On the list of things that can go wrong with plug-in cars, this is one the engineers probably never thought of: rodent attack. Cars.com‘s Chevy Volt was parked at a public charging point when a ground error occurred, ending the charging session. We’ll let the firsthand account take it from there:
Monitoring the online ChargePoint portal from home, I hoped the charging station would reset, something it attempts to do a total of four times every 15 minutes. That’s when I received an e-mail from Todd Dore, the treasurer of the Fox Valley Electric Auto Association who parks and charges his converted Volkswagen Beetle right next to our Volt. He said that at 6:30 when he left work, we’d had a “furry visitor,” a brown rat who scurried under our Volt, probably seeking warmth. The temperatures had been below 10 degrees.
Rodents are known to climb into the engine compartments of conventional cars when it’s frigid outside, so it made sense. The Volt maintains a minimum battery temperature when it’s plugged in, even once fully charged, because a warm battery is a more powerful one. It also extends the battery’s longevity, according to Chevrolet.
When I arrived Friday morning, I returned the power connector to the charging station, which reset it, then reattached it to the Volt, which began charging again. No problem. But when I departed Friday night, I got warning lights: ABS, “Service Brake Assist” and “Service Stabilitrak.” I drove it home anyway, hoping to get it serviced. The next day, I noticed the bottom rear window pane wasn’t defogging, though the main window was.
This morning, the Chevy dealer confirmed that the rat had indeed gnawed through a wiring harness in the engine compartment, causing, at minimum, the warning lights and rear defogger failure.
This won’t be covered under warranty. It was, in the truest sense, an act of nature.
An attempt to repair the harness should save us “thousands,” according to the dealer, but the labor involved in extricating the harness from behind the headlight is extensive. The cost: an estimated $600.
Of course, this incident was as much a product of the garage in question as the car… and presumably most private suburban garages will be less rodent-infested than urban public garages. Still, this is just one of the many issues that nobody saw coming. As more and more plug-in cars hit the roads, there will probably be plenty more.
I had a Pack Rat living in my shed for several years, and it almost seemed to know what to attack to do the most damage. Battery cables, control cables, heater hoses and brake hoses were favorites.
Time for an emergency retrofit: spray that harness with liquefied capsicum!
Come to think of it, that’s something the engineers should have had on their list of potential problems, along with mag-chlor salts and what they do to unshielded conductors: rodents chewing through wires have been a known problem for decades among the home wiring experts, to the point where capsicum extracts have been integrated into the sheaths of system-critical wires in order to discourage unauthorized gnawing.
One of the reasons German cars started getting plastic covers covers on everything under the hood was to keep squirrels from eating the wiring so somebody has already thought of the problem. Apparently modern (90’s on up) insulation is very tasty to rodents.
I knew a friend, owned a farm, had a nice mazdaspeed miata as his toy car (in Ontario), so summer use only. He parked his car in his garage over the winter, had the same warning lights when he started up the next summer. $1200 in wiring harness later, all was well. Rats had chewed up the whole thing.
My grandfather’s neighbors had this happen to a brand new Sant Fe. They went away for the winter to FL and when they returned the car wouldnt start. They had it towed to the dealership where they were told the majority of the wiring under the doos at the insulation chewed off and had to be replaced along with some under the dashboard. Total damage was just under $3500.
$600 for the volt sounds cheap.
D-Con on the floor of a stored car.
I had mice somewhere in the heating system, blocking most of the heat. My mechanic extracted a nest for $100 and change.
This can happen to any car, and it has happened to many. Rats aren’t the only culprits, in my neighbourhood squirrels also like to chew up wiring harnesses. A family of squirrels setup shop under the hood of my neighbour’s Caravan. The van was parked for months while the owner was recovering from an injury. When she tried to start it after her recovery, nothing happened when she turned the key. She paid nearly $6000 to have it repaired!
I’ve seen three memorable incidents:
My parents’ Dodge Aspen’s radiator fan cut a four-inch long gash in our family cat who had been sleeping in the engine bay. Stitched him up, but it was pretty horrible to witness. I don’t think a cat could fit in a modern car’s engine bay, thank goodness.
My sister-in-law’s Pontiac Vibe had a small family of mice living in the remains of the cabin air filter. Turns out they make pretty good nesting material.
