Recently a message popped up on my Fabia dashboard telling me to change the battery in the key fob. Was a little surprised as the car is only about 18 months old. I took the battery out and put it into my battery tester - came up as fully charged !

This message has only appeared once and to date has not re-appeared, 

To be on the safe side, I carry around a spare battery, but I'm little curious as to why this message appeared when the battery is nowhere near run down.

Anybody else experienced this?

 

I don't know how long the battery in my Fabia Mk4's key-fob will last, but this Octavia-related forum discussion is worth reading.

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/504061-replace-key-battery-warning/

 

If you are confident that your battery-testing equipment is 100% accurate and your key-fob's battery is genuinely fully charged (which I would have thought would not be the case after 18 months) it may just be a one-off bloody-minded glitch in your car's electronics. All you can really do is not change the fob's battery and see if the message comes up again.

 

The car that preceded my Fabia was a 2021 Hyundai i20 SE MHEV. One afternoon, while I was cleaning the car and hosing it down, I noticed water running down the inside of one of the rear windows and, when I checked, the window was open by about a centimetre. I thought that perhaps, when I had moved the car, I had accidentally touched the switch that operated that window, so (cursing my luck) I mopped out the water that had got in, shut the window, finished cleaning the car, locked it and made absolutely certain that all the windows were properly closed. Next morning, when I went out to the car (parked in the open outside my house) the same window was again open by a centimetre and (surprise, surprise! it had rained heavily overnight - more mopping out! As a temporary 'fix' before I involved a Hyundai dealership, I made up a sort of shroud from Gorilla tape that, if the window did open itself again and it rained, would at least stop the rainwater getting in. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, but the spontaneous window-opening never happened again.

 

(My Skoda Roomster was bought new by us in 2009. Although I keep a new key-fob battery in the glove-box just in case, I think I've only replaced the fob battery once (perhaps twice) during that 15 years period. Having had unhappy experiences with 'big brand' products (that might have been fakes) for this type of battery I normally buy inexpensive Eunicell batteries via ebay.)

No harm done to let the driver be aware that a replacement battery might be due sooner or later and then they can be sure that get one bought and available to fit if needed.

They might last long enough, then again they might not.

There are actual garages that will as a matter of course replace the fob battery at bi-annual services. Just from their experience of customers being peed off if a few weeks after the service they need a new battery in the key fob.

Simply clever is use both keys from time to time and not always the same one if there is only one driver.

I had same message approx. 6 weeks after I got my car and was surprised to see it with both keys, which would be too much of a coincidence.

I got a generic battery from local diy shop and replaced in one of the keys, this made the message disappear for both keys. However within 2 months the message was back again !!!, so I got a couple of expensive Duracell batteries and replaced in both keys.

This made the message disappear again and now I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I think the warning system is a bit too sensitive to small drop in battery power.
 

It's concerning because I've experienced a number of minor glitches with the electronics on our 2023 Fabia though not this particular issue yet. When you buy a new car with years of pedigree behind it this shouldn't happen.  Maybe Skoda will roll out a Mk V Fabia.