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Hello, first post to the forum!

My girlfriend has a 20' Hatch Sport only around 8500mi on it and I just experienced an interesting electrical problem. She had just gotten back from work and was saying that her trunk wasn't opening.I went down to check it out and yeah it wasn't opening with the key fob or the trunk release on the actual hatch It's about 5 in the morning and too dark to tell if there was a button on the interior of the car. I tried a few more times with the fob, each time making sure to lock the car down fully, still no response; I wasn't getting any audible feedback from the latch releasing like normal. I went to check out the vehicle settings to see if there was some kind of valet mode or something that got engage but the menu was greyed out saying that the car cannot be moving in order to make any changes, something isn't right. Turned the car off fully, then started it back up; engine running, noticed the dash had a maintenance due notification that I could not get to go away by pressing the circled "i" on the steering wheel which was also odd. Closed the door, put it in drive and then once the overhead cabin lights went off, that's when I noticed none of the buttons on the steering wheel, and doors weren't illuminated and dashboard lights weren't on, only the screen for the infotainment and the center screen in the cluster were on. Put the car back in park, dash confirmed saw it switch to "P" set the e-brake, everything appears to working fine. So okay maybe there is a battery related issue here, but that couldn't be it considering that at this point I have started the car 2-3 times in the sitting, and the car did it without complaints, headlights, tailights, overhead cabin lights are all on. Popped the hood to check out the battery connections and just see if anything didn't look right. I didn't notice anything big, but did note that the battery appears to be leaking a little bit and one the positive terminals is bent up a little bit, nothing too concerning though. So went to close the hood, and now the hood isn't latching, tried a couple more times, still won't latch. So now the hatch won't open, the hood won't close and the lights aren't on.

So I sat there stumped, weighing my options about having to go to work, am I going to have to skip the day, go in late in order to get this brick of a car to the dealership, Im going to have to call AAA now that the hood won't latch, but then my girlfriend walks up to attempt to open the hatch again, it opens! Hmmmmm, maybe the hood will latch now, went to try, and now it latches. Turned the car off, locked it down fully, unlock and lock on the fob are working fine, even the remote start worked, hatch release on the fob seems to not work still. But I got back in the car, pushed the start button in order to get all the accessories going and all the lights are working again, everything is back to normal. Took the car around the block really quick, and yeah nothing out of the ordinary, came back and parked it.

I appears they may be a big problem here, Im going to take it to the dealer to see whats up with the trunk release on the fob not working, I will come back and update if anything develops.

 
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Welcome to the forum!

You've definitely got the right idea here. It's still under warranty so the dealer should look at it first.

 
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There's a manual release on the inside of the hatch, you have to take off a small plastic panel and use a screw driver

by the way, the button on the key fob just unlocks the hatch, it doesn't pop it open.

I know you did a visual inspection of the battery connections. Make sure the connections are tight though. Also look around for any signs of rodent presence. I'm not 100% sure if they switch away from the soy-based wire insulation (that seem to attract rodents), but small electrical disconnects wreak havoc on these cars. I had a christmas tree of lights a few times on my car, only thing it prevented me from doing was using the brake hold function; the first time, I disconnected and reconnected (and ensured it was on there good) the negative terminal and it went away after driving around a bit. The second time was self-inflicted after an aftermarket electrical modification (HID relay harness install), and went back and made sure all my connections were solid. Went away after driving around a bit.

While reading through your post, it almost seemed like a fuse issue, but everything magically started working again, leading me to believe it might be some sort of loose electrical connection somewhere. If you take it to the dealership, even if it's under warranty, they'll charge you a diagnosis fee regardless, and my local dealers charge like $150 for that.