I was driving in a Snowstorm. It was a heavy wind/sleet type of snowfall that was near whiteout driving conditions. All of a sudden I lost almost ALL power in my 2018 Honda CR-V (touring edition). The roads were terrible and snowplows had not come through, as it was a bad and sudden storm.

I was driving on the freeway at this time. Once I lost power, the message came up on my dash that said “Shutter Grille Problem. Power reduced”. When it says power reduced, it meant it. I lost 20 mph almost instantly and had the pedal to the floor the entire time, to try to keep speed up. I was almost struck twice in the first 5 minutes of this power loss and had nowhere to pull over to.

If I had stopped on the snowpacked/covered shoulder, I would have been struck. There was no visibility. I almost didn’t have enough power to even make it through the snow covered road and was freaking out. I have driven for over 27 years and have a lot of winter driving experience. This is the only reason I didn’t get into a crash. If my wife had been driving, she would have been struck and/or killed.

I was able to limp it to a rest area eventually. Once there, I discovered (via some stressed out google searches) that this was a known issue and the shutter grilles were blocked. The front of the car was covered with packed snow/slush and I couldn't clear it all out. I removed the majority of it but there was still some in between the grilles. The lovely part was that nothing fixed the issue. I had to wait for a lull in the storm and until I saw a plow truck to get behind, since my CR-V couldn’t drive in the snow. It was dangerous to get back on the freeway but at 30 miles away from home, I didn’t have much choice.

Near my house I found a car wash and sprayed out all of the snow from the grille. It fixed the issue immediately. After speaking with service technicians at my Honda dealership, this is all they had to say. “Yea, that’s a problem (no sh*t) and it’s a bad design (ALSO no sh*t), was designed by people in California who don’t drive in snow......AND it’s not going to be fixed." WOW, is all I could say. That basically ensures I will not buy a Honda in the future. This is a terrible and dangerous decision.