P0A35: Drive Motor B Over Temperature
What to do
If the rear motor derates on a long climb or in deep snow, that is protection, not failure — let it cool. Recurring overheat in normal driving means the motor's cooling needs professional attention; mention whether all-wheel drive behaviour changed, because on many hybrids that is this motor bowing out.
What this code means
The second drive motor genuinely overheated — the thermal event, not a circuit fault.
The P0A2F reasoning applies, with one adjustment: a rear-axle motor B often has its own cooling arrangement rather than sharing the transaxle's fluid, and on many installations it is worked hardest by exactly the situations drivers do not think of as hard — repeated hill starts, towing, and sustained all-wheel-drive running in deep snow or sand. The module derates the rear motor to protect it, which on these cars means the all-wheel drive quietly bows out when hot.
Recurrence in ordinary driving is the signal that matters, exactly as at P0A2F: once is a workload story, a pattern is a cooling-path story.
Likely causes
Start here
Less common
- Low or degraded transmission fluid · moderate
- Faulty motor temperature sensor · specialist
Rare
- Motor winding insulation breakdown · specialist
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
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.
Community experience
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