[Haze]

This just happened to my wife 2 minutes ago.

She drove the 1 month old Ascent to the store, came back out and couldn't start the car. The brake would not depress whatsoever, and pushing the Start button wouldn't even launch the radio or internal car lights (which normally it will do without depressing the brake). The display would only light up with a message to depress the brake to start the car.

The car was in park, car key was in her pocket, the parking brake wasn't on, the car was parked on a perfectly flat parking lot. I launched the My Subaru app and looked at the diagnostic report, which showed everything green and A-OK remotely.

After a few attempts at pushing the Start button to "turn" the car "off" and "on" (the brake continued to be immovable) my wife finally decided to push the brake with all her strength and press the Start button and the car finally started.

I had her turn it off and try again and everything was back to normal.

WTF?!?

 

[Snowgirl]

This just happened to my wife 2 minutes ago.

She drove the 1 month old Ascent to the store, came back out and couldn't start the car. The brake would not depress whatsoever, and pushing the Start button wouldn't even launch the radio or internal car lights (which normally it will do without depressing the brake). The display would only light up with a message to depress the brake to start the car.

The car was in park, car key was in her pocket, the parking brake wasn't on, the car was parked on a perfectly flat parking lot. I launched the My Subaru app and looked at the diagnostic report, which showed everything green and A-OK remotely.

After a few attempts at pushing the Start button to "turn" the car "off" and "on" (the brake continued to be immovable) my wife finally decided to push the brake with all her strength and press the Start button and the car finally started.

I had her turn it off and try again and everything was back to normal.

WTF?!?

We had this issue with a 16 legacy. We would have to hold the key fob on the push start button to override it. (Our service guy told me this trick) they replaced our remote module twice and we got new key fobs and then eventually they had my car for 4 weeks because they or the engineer couldn’t figure out what was going on and then Subaru called to tell me they were repurchasing our car under lemon law. It was the craziest thing ever. I would definitely go by your dealer and get it documented on a service ticket just in case!

 

[GMG]

We had this issue with a 16 legacy. We would have to hold the key fob on the push start button to override it. (Our service guy told me this trick) they replaced our remote module twice and we got new key fobs and then eventually they had my car for 4 weeks because they or the engineer couldn’t figure out what was going on and then Subaru called to tell me they were repurchasing our car under lemon law. It was the craziest thing ever. I would definitely go by your dealer and get it documented on a service ticket just in case!

Thank you! This is great information for every owner.

 

[Carl Abrams]

This just happened to my wife 2 minutes ago.

She drove the 1 month old Ascent to the store, came back out and couldn't start the car. The brake would not depress whatsoever, and pushing the Start button wouldn't even launch the radio or internal car lights (which normally it will do without depressing the brake). The display would only light up with a message to depress the brake to start the car.

The car was in park, car key was in her pocket, the parking brake wasn't on, the car was parked on a perfectly flat parking lot. I launched the My Subaru app and looked at the diagnostic report, which showed everything green and A-OK remotely.

After a few attempts at pushing the Start button to "turn" the car "off" and "on" (the brake continued to be immovable) my wife finally decided to push the brake with all her strength and press the Start button and the car finally started.

I had her turn it off and try again and everything was back to normal.

WTF?!?

Brake pedal switch bad.

Happened to my wife's Forester last month. She had to basically kick the pedal to get it to disengage. Take it in for service so they can put a new switch in.