Vehicle was travelling ~40 mph on public road. reached down to press "mode" button to left of shifter twice to switch to eco mode. pressed "power" button by mistake. two presses of power button causes vehicle to shut off, even while moving. vehicle suffered total loss of power. was able to bring vehicle to a stop thanks to limited traffic, engaged park, and pressed power button to restart vehicle. mode and power buttons are right next to each other, both require two button presses to either engage eco mode (mode button), or activate emergency vehicle shutoff (power button). not enough differentiation in feel to determine which button is being pressed without taking eyes off road and looking down at shifter console.
I was driving my 5-month old vw e-golf on a city road with heavy traffic and traveling about 35-40 mph when all of sudden my electric car shut off and came to a shuddering stop. it felt almost like another car had hit me from behind. the electric vw golf came to such an abrupt stop that the car behind me nearly hit me. but, they were able to swerve around me. but my car remained stuck in the road and with an electric failure message on the dashboard. the car would not start or even move. i was frightened by this incident. the vw car dealer worked on the car and consulted vw. vw stated that it was likely caused by the driver hitting the start/stop button by accident. but, i did not press the button. the vw dealer was able to re-set all the electrical components and get the car running again without further error messages or incidents. however, i have been reading of similar online reports of this electrical motor failure happening with other e-golf drivers. i do not believe vw has a proper understanding of why their e-golf is shutting off while driving down the road, and this type of mid-trip failure is likely to result in a serious accident and injury/death if not fixed by vw. based on the number of incidents i have read online, this failure warrants a recall by the us government. here is a link to the other reports: http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?7108546-doh!-error-electrical-system-stop! http://www.myvwegolf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=422