Hello everyone!
Thanksgiving is right around the corner and turkeys aren’t so happy about that, so am I about how quickly my car’s battery dies during short inactivity.
Comparing to the rest of cars in our family, the Lexus battery despite being brand new will die within about 4-5 days of inactivity, whereas the rest of cars can go much longer exceeding over 2 weeks
What gives ?
Either Lexus did not do a good job with their electronics or you have a parasitic current drain.
A parasitic drain is usually from some electronic component that develops a short or refuses to “go to sleep” when the car shuts off. The first is typically a failure of the part. The second can be a part or a software failure.
Some electronics in cars continue to draw significant current after you turn off the key to be ready to start up if it thinks you are nearby. If you leave your keys close to where the car is parked unlocked - on a hook just inside the house from the garage, for example - the electronics will never go to sleep and drop their draw down to a level low enough to keep the battery alive. Sometimes locking the car will help that and sometimes not even locking helps and you need to put the keys in a metal box or farther away.
Try the locking and key things first. If that doesn’t work, a mechanic can run a parasitic draw test.
Has it always done this, or is this something new it is doing??
Did you replace the old battery due to this??
Is it only doing this since you had the new battery installed??
Have the new battery checked to make sure it is not defective, it happens…
Mustangman covered the parasitic draw part of it quite well…
Also the weakest link: the alternator.
After 3 remanufactured ones in my ‘81 Buick back in college, I finally landed one that cured what Clueless is experiencing.
Do you leave anything at all.plugged into your USB or 12v power ports overnight?
Do leave something connected to the 16pin DLC?
Welcome back! Are you driving again or is this inactivity because the car remains parked while you recover? When you say the batteries is brand new, do you mean it was installed in this couple of weeks or that it is several months old? Another possibility is that the battery is defective. On a car I owned 10 years ago, the battery died and I had two defective replacements. You might get the battery checked as part of your troubleshooting.