Low Battery Light

[nd750]

Wow, I'm having a surprising number of "glitches" with this new car.

Today as I get to work (3 mile drive, <40mph) it says "Low Battery" on the display after I shut off the engine.

I've only driven to and from work (2x per day) since Monday. Is there so much drain from the electronics that I'm not driving far enough to recharge the battery?

Maybe I need to rev it a little more

[nd750]

Now I have "Increased Battery Discharge" and it says that something is drawing while the car is turned off. It had the suggestion of resetting the date and time.......

[nd750]

Salesman is telling me that I should put it on a charger........wouldn't driving it alone charge it via the alternator?

[Fastbuck]

I suppose it depends what things you are using whilst you drive. a 3 mile run probably isn't enough though. Loads of people with X5s having similar issues. Make sure you lock your doors when you park to ensure all systems go to sleep properly.

[nd750]

Ah, like Porsche (although that's an extended amount of time). I'm not locking the doors. At night either. Thank you.

[Fastbuck]

Originally Posted by nd750

Ah, like Porsche (although that's an extended amount of time). I'm not locking the doors. At night either. Thank you.

I know from first hand experience of my E70 that as soon as I started locking the doors at night my problems went away.

[nd750]

Dealer says that locked or unlocked the car goes to "sleep" after an hour. Different than my Porsche. They think it could be due to my door latching problem (other thread). Anyway, the 750 is going to the dealer today via flatbed. I do have to admit that BMW Roadside was very accomodating, much better than Mercedes.

[xDrive50i]

Wow, sorry to hear you are having so many issues with your new car!

A 3 mile drive is definitely NOT sufficient to recharge the battery. Another thing you need to remember is that with colder temperatures, the battery has less charge and will take longer to recharge! Also, if you have the efficient dynamics brake regeneration system on your car (you can tell if the bottom of your dashboard shows you the blue battery charge indicator during coasting and braking right next to the current fuel consumption gauge), the battery only charges to I think just below 80%. So if you do these short stints, the engine cranking will draw a large amount of energy out of the battery and the battery does not have enough time to recharge during your short drive to work. Also, the car will draw less power if you use either your remote or the door handles to lock your car as it will turn auxiliary equipment off a lot faster than it would if you let it time out. There is an 8 minute timer that starts from the time you turn the engine off before the car start to turn off equipment like the fans, the radio, the CD player, the entertainment system in the rear, the lights etc. The car may actually turn off equipment a lot sooner if it finds that the battery does not have enough of a charge left in it to guarantee that you will be able to start the car again! The battery will always have a bit of a drain on it since it needs to supply power to equipment like the alarm system, the clock, the remote control system, etc.

[nd750]

Thanks for the sympathy but believe me, after my S8 experience, this is nothing!

I guess I'll just have to take the long way to work

I do have the battery charge dynamic indicator on the bottom, I had wondered about if it does any charging via alternator.

Lots of electricity flowing through that thing!

I do the "double push" to shut everything down, dealer asked me too.

We'll see. Door issue is the more annoying problem.

[nd750]

Dealer says the door cable/actuator issue likely was preventing the car from going to sleep.......

Just to finish out the thread for a future person who may be reading!

[alex_750li]

Hey guys...I got the "Increased Battery Discharge" warning, the only thing I did differently was leave a USB plugged into the center console all night. I transferred my music via the dashboard USB onto the hard disk and then took it out. The next day it was fine. Could it be that the USB doesn't go to sleep or perhaps a coincidence?

[xDrive50i]

It's NOT the USB you left plugged into the center console. I have a 64GB USB Flash drive plugged into the center console since I got the car (back in June of last year) and never had an issue with the battery.

You need to take a look some of the following:

1) how often do you drive the car?
2) what's the distance you travel each time?
3) do you use battery power after you arrived at your destination (e.g. you drive and drop someone off and wait in the car with the engine turned off but you listen to the radio, etc)?
4) do you move the car often without really driving it (e.g. start the car to move it to a different location like from one place to a different one in your driveway)?

3 and 4 above will quickly discharge your battery to the point where you will end up with the "Increased Battery Discharge" warning! If you don't drive the car far enough, the battery will not have enough time to recharge to a point where it can sustain all of the electronic that keeps drawing power from it especially during the time the car is not being driven!