Yep, great advice from @PaulLR . I keep a 10mm knipex duck taped in my battery well. Haven't needed it for that problem (yet), but it is handy to kill the battery power. Any 10mm will do, but I grabbed a version of this on ebay.

 

Exact same thing happened to me on October 4th. Got in, in the morning, can start vehicle but can't move steering wheel without completely reefing on it to get it to move a couple inches right or left. Back and forwards not an issue. I did have a "lane assist warning" as well. 2023 Defender 90 brand new less than 5000 kms. Called Dealer and they sent a car hauler. It's now Nov 20th and I am still driving a loaner Jeep.

From my service advisor "While we are not able to give an explanation why this happened, it was determined with the guidance of TA (technical assistance) that the Power Steering Control module needed to be replaced. This unit is part of the steering rack assembly."

It took weeks to get the new module that needed replacing. They took it for an 8 km drive after replacing and tell me it's fine and ready to be picked up. I am very uncomfortable with driving it now. I do not have the service report.

Do I have anything to worry about?

 

I just ran into the same issue for the first time. 12k miles and 1 year of ownership which leads me to believe it could be software related. I live in an area with poor cell signal and suspect the software update may have glitched as others have mentioned.

Lane assist not available message and loss of power steering. Disconnected the battery for a minute and everything is working again.

Service advisor had not heard of the issue and offered to squeeze me in for an appointment in 3 weeks.

 

Lane assist not available message and loss of power steering occurred with less than 600mi on my D130 P400 Dynamic. Couldn’t turn steering wheel all but a little with a lot of arm strength. all the previous comments here offer a myriad of solutions. I simply drive it back and forth and switched gears several times and within a minute it worked. Oddly, the dealership gave me another solution of shutting the car off, getting out, locking it back up, and then trying to start over by getting in and firing it up.

Either way, I was told by dealer too that a permanent solution will be out shortly.

 

Thank you for the reply. I still don't have my vehicle back from dealership. It's been weeks. Where are you located? I was told by dealership that TA had not heard of the issue.

 

I am in South Jersey and use Cherry Hill Land Rover. I wouldn’t let them tie up the vehicle if it only happened once and try one of the aforementioned solutions.

 

It's the second time it happened. Thanks for location info.

 

It finally happened again to me this morning. I actually drove it 3 miles to my office being very careful. I now have 2200 miles on it since it happened first time at 600. Thank God it didn’t happen in the mountains over the weekend skiing with a bunch of kids as we got back late last night. Now I’m trying the 10mm wrench battery disconnect idea as the locking and walking away option didn’t work this time.

Hopefully I have metric tools, I normally only work on a 66 Mustang. Ugh…

 

My dealer got in touch with me yesterday basically making me feel like I have overblown this and there is no issue. He is arranging to have my vehicle returned to me with nothing really changed.
My concern is it will happen a THIRD time, I have no clue what to do with a wrench if I had one. I don't think I should have to come up with a fix on my own and Land Rover should be taking this seriously.

 

Sure enough the 10mm wrench and disconnection of the battery for 10 seconds worked.

Note that the battery in the new Defenders is in the same place as the old ones; under the front passenger seat there is an access panel. Move the seat all the way forward and from the back seat foot pan area lift up the clipped access panel. This allows access to the battery terminal to simply unscrew lightly and disconnect and reconnect.

Next move is the dealership to see if there’s further data to help prevent this, but note-to-self to keep the metric tools in the truck for future conundrums!