Isuzu MU-X 2023 Problems

This is an increasingly common complaint among car owners who are finding that modern driver safety aids such as autonomous emergency braking and lane-keeping assistance programs are too sensitive and don’t take into account the whole picture at the time. Examples include shrubs in a driveway causing the emergency braking to activate, and lane-keeping assistance trying to maintain a car in the centre of its lane despite a looming wide-load on a truck next to it.

I’m not sure what the solution is. But we can only hope that as cars get better and these programs more sophisticated, the errors won’t be as common. But while ever this tech relies on a computer and an algorithm, it will be doomed to (sometimes) fail. This is one of the reasons completely self-driving cars are not yet a reality on our roads; the tech is simply not foolproof yet.

Meantime, covering your car’s cameras with tape might put a stop to the false alarms, but it might also create new problems as the computer searches in vain for the camera’s input. And your concerns about insurance hassles are well founded, too. It’s not hard to imagine the owner of a car with disabled safety features being refused cover in the event of a crash.

My experiences with the very latest turbo-diesel engines available suggests that DPF burn offs are being programmed to happen much more often. It’s likely to be a manufacturer response to the problems associated with DPFs that become clogged and then require manual cleaning or even costly replacement. By programming the DPF to burn off more often, the theory is that this will lead to fewer DPF blockages and other problems, making life easier for the car’s owner and reducing customer complaints.

Perhaps another aspect of this is that the DPF burn usually takes several minutes and kilometres of driving to complete. If the vehicle is stopped before the burn is complete, it may try again for a complete regeneration (burn) as soon as possible, which could be why you’re seeing these frequent notifications on the dashboard.

I’d be interested to know what happens after the 30 minutes when the system switches itself back on. Does it disable again if you give the connecting plug a wiggle? If so, it’s probably a poor electrical connection somewhere inside the plug assembly. If you need to turn the ignition off and back on to make the system disable itself again, then you might be dealing with some kind of computer (body computer?) problem.

The thing is, if this is a genuine Isuzu accessory option, then it should come under the car’s new-car warranty. At which point it’s Isuzu’s problem to fix, regardless of whether the dealership you use has seen this issue before or not.

Electrical failures like this are not uncommon even on brand-new cars. You could have a problem with the body computer, the wiring system, the lock actuators, a fuse or relay or even the key fob that you use to control the locking. However, the solution is pretty simple: This car should still be under the factory warranty (even if you’re not the original owner) so all you need do is take it back to an Isuzu dealer. Under Australian Consumer Law (provided you haven’t caused the problem through negligence or mis-use) the manufacturer is responsible for fixing problems like this one at no cost to you.

A lot of people think that a car that is switched off and locked won’t be draining its battery at all. But that’s not the case. Electronic equipment often imposes a constant drain on the car’s battery, and things like the stereo (for keeping stored radio frequencies) and any alarm system can create a constant draw on the battery. And when you think about it, even the remote central locking needs to be 'alive' all the time so that it can identify and act on your command to open the doors and prepare the car to be started.

However, I wouldn’t expect a nearly new car battery to be unable to survive a single week of not being driven. So maybe there’s something else going on. It could even be that the battery itself is faulty and not holding a charge as it should.

I’d be talking to the dealership as a fault with, say, a luggage area light staying on or any other piece of equipment not switching off when it should, is potentially a warranty claim. Just don’t expect Isuzu to cover the cost of a new battery. Like tyres and brake pads, batteries are considered consumables and are generally not covered by a new-car warranty. Although if it’s an electrical fault on the car that has caused the death of the battery, I reckon it’s an arguable case.

What you’re experiencing is the transmission calibration that many modern vehicles use to increase fuel economy. By always trying to be in a higher gear, the vehicle will record a better fuel economy number on the official test that compares it with its competitors.

The downside is that the constant upshifting means the vehicle will sometimes find itself in a gear that’s slightly too tall, and that’s when you’ll start to get the symptoms of feeling like the engine is labouring or lugging.

As you’ve noted, when the car shifts down a gear, the sensation goes away. The solution is to manually pull the car back a gear when this happens. If t really bothers you, you could ask Isuzu if there’s a software update that makes the transmission a little less eager to be in top gear.

You’ve kind of already answered your own question by saying that you’ve already waited a year for delivery. Saying no to this one and ordering another might see a similar delay and you’d be back to square one. And a year older. Like many brands, Isuzu deliveries were adversely affected by global supply-chain problems and the world shortage of silicon-chips needed to make on-board computers work.

There are two issues with a car with last year’s build date. The first of these is that the motor trade uses the year of manufacture when calculating retained (trade-in) value. So, if you don’t plan to keep the car long before trading it in, then maybe that’s a concern. If you plan to keep it for 10 years or so, then an extra birthday will have very little affect on its trade-in value by then. This is something you might be able to negotiate on with the dealership you’ve purchased from

As for warranty, Australian Consumer Law states that motor vehicle warranties start form the date of first registration, not the build date. So even though the car might technically be six months old when you get it, the factory six-year/150,000km warranty will start from the day it’s delivered to you as a brand-new vehicle. The exception to this is if the car was originally a dealer demonstrator, when the warranty would start form the time it was registered by the dealership. If that’s the case, this should be reflected in the purchase price as it’s no longer a brand-new car you’re buying.