Subaru rear hatch won’t open. 3 beeps

If your Subaru rear hatch won’t open, you’ve come to the right place. The auto opening/closing hatch can get “stuck on stupid” as our lead tech Morgan likes to say. If you’re tired of loading your groceries from the rear door and lifting them over rear seats, here’s the solution.

Open the pod bay door HAL

Why won’t your Subaru open the rear hatch? Has it become sentient? Is it worried you’re plotting to disconnect it while it sings Daisy Bell? Well it may have cause, since this fault frequently follows disconnecting the 12V battery, but that’s not why. Your Subaru isn’t sure about the rear door’s state, it goes into “do no harm” mode. It wants to be told that someone who knows what’s going on is going to take charge. It wants you to make it forget it had a problem so it can be care-free once again.

How to reset your Subaru rear hatch

When this issue is occurring, the car will beep three times each time you press the rear gate button. The natural response is to release the button once the car beeps. To reset the rear door, keep holding the rear hatch release button until you hear a soft “thuck”. The noise is the rear latch releasing. The door can now be opened, but you’re not done yet.

How to initialize a Subaru rear hatch

The auto-open and auto-close functions won’t work until you initialize the rear door. Start the process by slowly raising the rear hatch to the fully opened position. The motors will fight you a little bit, so the door will feel stiff. Once the doo is fully open, close the rear door fully. Make sure the latch is fully closed by pushing the door firmly and listening for a servo noise.

That’s it! If all went well, you should be able to press the button and the car will beep twice and open the door.

Summary:

The fix for when a Subaru rear hatch won’t open and beeps 3 times

1. Press and hold the rear hatch button on the rear hatch until you hear a “thuck”
2. Open the rear door fully
3. Close the rear door fully and listen for a servo sound as the latch grabs
4. Press the rear hatch button and the door should beep twice and open

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