Cause
Towing with the drive wheels on the road
A vehicle towed or recovered with its driven wheels turning on the road. On a hybrid or electric vehicle this drives the traction motor as a generator, feeding current back into a system that is switched off and cannot manage it — which is why the module records the event and stores a fault.
It is genuinely damaging rather than merely irregular. The motor can generate voltage beyond what the inverter can absorb with the vehicle shut down, and on many hybrids the transmission's oil pump is driven by the engine, so the gearbox turns without lubrication. Manufacturers specify flatbed recovery for exactly these reasons, and the fault code is often the only record that the instruction was ignored.
It matters diagnostically because the codes are consequences. Battery, inverter and motor faults stored together after a recovery describe an event, not a component — so establish whether the vehicle has been towed before pursuing any of them. Ask the owner directly, since a recovery a week earlier is rarely volunteered and it changes the whole reading of the fault set.
Typically an easy fix. Often worth checking before paying anyone to look.
Codes this can cause (3)
Codes where this is a likely explanation first, rather than merely a possible one.
Information, not instruction
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Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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