Start-Start power consumption too high & Low battery warnings

[fabdavrav]

33 minutes ago, DHRichards said:

In the last few years I have owned (all new cars) a Hyundai Santa Fe, a Peugeot 3008, a Ford C-max, a Vauxhall Zafira

 

Old tech, the Peugeot is the worst polluting (in hybrid & diesel) car out of all Euro 5 & 6 engines...the Zafira, ought to be renamed the Zafire due to the huge amount that catch fire due to bad design of cabin heater fuse which cause the unit to draw huge amount of power & then set fire to the car via the dashboard...

[Gabbo]

I am with the OP on this one & feel that theres something wrong with the car.

My wife did approximately 20miles a day for 18months in the vRS (whilst I drove her s&("ç"t heap BMW).

We never had any problems with battery draining in this time or lack of StopStart.

Perhaps I would take it to work once in a while but not every week.

 

Whilst 15miles of driving wont charge a battery from 0% to 100% it is enough to keep the battery topped up in my opinion.

If the battery is 100% charged at the dealer, it should not reach critical level in a week driving 15miles a day.

 

I would think that the garage could do much more to "prove" there is no problem with the battery.

Firstly its not difficult to measure the current draw from the battery when the car is turned-off.

After locking the car the current draw should fall as each module goes to "sleep" to leave only a few mA for the alarm & remote locking detection.

It should be easy here to see if there is a module that is not shutting down.

 

I'd put my money on a hardware or SW update for one of the electronic modules causing the problem.

[DHRichards]

1 hour ago, Gabbo said:

I am with the OP on this one & feel that theres something wrong with the car.

My wife did approximately 20miles a day for 18months in the vRS (whilst I drove her s&("ç"t heap BMW).

We never had any problems with battery draining in this time or lack of StopStart.

Perhaps I would take it to work once in a while but not every week.

 

Whilst 15miles of driving wont charge a battery from 0% to 100% it is enough to keep the battery topped up in my opinion.

If the battery is 100% charged at the dealer, it should not reach critical level in a week driving 15miles a day.

 

I would think that the garage could do much more to "prove" there is no problem with the battery.

Firstly its not difficult to measure the current draw from the battery when the car is turned-off.

After locking the car the current draw should fall as each module goes to "sleep" to leave only a few mA for the alarm & remote locking detection.

It should be easy here to see if there is a module that is not shutting down.

 

I'd put my money on a hardware or SW update for one of the electronic modules causing the problem.

Thanks for agreeing with me. I cannot believe for an instant that a trickle charger should be used to keep the battery topped up. This is a ludicrous suggestion and completely wrong.

I have spoken with Skoda and they are sourcing an identical replacement, which I can collect within a week.

They admit that they have never come across the problem of High Power Consumption before but are at a loss as to the cause of it. They say that only doing a few miles a day should not effect this, especially given that the problem reoccurred within 48 hours of returning the car to me. 

PS - Many years ago my father owned a 1959/60 Wolsey 4/44 which he refused to get rid of. He used to use a trickle charger on the car's battery to keep it topped up. After 60 years of technological advancement I find it hard to believe that anyone would still insist a trickle charger be used to top up a brand new car's battery. 

 

[fabdavrav]

2 hours ago, Gabbo said:

I am with the OP on this one & feel that theres something wrong with the car.

My wife did approximately 20miles a day for 18months in the vRS (whilst I drove her s&("ç"t heap BMW).

We never had any problems with battery draining in this time or lack of StopStart.

Perhaps I would take it to work once in a while but not every week.

 

Whilst 15miles of driving wont charge a battery from 0% to 100% it is enough to keep the battery topped up in my opinion.

If the battery is 100% charged at the dealer, it should not reach critical level in a week driving 15miles a day.

 

 

 

23 minutes ago, DHRichards said:

Thanks for agreeing with me. I cannot believe for an instant that a trickle charger should be used to keep the battery topped up. This is a ludicrous suggestion and completely wrong.

I have spoken with Skoda and they are sourcing an identical replacement, which I can collect within a week.

They admit that they have never come across the problem of High Power Consumption before but are at a loss as to the cause of it. They say that only doing a few miles a day should not effect this, especially given that the problem reoccurred within 48 hours of returning the car to me. 

PS - Many years ago my father owned a 1959/60 Wolsey 4/44 which he refused to get rid of. He used to use a trickle charger on the car's battery to keep it topped up. After 60 years of technological advancement I find it hard to believe that anyone would still insist a trickle charger be used to top up a brand new car's battery. 

 

 

 

Unfortunately Gabbo is talking about driving 15 to 20 miles a day....which is 5,475 to 7,300miles a year......

