The Solution: I disconnected both battery leads and touched the leads together for several seconds. When the leads were disconnected the beep (of course) stopped. After touching leads together I reconnected them to the battery and the beep did not return. At this point the tailgate worked fine and all is sweetness and light.
The Explanation: So the service manager explained that the tailgates are finicky beasties and have special logic in them that tries to prevent motor burn out should the gate be opening and closing at the same time (double button push?). Once the gate gets into a “safety mode” it will not open or close and just sits there like a lox complaining with a beep sound. Doing the battery dance resets things sort of like CTRL-ALT-Delete for the car.
Subaru: It sure would be nice to have (a) An indicator showing that the tailgate is in this mode and (b) A way to reset that does not require a metric socket set and some mechanical aptitude…. just say’n….
