Hello guys. This will be a challenge to figure out as now even authorized dealer has no clue. I seek help and hope to find a good expert on car electronics. Spoiler alert - the problem persisted for 3 days and then disappeared without any trace. The car is right now at authorized repair shop and they haven´t been successful in diagnosing the issue nor replicating the issue.

My Mazda wouldn´t start on saturday evening following 3 years of flawless functionality. I shot a video to describe the issue (although the video is after 100 attempts, it represents the same behavior). Notice that the orange light is flashing on start button. Notice it doesn´t crank. Notice that the immobilizer system icon (at least I believe that it is, the red car with lock next to it) is flashing. Notice that the steering wheel unlocks after pressing the start button. Notice that the electronics doesn´t turn on - you can´t move the windows or turn on the radio.
There were a few anomalies. Sunday morning the car would start up once flawlessly, engine would then stop after a while due to i-stop system. It wouldn´t start back up. So I tried to restart the engine with start button which resulted in cranking without starting the engine - 2 attempts like this. Then I managed to start up the engine by pressing the start button twice without pressing the clutch (that turned on the electricity etc.) and then the engined managed to start up fine. I made a short ride (that was before all of my repair attempts) thinking it is fixed. Parked the car and the issue re-appeared on the next startup attempt as per video (no crank, orange start button flashing, steering wheel would unlock but no electricity for the radio or windows etc.). Since then I tried: charging the battery, replacing the battery, replacing the key battery, tried the second key (I even tried the key without battery to see that the symptoms are different). I tried something that was supposed to be emergency start - press the start button with your key for long time, also no result.

So I had a tow truck arranged, repair shop was expecting me and the car would suddenly start (I tried it 30min before the tow truck arrived just to be sure). It now works flawlessly in the repair shop, no trace of the issue in ECU either. They called me twice asking for symptoms but no luck so far figuring it out.

I am really down due to this. I don´t earn much money and I had my past 3 cars that I bought used break down. So I collected all of my money and bought a new Mazda, because Mazdas don´t break down. They are on top places in reliability tests every year. Buy a new car they said. It will work, they said. My trust in Mazda took a big hit. No matter how stupid or banal the issue will turn out to be, it rendered my car useless for 3 days, can´t be figured out by the repair shop and my car is now unsafe to drive long distances as it may hang up pretty much anywhere as soon as the engine stops.

 

There are some places with lots of antennes of sort. Sometimes keys cannot locate correctly. Maybe that was the case with you.