 

You state you only drive 3000miles a year....so HALF the amount..

 

driving 15 miles a day for a few days will NOT charge the battery up...

 

 

I have been messing with VAG cars for over 23yrs now & I am on various VAG car forums in UK, USA etc.....most newer models have problems with batteries flattening down due to small case Ah sizes & high loads (just to do basic driving) on these modern all electric systems...

 

The air con is fully electric, the ABS is fully electric, the power steering is fully electric...these items used to be run of the engine via aux belts..NOT now!

 

Loads of problems in USA & Canada with their MK7 Golfs flattening batteries....& they do NOT have stop/start in many cases....

 

IF & That's a big IF there is a genuine fault with the car the dealership has done bugger all to find the parasitic draw...& in most cases a true fault code will generate & will point to the BCM causing it...& the car auto shuts down the BCMs after 30mins anyway to stop parasitic draw....

 

& with the help of VCDS (you can use a member on here who has) you can code the stop start out by altering the operating temp so it doesn't activate & no this does not throw up other faults etc...

 

 

[S00perb]

I thought my battery was on the way out due to start/stop not being consistently available. Naught a brand new. top of the range battery. Result - NO difference.

On a short run with 5 stops, may come on for stop 4 and 5.

Long trip from stop 4 (if local) then 3 out of 5 if used a few times in a row.

It won't come on if there is any chance it will leave the battery too low. Be happy with that.

[DHRichards]

Skoda have agreed to exchange the car so problem solved - hopefully.

thanks for everyone's input. I do appreciate all comments.

[Gabbo]

2 hours ago, fabdavrav said:

Unfortunately Gabbo is talking about driving 15 to 20 miles a day....which is 5,475 to 7,300miles a year......

driving 15 miles a day for a few days will NOT charge the battery up...

 

As I said driving 15 minutes wont charge a battery fully from 0% but if your battery is already fully charged, driving the car 15miles each time 2 or 3 times a week should be enough to keep it topped up.

It is certainly not a reason why it would discharge the battery completely in a couple of days.

If the system is working correctly, the drain whilst the car is parked should be negligable (obviously without any external draw like a dash-cam) so it shouldnt make a big difference if you run the car every day or a few days a week.

 

Perhaps driving in this way, without a longer run might give you a low battery warning after a month or so but I would imagine the system is able to cope with this.

 

 

DH, please report back when you get your new car... Im interested to know if you still have the same problem but I'm expecting it will be fine.

[andyvee]

5 hours ago, Gabbo said:

 

As I said driving 15 minutes wont charge a battery fully from 0% but if your battery is already fully charged, driving the car 15miles each time 2 or 3 times a week should be enough to keep it topped up.

It is certainly not a reason why it would discharge the battery completely in a couple of days.

If the system is working correctly, the drain whilst the car is parked should be negligable (obviously without any external draw like a dash-cam) so it shouldnt make a big difference if you run the car every day or a few days a week.

 

Perhaps driving in this way, without a longer run might give you a low battery warning after a month or so but I would imagine the system is able to cope with this.

 

 

DH, please report back when you get your new car... Im interested to know if you still have the same problem but I'm expecting it will be fine.

You are forgetting that the battery was originally semi-drained with a dash cam left on 24/7, and at no point has anyone said that the battery went from 100% charged to fully discharged. In my experience, the informational message comes on at about 40%-50% SoC. I asked multiple times for the OP to charge the battery to 100%, but the best response I got was that the dealer had 'topped it up' - what for 10 minutes, an hour or to a full charge - who knows? (which on on one of these cars with a semi-flat battery takes a quite a few hours with the correct charger, typically 6 to 12 hours).

 

Also, the OP says that the car had been driven 15 miles each day, so I would assume the best case scenario is 2 x 7.5 mile journeys - that is not going to put much charge in any battery, in fact it is more likely to drain it slightly. Don't forget the alternators and BCM don't work like the old days and put out a whopping current to get charge back in to the battery, in a bid to reduce emissions the alternators now only trickle charge so there is minimal additional load on the engine - you only get a high current under regenerative engine braking and when the BCM senses the battery has dropped below a threshold - and then guess what - you get the 'High Power Consumption' message and S/S is disabled in an attempt to put as much charge back in to the battery as possible and get it back above the threshold where S/S will enable itself again.

