Sudden, temporary loss of power today

[adric22]

I had an odd experience today. I was taking one of those exit ramps from the highway that goes in a complete circle to get you onto the bridge for the street you are exiting too. I'm sure everyone knows what I'm talking about. I was probably going about 30 to 35 mph which is pretty much the same speed everyone else was going. At one point the car simply lost all power and I could feel this vibration that reminded me very much of traction control or ABS doing its thing. I looked at the dash to see if that is what was happening, unfortunately as irony would have it the sun was shining directly onto the dash at this point and pretty much the entire thing was washed out and I couldn't see or read anything.

As soon as the vibration stopped, I had power back again. All in all, I think it lasted maybe 1 to 1.5 seconds. I did not experience it again for the rest of the drive.

I'm sort of hoping this was just the traction control. Maybe because the circle was so sharp it saw a difference in rotation between the left and right wheels and maybe thought I had lost traction. I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this?

 

[TurboFroggy]

This sounds like classic traction control activation. Was it raining or wet? Also see if you can produce the same behavior in the same spot going the same speed etc. Then trying going though that spot with the traction control disabled and see if it feels the same. My guess is that you lost a little traction on the outer most rear tire causing it's rotation to slow down. This activated the traction control which breaks the inner opposite wheel and decreases acceleration power. The noise you heard is the ABS pump working that tire with the most grip to control the skid.

 

[garsh]

I've had that happen on a back road, going around a curve, where a road repair left a little bump mid-curve. Hit the bump and the traction control kicks in due to the momentary lack of road contact. I could reproduce it pretty regularly.

Unfortunately, the traction control appears to remain active for much longer than necessary. My old Chevy minivan did the same thing. It's quite annoying when you know there's no reason for it. My old Dodge Intrepid's traction control seemed to work much better, only staying active for very short fractions of a section when traction is again available.

 

[Leafprobs]

Same thing happened to me last night. The skid light kept coming on (uphill) and I'd lose all power as long as it was on.
Scary as ****. Then downhill my brakes kept locking. Never happened before and the leaf is from 2021