U0192: Lost Communication With Personal Computer
What to do
On an ordinary private car, this almost certainly is not a fault — and it tells you something about the car's history.
This code refers to a working computer plugged into the vehicle's network: a police car's data terminal, an ambulance's records system, a taxi's dispatch unit, a delivery van's routing terminal. Private cars do not have them.
So if you see this, your car has very likely been an ex-fleet, ex-lease, ex-utility or ex-taxi vehicle. When those are sold on, the terminal is taken out — it belongs to the operator — but the car is often not told to stop expecting it. It then reports the missing computer forever, and no amount of testing finds anything, because there is nothing there.
The fix is a coding correction rather than a repair, and it is cheap.
It is still worth doing. A car that keeps calling for a module that never answers may not switch itself fully off after you lock it, which flattens the battery over three or four days and usually gets answered with a new battery.
If your vehicle genuinely does still have one of these terminals, go back to whoever installed it before the car's dealer. They designed that connection, and that is where the fault will be.
What this code means
The on-board computer module has stopped being heard from. The general reasoning is at U0100, and U0493 explains what this actually is — a working computer belonging to whoever operates the vehicle, plugged into its network: a police car's data terminal, an ambulance's records system, a taxi's dispatch unit, a delivery fleet's routing terminal.
Silence produces one situation that bad data does not, and it is easily the commonest way this code reaches a private owner: the vehicle has left the fleet.
When a working vehicle is sold on, the terminal is removed — it belongs to the operator, it carries their data, and it is worth money. What is very often not done is coding the vehicle to stop expecting it. So the next owner has a car that reports lost communication with a computer that was deliberately taken out, permanently, and no test finds anything.
That is the answer on an ex-fleet vehicle, and ex-fleet vehicles are extremely common — ex-lease, ex-utility, ex-police, ex-taxi, ex-driving-school. A code naming equipment a private car has no reason to contain is a strong hint about the vehicle's history, and worth reading as one.
The fix is a coding correction, not a repair. And it is worth doing rather than ignoring, because a module the vehicle keeps calling for can stop the network agreeing to sleep — which flattens a battery over a few days and gets answered with a new battery.
Where the vehicle genuinely still carries such a terminal, U0493's advice stands: go back to whoever installed it rather than to the vehicle manufacturer's dealer, because the connection to the vehicle network is their design and the fault is nearly always at that join.
Likely causes
Start here
- Module not coded to the vehicle · specialist
- Poor wiring splice in an aftermarket installation · moderate
Less common
- Another module holding the bus down · specialist
- Corroded or loose connector · easy
- Blown fuse or failed supply · easy
- Damaged data bus wiring · moderate
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
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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