 

The battery has not been discharged completely, unless I have misunderstood the OPs posts, he is getting the Informational Message about High Power Consumption. This is not an 'Error' or 'Fault' message - the car has sensed that the battery charge has dropped below a threshold so S/S is disabled to get some charge back in the battery - it is working exactly as designed. It does not necessarily mean that the convenience electronics is the cause of the high consumption, it can also mean that the battery is the high power consumer as it needs some charge. This is the BCM trying to protect the battery and ensure you don't end up with a dead battery - which from the OP's posts does not seem to have happened, so as I said, working as designed. It doesn't help that some main dealer technicians won't understand this - the fact that they don't seem to know that the message is telling you that the battery needs some charge so S/S is disabled is a little concerning.

 

The chances are that if anything is faulty it is the battery due to being partially drained by the dash cam being left permanently on. These AGM batteries do not like having a constant 1A drain on them, they don't seem to recover very well unless charged correctly. I would have expected the dealer to check for this though, they can test discharge with one of the VAS tools. If a module was drawing too much current when the ignition was off there would be a fault code logged on the CAN Gateway (BCM is a sub-module of) - I've seen a couple of examples of this.

 

As I said in one of my posts - been there, done that, got the t-shirt with a Blackvue in parking mode and getting regular 'High Power Consumption' messages. A 250 mile motorway drive back from London after being parked up at a hotel for a week with the dash cam in parking mode hardly put any charge back in to the battery - it went from 30% SoC to 60% SoC. A day or two later, the 'High Power Consumption' messages were back. Gave it a boost with the battery charger for a few hours and changed the PowerMagic Pro to 12v threshold and didn't see the messages again. The dash cam would stay in parking mode for a night, then the PowerMagic would intervene and cut power to it on the 12v threshold. On the 11.8v threshold it would run for days in parking mode ....... and the Blackvue was about 60% of the current of the OP's dashcam.

 

At no point did either of my cars fail to start, and I must have seen the message well over 100 times across the 2 cars. I only ever recall topping the battery up that one time. The drawbacks of running dashcams in parking mode .....

 

Anyway, all academic as the car is being exchanged. As I said yesterday to the OP - enjoy the new car BUT be careful with that dashcam or you could end up back where you started. Invest in a hardwire kit with in-built battery protection.

[andyvee]

9 hours ago, S00perb said:

I thought my battery was on the way out due to start/stop not being consistently available. Naught a brand new. top of the range battery. Result - NO difference.

On a short run with 5 stops, may come on for stop 4 and 5.

Long trip from stop 4 (if local) then 3 out of 5 if used a few times in a row.

It won't come on if there is any chance it will leave the battery too low. Be happy with that.

Working as designed. You can always hook a charger up if the messages become very regular.

[fabdavrav]

The OP has a 2017 Superb SE.......I just double check the parts general for a 2016 year version & 180Amp alternator is the biggest fitted to any stop start system...

& that's with the biggest battery which is 096 case size so about 760A 70Ah 

[Rodge]

On 20/09/2017 at 12:29, DHRichards said:

I have a Skoda Superb 2lt which is only 5 months old. The start/stop also showed high power consumption and went back to Skoda for checking. It worked fine for one day, then the same fault returned. It's back in the garage (main dealers) again next week and we are getting concerned as we're going abroad in it next month and don't want the car to fail us while away. 

This is not a fault. The car is working as intended. It is not going to fail. Why on earth would you think it is? Start/stop choosing not to operate is normal.

[Mary79]

On 2015. 11. 19. at 13:42, JamesVRSmk3 said:

Van egy pár probléma, valószínűleg kapcsolódik:

 

1. Szinte minden alkalommal, amikor elindítom a kocsimat, figyelmeztetést kapok az akkumulátor lemerüléséről.

2. A start-stop rendszer már nem működik.

 

A stop-start két üzenetet jelenít meg (néha egyik vagy másik, néha mindkettő együtt), amelyek:

 

• Túl nagy az energiafogyasztás.

• A motornak járnia kell.

 

Nem igazán tudja, hol kezdje. A "magas az energiafogyasztás" üzenet kikapcsolása érdekében megpróbáltam kihúzni minden olyan dugót, amely csatlakozik, például műszerfalat, USB-t stb., Kikapcsoltam a légkondicionálót, a lámpákat és más biteket, ha parkolóban ülök, de még mindig azt mondja, hogy a fogyasztás túl magas.

 

Van valakinek ilyen, mielőtt lefoglalnám, hogy megnézzék?

Hi! Did the service solve the problem with your car? My Superb III 2016 writes the same bugs and disables comfort features like air conditioning after a while. New AGM battery has been replaced, battery controller and voltage regulator. The generator is good. The diagnostic does not generate an DTC. The car thinks the battery is weak, but it is not. They say software can be a problem. Waiting for manufacturer help. If there is hope to do it once you would not sue the dealer to buy it back. Thanks for the answer. 😔