footage showed one hurtling past a mother pushing a pram and ploughing into the front of a house.
Emergency services raced to the Manchester suburb of Moston last October after the £69,995 electric car zoomed across the road and smashed into the home.
Several houses had to be evacuated and Moston Road was closed after the collision – likened by neighbours to an ‘ earthquake[8] ‘ – caused a suspected gas leak.
CCTV footage showed an I-Pace hurtling past a mother pushing a pram in Manchester last year
Several houses had to be evacuated and Moston Road was closed after the collision last year
Pictures of the aftermath show the garden wall in ruins and the front window shattered
Video published at the time revealed the property’s garden wall was destroyed and the front window was shattered from the impact of the crash.
One neighbour said: ‘There was a huge bang, and everything shook. It was like an earthquake. I thought it was an earthquake. Then the police came pretty quickly.’
Another said: ‘I don’t get how it happened. Everyone was lucky. Imagine them in the house, what they would’ve thought. They must’ve just been like ‘what the f***?”
Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service were called amid concerns over a gas leak, which was then isolated. Greater Manchester Police[9] said no arrests were made.
EV ‘suddenly went off like a rocket’ and crashed into cars
A driver called Julie posted on a Jaguar I-Pace forum that she was left ‘unnerved’ after her EV ‘suddenly went off like a rocket’ in the Lancashire village of Longton.
She said the airbags were activated after she crashed into the back of a parked Mercedes as she pulled up to her son’s house, in an undisclosed location.
The woman wrote in December 2021: ‘It ploughed into a Porsche in front of me that went into a Volkswagen that pushed a lamp post over.
Julie said she had been picking up her son when her Jaguar I-Pace ‘went off like a rocket’
The I-Pace ploughed into a Porsche (right) which then crashed into a Volkswagen (left)
The I-Pace driver asked her fellow forum members ‘what on earth’ they thought had happened
‘Then I swerved across the road into a wall and ended up on top of the wall on a fence. Thank God there was nobody walking past or sat in the cars. The airbags activated and I opened my door and got out uninjured.
‘What on earth happened? I’m 62 years old and have been driving safely since I was 17 and own two companies with numerous vehicles. No way would I have put my foot on the accelerator by mistake.’
When she slammed on the brakes, she said ‘the car kept accelerating anyway and was unstoppable until it crashed’. She said she was considering returning to a diesel.
Car ‘accelerated suddenly while trying to park’
Neil Turner said his father Colin suffered two close calls in his I-Pace after it accelerated suddenly while he was trying to park in November 2019.
In footage of the near-collision, the car suddenly takes off and almost collides with a flagpole before Colin manages to slam on the brakes.
The car was left with a small scratch on its front bumper while the wheels left two deep grooves in nearby grass after it shot forward at high speed.
Neil Turner said his father, Colin, had suffered a close call in his I-Pace after it accelerated suddenly while he was trying to park in November 2019 (pictured)
‘The car tried to accelerate by itself and was stopped just in time before doing any damage,’ Mr Turner told MailOnline.
‘We reported it to Jaguar, who said nothing was wrong with the car. It did it again while I was driving it and we decided to sell it not long afterwards.
‘I have the original CCTV footage of it accelerating while the brakes were on, almost hitting the flagpole – you can see the car trying to suddenly launch.
‘Fortunately he was quick on the brakes. When it happened to me in a car park I was convinced it was faulty.’
Colin’s I-Pace was left with a small scratch on its front bumper after it suddenly accelerated
The I-Pace left two deep grooves in nearby grass after it shot forward at high speed (pictured)
Mr Turner said Jaguar had taken the car in for assessment but that technicians, as well as roadside assistance, were unable to replicate the fault.
In an email exchange with Jaguar’s customer service team, Mr Turner wrote that there had been two occasions ‘whereby the vehicle launched itself dangerously’.
‘I decided not to drive the car from 14 to 17 November in case of reoccurrence at say a junction or a zebra crossing,’ he wrote in an email to customer service.
‘Given that I have irrefutable CCTV proof, what am I to do? Please treat this matter as urgent, do I wait at home, miss work, until someone takes an interest or what?’
Car ‘written off after being driven into house opposite’
One forum user called Dave said his wife had been left ‘confused’ after their I-Pace was driven into the house opposite them and had to be written off.
‘My wife was driving our I-Pace last month and had an almost identical incident that resulting in the car being written off after being driven into the house opposite,’ the man wrote.