Finally, a squirrel had decided to munch some pine-cones out of the cold (and in my Fit’s shift linkage) and the detritus (stripped pine cones) ended up locking out second and fourth gears. The dealer thought that one was pretty funny. Initially they thought I was a dimwit who couldn’t shift his two-day-old car.
It’s pretty common in colder climates.
I got a couple outdoor cats that leave a chewed up mouse in the garage every now and then to remind me why I have cats! And, (knocks on wood) they don’t climb on and walk on the cars either.
Both of the cars in front of my house have cat paw prints on the hood. I’ve given up cleaning them off, because they always reappear in a few days.
Whenever I start my car, I turn the key to on, wait for the fuel pump to run, and then I start the car. The noise from the fuel pump scares away any cats keeping warm under the engine.
That beloved term of yore may not disappear!!!!!
The “rat” engine remains in the garages of the masses!!!
It’s a problem here in the Seattle area too – there are rats everywhere, and I have, er, ahem, evidence of them on all of my car engines (fortunately I haven’t had a lot of wires chewed – yet). My neighbors are shocked when I show them where the rats have been under their car hoods (muddy footprints, their uber-urine which corrodes the living snot out of anything metallic, droppings on the intake manifold, etc)
One on of the VW forums I am on, several years back, somebody posted a VW brochure from Europe (in German), and they actually had a rodent-resistant option package available – the brochure showed a picture of a real rat gnawing on an underhood cable! You’d never see that in a brochure at a dealership here in the US, that’s for sure.
I remember hearing about that package, though i don’t remember if it was on TTAC or a Top Gear “news” segment.
I work as a dealership service advisor and agree with those who have noted that this issue is not limited to plug in cars.
The anecdote I’ll throw in is that one day we were doing a routine service on a vehicle and found the air induction system literally stuffed with peanuts in the shell. We extracted roughly two to three pounds of them and bagged them up to show the owner of the vehicle. Upon doing this, the owner informed me that the garage where the vehicle was kept had a large bag of peanuts in it, and they had noticed that the peanuts were disappearing. So now they knew where they went… some furry little creature’s winter food supply!
I’m fairly confident this is something Toyota addressed years ago, but I can’t immediately find the reference;
They don’t use wiring materials/shields/covers that are tasty to rodents.
I was told earlier this month by my mechanic that “they” [a suspected reference to all vehicle manufacturers] use organic products to make wire shielding and wire loom covers. He specifically said “peanut oil”. He said it DOES taste good to rodents. I’m not sure if his anecdotal evidence/story applies to Toyota. Might the End-of-Life recyclable material content requirements in the Euro Zone be to blame for my Volvo’s squirrel damage?
BTW: my incident was covered by my comprehensive auto insurance. I paid the $1000 the deductible, Allstate paid the remaining $2700+/-.
One trick a local farmer told me was to leave the hood popped if you are not using it for any length of time. The cold breeze and flowing ambient air will make the engine compartment much less favorable to roost in.
Personally, I haven’t had this problem, at least not yet, but a friend who lived outside Riverside, Ca. owned a Corvette that he only drove occasionally. Well, a rat got in under the hood and chewed up the harness. $1600.00 later, all was well, then he sold the car and house and moved to Arizona.
At our first house, way back when, we always parked our shiny new ’82 Accord in our small garage during the winter. We kept smelling dog food when we drove it. When the vents stopped putting out any heat, or air for that matter, I investigated. The air passages were stuffed with dry dog food nuggets. Apparently the resident ground squirrel was carrying our St. Bernard’s food from the barrel next to the car and “squirreling” it away in the Honda. Took a whole day to remove enough dash bits to get all the food out. I think there was still some in there when we sold it 10 yrs and 160,000 miles later.
This sort of thing isn’t all that unusual, even in gas powered vehicles. We’ve seen all manner of creatures under the hood here in our shop.
My favorite was the kitten we pulled out of a Toyota. We were giving the car an oil change and tire rotation when we discovered the hitchhiker. Of course I guess it’s possible he was chasing a rat. ;-)
I do think that with the advent of electric powered vehicles that rodents will prove to be a bigger problem than they are with current vehicles. Here in Florida a lot of people park there cars outside, so keeping animals out of the electric powered cars is going to prove a challenge. We’ve even had snakes wrap themselves around engines.