The part about this being common in Southern States is incorrect. I, personally, have had 4 to 6 year old batteries sitting in cars parked for weeks without significant discharging. If the battery is in good condition, even modern cars will not discharge a battery that quickly just maintaining module memory. Most of these modules pull very small amperages. The fact the battery was found defective reinforces that.
You need to have someone to check for a parasitic current draw on the battery as the vehicle sits.
Things that can cause a parasitic current draw are a glove box, underhood, or trunk light that fails to turn off. But these can be easily checked by opening each and quickly touching the bulbs. If a bulb is hot it means it’s been on for awhile. So that’s where the current draw is.
Another thing that can cause a parasitic current draw on the battery is a computer/module that fails to go to sleep. Computers/modules can draw current from the battery for up to an hour after the vehicle is shut off. But after that time the computers/modules should go to sleep where they draw the minimal current. If a computer/module fails to go to sleep this can draw the battery down as the vehicle sits.
Find someone who knows how to do a parasitic current draw test on the battery without disconnecting the battery.
Tester
The only place where new car batteries die in 3-5 days is in the world of “service advisors”…
…who know very little about cars…
and
…where the staff is not really interested in determining that exact cause of the problem.
I strongly suggest that you follow Tester’s advice.
I think what he’s asking about is a battery going dead in 3-5 days from normal parasitic drain.
I sort of agree with Keith, but 3-5 days is way too short. Every car at the long term parking lot at airports everywhere would be dead if that were the case.
As you (the OP) found out, your battery was defective. Congratulations for pushing the dear until it got fixed correctly.
Yes and no. Yes new cars do draw some current when parked for extended periods. But the car should still start after sitting for 30 - 60 days. If you frequently leave your car parked for 3 weeks or more a jumper box in the trunk might be a good thing to have handy.
Any car that runs it’s battery down after sitting for 3 or 4 days has a major current draw problem. Do this to a car battery 3 or 4 times and the battery is trash…They do not like to be discharged over 25%. as the battery sulphates and is ruined.
Complete and total BS, in my opinion.
Just to be clear, I too agree that 3-5 days is way too quick, however there are some major changes in just the last two years so the drain will be a lot faster now than it was just a couple years ago. Two to 5 weeks would not be out of range for a battery to go dead in a new vehicle, especially if the wifi and bluetooth functions were left on.
Note: many people leave the wifi and bluetooth on in their cell phones even though they don’t use the wifi and don’t have a bluetooth device, it cuts the life of the battery charge by about 30-40%.
One more thing, it the vehicle has a premium sound package, a lot of them have remote amps by the speakers. The amps are always in standby so they also have a small parasitic draw so they can tell if the radio is being used. Shutting off the radio removes this parasitic draw and that is another reason to shut off the radio for long term parking.
Alarm systems are a big parasitic load too, but you probably don’t want to turn that off.
@Keith, What major changes have take place in the last two years? I haven’t worked on Chrysler vehicles in four years. I doubt they have gone back to those Infinity speakers with the amplifiers attached like in the 1980’s. Those had a power feed that was turned on with the ignition.
I haven’t seen any cars with active Bluetooth after vehicle shut down.
New vehicle inventory (Chrysler) can sit for 5 to 6 months before the battery will go dead.
The owners manual will have information about the IOD fuse (Ignition off draw or storage).
Removing the IOD fuse will disable the interior lights (dome, visor, map, glove box and trunk) and radio/module memory. This isn’t necessary for storage of less than 30 days.
What you were told by customer service is total BS. Those people are paid to be syrupy sweet and babble nonsense if required to get through the moment.
If what you were told was true (and it’s not) then battery replacements en masse on a weekly basis at all car dealerships would be the norm.
If your battery is going dead quickly and the battery is not the cause then the car likely has a parasitic draw that is too large.
I suggest you have the dealership check the current draw on the battery to see if it is within specs since you have been having a problem with this. I do believe the newer cars require more power from the battery to keep things running but to have a car not be able to start even after a week of being parked is ridicules. I would hope the normal current draw isn’t more 50 milliamps when things are in the sleep mode. It might be a good idea to have the charging system checked out at the same time to make sure it is okay by doing a load test. These are simple and quick tests that should have been done earlier in my opinion. One of the reasons to have a new car is to avoid having incidences like this, not create it.
3-5 Days? No. 3-5 Weeks? Yes. There are 3 things that could be happening here:
-The battery is bad from the factory.
-The battery was in a state of low charge when you parked it, possibly due to being driven on nothing but short trips for a while.
-There is a parasitic draw, as others have said. This could be anything from something simple like a glove box or trunk light that doesn’t shut off when it should, to something harder to track down like one of the car’s electronic modules not going to sleep when it should.
I have a 2006 Chrysler with the original battery. It doesn’t have quite as many bells n’ whistles as your 2013 no doubt, but still has at least half a dozen computers and a ridiculous amount of electronics. I recently didn’t drive it for 4 days when I was out of town. When I returned and started it, you wouldn’t know the battery was even slightly low from the experience. A battery going dead that quick is not normal for any car.
You’d need in the neighborhood of 0.5A continuous draw for the battery to be dead that fast assuming it’s in good shape and fully charged. That’s almost an order of magnitude more load than it should be. As mentioned that’s total BS from the service advisor. No one would tolerate a design like that.
My 2012 Ody routinely sits for up to 30 days. I haven’t bothered to adjust anything- factory/dealership defaults. It has all the bells and whistles.
You can’t compare phones to cars. The best phone batteries are a little over 1 AH. Of course the Bluetooth draw is significant percentage of its capacity. This is at least an 80 AH battery in your car. Leaving stuff like that on is not going to have an impact of that magnitude on your car battery. Something else is wrong.
I think Oblivion was the one that summed up the possibilities. I wouldn’t put up with that dealerships baloney for a second.
Nevada, there have been a lot of changes, go new car shopping and you will see. Not to change the subject here, but it might make an interesting discussion on the future of auto repair as more and more electronics are put in these cars. How will that affect auto mechanics when failures start to shift from the mechanicals to the electronics?
How will that affect auto mechanics when failures start to shift from the mechanicals to the electronics?
Easy…Far less failures.
I had 2 Dodge batteries in my car. They shorted internally and left me stranded. I gave up on getting batteries from the dealer and just went to Adavance.
Those who insist that the discharge from extended parking is negligible might consider whether they would hesitate buying a new battery that had been on the parts store shelf for a year. Batteries will often discharge to below 11 volts sitting on the parts house shelf for 2 to 3 months. If the parts store recharges their stock should they be considered selling used parts?
Those battery tenders have a good market.
shadowfox, I don’t know why but some new cars like some Ford models will not start if the battery is disconnected or goes completely dead. My local AutoZone will not replace a battery for a customer or assist the customer in replacing the battery in their parking lot on certain new cars because they have had to pay for the tow to the dealers to get something reprogrammed.
I don’t know the reasons for this or if the manufacturers are doing this intentionally, but it just is.