‘Again no one harmed thank goodness, but she would love to understand exactly what happened.’
One man told an I-Pace forum his wife had been left confused and seeking answers after their I-Pace (pictured) was driven into the house opposite them and written off as a result
Driver ‘had no control over speed or braking’
Patrick Macnamara told MailOnline about an accident that his parents’ friends had in their I-Pace in South London.
The couple were forced to part ways with the luxury vehicle after it accelerated into a wall at high speed. ‘The driver had no control over speed or braking,’ he said.
‘They initially began proceedings against Jaguar but then withdrew them due to their age and the cost etc.
‘I believe the car was left in situ where it crashed pending case and examination by an independent assessment.’
EXPERT VIEW: What caused the M62 I-Pace incident?
A police convoy stopped an out-of-control I-Pace on the M62 motorway yesterday
One motoring expert has analysed the M62 I-Pace incident for MailOnline and said it was likely to be related to the electronics going wrong.
Stuart Masson, editorial director of The Car Expert website, said today: ‘The issue causing the car to take off uncontrollably is likely to be related to its electronics, which control most every aspect of every car on sale these days.
‘In most cars, when you put your foot on the accelerator, you’re essentially asking the on-board computer for more power and then it tells the motor – electric, petrol, diesel or hybrid – to serve up more power.
‘Essentially, it sounds like the main fault is with the on-board computer – it’s asking for more power and then not cancelling that request, so the car just keeps on accelerating.’
He added that the fact that applying the brakes failed to stop the car was another concern, saying: ‘Brakes are not allowed to be completely electronic, so there will still be an element of hydraulic assistance.
‘In other words, when you put your foot hard on the brake pedal, the brakes are applied. But it appears that, in these instances, they were not able to overpower the electric motor.
‘Even though EVs use the electric motor to do a lot of day-to-day braking, rather than the physical brake pads themselves, you should certainly be able to stop the car in any emergency with the physical brakes.
‘So there should never be a situation where the driver can’t slam on the brakes and bring the car to a stop.’
Mr Masson also pointed out that most modern cars have automatic gearboxes with electronic controllers which can’t be overridden, rather than older gear levers; electronic parking brakes, rather than physical cable-controlled hand brakes; and electronic ignition buttons, rather than physical keys that can be pulled out to switch off the engine or motor.
He continued: ‘So if there is a fault with the on-board computer, you can’t order the car into neutral, you can’t pull on the handbrake and you can’t switch the whole thing off, so there’s no emergency override control to arrest the car once it’s taken off.
‘If this sort of control failure happened on your home computer, TV or other electronic device, you’d just pull the plug out to cut the power. But obviously you can’t do that in a car, especially when you’re on a motorway at 100mph.’
He also pointed out that while recent incidents having involved EVs, the ‘same could probably happen on any number of new petrol or diesel cars that have similar electronic controls for all the major driving functions’.
Mr Masson added: ‘I don’t know if there is an engineering reason that makes these incidents more likely on certain EVs – it may be that because the motor function is much simpler on an EV than on a petrol or diesel engine, car companies are using simpler/cheaper control systems that are not robust enough.’
Last October, a terrified driver of another EV, the £30,000 MG ZS, said he was kidnapped by the car after it suffered a ‘catastrophic malfunction’.
The bizarre case forced Glaswegian Brian Morrison to dodge red lights and roundabouts before calling police to ram it into their van.
But Mr Masson also cautioned that such issues have not been seen on other EVs on sale, and there are now ‘a million EVs on the road in the UK and many millions more around the world’.
He continued: ‘So it’s likely to be specific faults – maybe related – on the Jaguar I-Pace and MG ZS rather than a generic EV problem.’
Mr Masson also said that EVs have ‘proven to be as safe, if not safer, than ICE cars’, adding that the ‘fire risk from an EV is considerably lower than from an ICE car’.
However he said they ‘have to be treated differently and more work needs to be done in outfitting fire departments with the right kit for fighting EV fires’.
EarthquakesMerseyside Police[10][11]
References
- ^ Mark Duell (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Olivia Day (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Nathan Owen behind the wheel of an out-of-control I-Pace (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ recalled (www.check-vehicle-recalls.service.gov.uk)
- ^ car makers from Mercedes-Benz to Ford are delaying or scrapping further EVs (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ sixth biggest faller in value (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Merseyside Police (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ earthquake (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Manchester Police (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Earthquakes (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Merseyside Police (www.dailymail.co.uk)