faarcanal

My car keeps on giving me the battery flat indicator in conjunction with reseting the date/time, trip meter and other computer metrics.

It seems to happen when I leave turn the engine off, have comfort access so just press on/off button once, this leaves the radio or CD running until sleep mode cuts in (about 15 mins).

Also, if I sit in the car with the TV/radio/CD on (first ignition setting) the battery will run down in 20-30 mins.

Is it normal for the battery to run down so quickly or do I have a battery problem?

IceBimmer

What is the car mileage ? Have the dealer check the battery voltage level. You may need a new battery. Also, don't leave the car key inside the car when not driving.

faarcanal

22,000km

And, because it is comfort access the key never leaves my pocket ie I don't leave it in the car.


Thanks

Ceenit

Sounds very much like a weak battery. Otherwise is could be something putting a drain on the battery when it shouldn't. Either way the dealership can determine this, and it should be covered under warranty.

Rudy

To help determine what's going on (like a weak battery or maybe something causing the car to not go to sleep), why not turn the car completely off right away instead of letting it turn off by itself after some time?

In other words, either press the stop button twice (or hold it down longer) so the car isn't still playing the radio, etc. for an extended time in your garage, etc. (I assume it's in your garage unlocked because if you locked it, the radio wouldn't still play, it would turn off right away once the car was locked.) It's possible that a weak battery is becoming even weaker by this unneccessary drain after you've turned off the motor.

That said, there still could be an issue with a component not allowing the car to enter sleep mode in the first place. This is exactly what happened to me early on when I had a faulty shift lever. (The lever was not always snapping back into the right-hand gate after pressing the 'P' button and it was throwing a fault code into the error logs.) Once they replaced the lever, everything's been working perfectly...

faarcanal

Thanks Rudy - It's laziness on my behalf leaving the car unlocked and often not in the garage (crime not that high in my area of Sydney).


I do lock it up sometimes and sometimes press the stop button twice to shut down the car and I have not battery problem when this is done.

Rudy

If the problem clearly only happens when you leave the car on, then yes, either the battery is weak or it's not being charged sufficiently when you drive, or a bit of both, I suppose...

faarcanal

The problem has been fixed! - SA told me that the battery type the car was delivered with (and replaced once due to this compliant) was sometimes not suitable. So they replaced it with a battery with more cells in it. Some months later not even a hint of a problem and my useage has not changed.

e6t.lab.rat

WOW! you are surely lazy to finally have this fixed nearly a year and a half later j/k ... thank goodness it's still under warranty.