I would like to hear from anyone whose E-four Alphard randomly changes from 100% front axle drive to engage the rear axle causing an audible clunk (often heard when accelerating from a standing start). My Alphard has always made a rear axle clunk when first accelerating. I have read this was a common criticism of 1st generation hybrids.

If you are able to swap in a known good battery that will be helpful. Any car battery can likely be rigged up for testing purposes - it doesn't need to be the perfect dimensions, just to make good electrical connections. AGM is better, especially if it's loose in the back (don't want flooded falling over and spilling acid, been there on a previous car...) but if you have another vehicle you could borrow the battery from that for testing, just make sure it's fully charged first and wedge it so it can't fall over. On the Gen2+ hybrids the 12v battery is not cranking the engine so it can actually be quite far gone before it becomes noticeable. All sorts of weird faults can show if the battery is on the way out... a fresh battery and a clear of codes is the first thing to try. One thing I bought recently is a USB charger with battery voltage display: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004622249401.html with the aim to better keep an eye on the battery levels and catch it before it gets too low - the Alphard is much hungrier when locked than my other hybrids.

Thanks as ever Ted. Hope so. The car started a couple of times today but otherwise it's dead. I found a discussion based on a similar problem - it seems to be something electrical and hopefully nothing major.

Taking a wild guess, I suppose it can't read the outside air temperature so it can't display it and E is for error. But it could be something else. If you are able to read fault codes it should tell you which module is having problems. It may just be a case of a code left over from the flat battery and clearing the codes may make it go away.

Hi all, has anyone seen this "E" message and/or know what it stands for? This may or may not be related to my other forum post on a flat battery, but I couldn't find anything in the manual about it.

Awesome. Thanks very much Steve.