I spent Thursday morning wondering what the situation with my insurance would be. I'm pretty sure that if I tried to make any claim regarding theft or vandalism then the insurance company would use the car's lack of connectivity as a get-out. Also, I think that if I contacted them to inquire about this, they would say that my insurance was invalid, and then I would be driving illegally.
The engineer (a Jaguar specialist) arrived at 2:30 and we spent ten minutes discussing what had happened. He agreed that the failed software installation was too much of a coincidence and the subsequent problem was probably related. However, he decided go through the installation process one more time, to eliminate it, and the result was as we expected - no improvement. He tried multiple start ups and shutdowns and pressed and held both overhead buttons to no effect. The SOS light continued to flash.
Next, he lifted the bonnet to connect jump leads to the 12volt battery. He explained that the battery was OK, but he needed a steady voltage to carry out his computer diagnostics through the OBD. I asked where the second auxiliary battery was, and he explained that this had been removed from later models and the TCU now had its own integral battery.
He spent the next hour running various tests, including an all module reset process (this is a soft reset of the hardware modules) and checking his online version of the I-Pace Technical Manual. He also called several colleagues to see if they could shed any light. The outcome of all this was that he decided that the TCU was probably the heart of the problem and, since it couldn't be awakened, it would have to be replaced.
He offered one final thing - a hard reset of the TCU. This is essentially "Big Red Switch Time", and he did it by simply pulling and replacing the TCU's dedicated fuse. Unfortunately, this didn't have any effect. The SOS light kept flashing and so we retired to lick our wounds.
He said that the car would have to go into the dealer's workshop. I pointed out that the earliest the dealer could accommodate this was 24th Sept (five weeks away) and then he dropped a bombshell. The dealer's techies would simply repeat what he had done and pronounce that the TCU had to be replaced and only then would they order the spare part! Given the availability of components, this would probably take a couple of months to arrive and, worse still, it might not solve the problem.
My mind had now shifted to the nuclear option - take my beloved I-Pace back to the dealer and tell them I wanted my money back!
We'd been standing discussing the options for at least 10 minutes when we heard a voice from the car say, "Hello, this is Jaguar Assist. How can we help?" The car had come out of its coma and automatically summoned help. Better still, the SOS light had stopped flashing.
Everything has been fine for 24 hours -- although I'm still getting a message asking me to install the latest software update, which of course has already been downloaded. There is no chance of me doing that until I'm parked on the dealer's forecourt with a tech guy standing-by! Also, the MyPace app shows the TCU battery at an unwavering 88%, which seems a strange number.
What I've learned:
1. It is possible for a legitimate piece of Jaguar software to totally stun a vital computer and Jaguar themselves are not aware of this.
2. There is no standard process (known to Jaguar) to wake up a comatose (not "sleeping") TCU. What the engineer did was a "Hail Mary" and he admitted he had no explanation of what happened.
3. Any First Responder (or owner) who finds an I-Pace in a coma should pull and replace that TCU fuse before doing anything else. It can't do any harm.