I ran into this situation 3 days ago. My 2007 Camry v6 has 170K on it. Wonder what some of the possible causes are…before I take it to the mechanics…
I was driving at 60 mph. The car had been running fine for the previous 20 mins. AC was off, radio and headlight were on. All a sudden, all the warning icons on the dashboard lights up (engine, VSC, traction…etc).
After a mile or so, the odometer and speedometer started go up and down intermittently and the dashboard went on and off. This lasted for a minute or so and then back to normal.
However, after a few more miles, my car completely shut off (lost all the power). Glad the brake still worked, but no emergency light, no power unlock, no engine cranking sound…etc. Everything is completely dead silent. Another strange thing was that the odometer and speedometer needles still stuck at 2krpm and 60mph without dropping back down to 0.
After 10 mins or so when I was ready to walk away for help, the emergency light came back flashing by itself and the dashboard lighted up again. I was able to start the engine normally. Ever since, I didn’t notice any abnormality and my car still runs fine in the last two days.
The battery is only 4 months old and the multimeter reading is 12.7V. After engine starts, the reading is 13.6-13.7 regardless I have AC and headlight on or not.
since the battery is fairly new, recheck that the battery cables are tight at the battery posts. Simple and easy check (and free!) that can fix a lot of weird issues like this.
This sounds like maybe a bad ground, possibly one of the main ones to the battery or alternator due to the fact that NOTHING worked. If this is an actual problem, it will probably do it again. If so, turn on the flashers, get out, open the hood, and start wiggling the thick black cables under the hood, especially coming from the battery/alternator. If the flashers come on, you have found the problem.
Stuff like this is very annoying and can keep your car from running but also can be hard to diagnose if the car is running normally. I had a truck with a corroded solenoid wire. It could supply the voltage but not the amps. Sometimes it would start like a champ for many months, then start acting up again. It went into the shop and they couldn’t find it. Finally I read something online about cutting off a few inches of the wire due to corrosion. I ended up cutting off a few feet of black crumbly corroded copper wire. The wire looked fine externally but obviously wasn’t. If you experience something like the car starting after wiggling the wires, make note of which one it was and tell the mechanic. A simple ground cable isn’t hard to change yourself. Maybe cut the old one apart to see how nasty it looks inside. It will be worst near the end.
My guess, your car’s electronic’s suffered power failure for some reason. Your battery and alternator measurements look good, so the problem is likely a faulty electrical connection somewhere. About the only thing you can do is ask your shop to do a visual check the most obvious connections. If they can’t find any problem, ask them what you should do if it happens again. There may be some things you can check at the time, which will help them resolve the problem.
In my own experience with this problem over the years, not a common thing, but the causes were
faulty wire splice between alternator & battery (Corolla)
Your '07 Camry electrical system is much more complicated than any of those cars above, so expect this to be quite time consuming & $$$ for your shop to solve.