I just killed the battery in a 2015 Jimny by leaving the lights on. It was standing with lights "on" for about 24h, and now the battery won't receive charge from my CTEC charger.
It is well known, that discharging lead-acid batteries below certain voltages is likely going to kill it.
Why doesn't an expensive equipment like a car include a relatively cheap low voltage discharge protection?
Does the Jimmy not have a lights on warning buzzer when you exit the vehicle?
My 2011 car had this feature …
My 04 corolla does too
06 Jazz screams when the door opens with the lights on
Does it? Toyotas usually kill the headlights when you open the drivers door with the engine off.
They've been doing that for well over 30 years.
@Manny Calavera: Apparently not on the 04 Corolla. Maybe Cresidas or something higher end?
But I can confirm that the corolla will squeal at you if you open the door with the engine off and lights on.
My 1981 car has this feature.
My dad yells at me when I leave the lights on … this has happened my whole life
My 04 MFY Vehicle auto turns them off when you open the driver door…
I think the buzzer goes off when you remove the key. Cant recall exactly. Will check once I get a new battery
Might wanna check ur hearing aid batteries at the same time
My '97 Magna does too
My '68 plymouth does it too.
@CocaKoala
photo pls
People get these cars because they're cut down no frills, it's like buying a WW2 JEEP then wanting AC.
Does the Jimmy not have a lights on warning buzzer when you exit the vehicle
That type of buzzer is the worst 'feature'
How about just turn the lights off automatically, after all the rest of the car is off.
My 97 car did that. With the ignition off, opening the driver's door turns the lights off. So simple and so effective I don't understand why this is even a problem that exists
Part of the problem is that there are so many variations in warning/shut off that it’s quite possible for you to screw up if you are used to X, but he car does Y.
Our Mk6 Golf did that. I generally used to drive with the lights on all the time (left for work with low light, coming home at sunset etc..) so i just left them on.
car manufacturers are too cheap to add the feature, most people remember to turn off the lights, so there isn't much demand for it.
I find with the permanently lit dashboards and DRLs a lot of id10ts don’t even bother turning their lights on, even on back streets at 8pm->.
I wonder how many drink drivers are caught due to drunks turning on their DRL's instead of headlights due to thier instrument cluster still lighting up….
My car turns the dash lights off if it's dark and you haven't turned the headlights on as a prompt for you to turn the headlights on.
If it can sense that it's dark and dim the dashboard, at that point, why not just turn the head lights on for you? Like every other car with auto-headlights?
@Harold Halfprice: Because like on every other car with auto headlights you can still turn the headlights off.
The majority of cars automatically turn the lights off or warn anyway. I haven't had a car since the early 90's that didn't have a warning or automatic lights off.
Beats me why they don’t. It’s a fairly simple technology. With all the auto controls they have now it wouldn’t be hard to cut power to lights, radio, fan etc if the engine isn’t running. I’ll assume they don’t want to kill important stuff while driving but it seems to make sense they could shut them off if the engine isn’t running and the battery voltage goes too low.
Many cars will have an auto light off function or an annoyingly loud beeper when you take the key out and leave the lights on.
Beats me why they don’t.
Because it would hurt the sales of the battery industry.
Smart Alternators are doing wonders for the battery industry. Not charging them enough and shortening their life.
It is smart, it drives up the sales.
Sometimes you are waiting for someone in your car and you want to listen to the radio or music while you're waiting, for ten or twenty minutes. If you didn't get the choice it would be a bit annoying.
If it’s got a low voltage cutoff, and your radio goes off then it’s not a bad thing - It means you can start the car rather than use the radio for longer and end up with needing a jump start.
I often listen to the radio for around an hour with no issues. I wouldn’t mind it to cut off lights, radio etc if the battery is low enough to mean the car won’t start.
Low voltage cut-off is a good idea but not a cut-off just when the engine isn't running
Every car I've driven you had to have the ignition in "Acc" to use the fans, radio, etc.
The earlier ones you could just pull the key out, but my current (~2015?) car you can't pull the key out unless the ignition is in "Off".
In my experience the only things that can be left on are the interior lights, hazards and headlights/parkers. And in many cars there's a beeper for the parkers/headlights if the driver side door is open.
The venn diagram of people not mechanically minded enough to prevent it from happening in the first place, but who know how to reset low voltage protection will be pretty small.
Plus when it's activated I'm guessing manual reset the is needed adding more complexity to both jump starting and replacing a battery.
Auto reset isnt hard to do. Voltage sensing on the body control module, shutoff non essential items like lights, wipers, audio, seat heaters. Leave the ECU active and able to start the car. Body control senses increased voltage and turns on all the stuff it turned off. Simple. No fuss, no intervention.
2015 Jimmy
Do you mean Jimny?
Imagine starting it up and the sound is his laugh… Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ahhhhhh
Lol I could hear your comment as I read it!
Yes, my bad
Where is the cheapest place to get a battery on a Sunday anyway?
Supercheap auto currently have a discount on batteries.
https://www.supercheapauto.com.au/p/century-century-hi-perfo…
thanks!,
looks weaker than the original battery (exide, 400 CCA, 65RC, 44AH) but I guess beggars can't be choosers
Dunno, that's just what google said was a jimmy 2015 battery , I'm not guaranteeing it's suitability:)
Just take the old battery in with you they'll sort it out. And maybe invest in one of those Gooloo jump starters that come on here now and again. We got one a couple of years back and has saved us about 3 times time already with being able to start the car and get it tot he battery shop.
@EightImmortals: Spot on for taking it and and getting a gooloo jump kit. Saved me twice from my kids playing with the lights when unloading groceries in the car.
Biggest issue for me is my neighbours surely one of them sees the car lights on and could knock on my door like I've done for several of them over the years, oh well can't pick em.
@AEKaBeer: Not much awareness out there these days. Had a friend recently had his shed burgled while the neighbour was working in his backyard. Doesn't sound too bad except the crims cut a hole in the side of the shed with an angle grinder and the neighbour didn't even bother to look up.
Costco
Second this.
Same place as a Monday.
Bunnings is OK
Highpoint shopping centre car park.
Typically cost of a hi-vis vest and crowbar.
My car has automatic lights. Its nearly two decades old. I thought all cars would have that by now.
I don't turn my car's head and tail lights on, they turn on by themselves, and they turn off by themselves. And when you turn off the ignition they go out. I can't even flatten the battery by leaving the tailgate open or the doors open, because the computer turns the boot light and interior lights off after a period of time. Or more correctly all those lights that used to be operated directly by a switch, are now only operated indirectly by the switch. The switch just tells the computer that you want the light, the computer turns the light on, and when the computer thinks you don't want the light on any longer it turns it off.
I have automatic lights too.
One time a friend drove the car, and must have turned off the headlights when they'd parked.
For the next day or two I was driving around without headlights on.
It does, my 14 year old lancer switch off both the radio and lights after 15min. Havent had low battery issue other than dead battery.
Exactly and this is probably the feature OP actually wants. Lights turn off after 5 minutes from when the ignition is off.
Low voltage protection will turn off the lights once the they have really run the battery down but they'll also stop a battery (or potentially anything else) that has just enough juice for ignition from starting the car. Could be disastrous in some circumstances.
So I picked "It's a non-problem".
Edit: I suppose you could put the LVP on everything but the ignition. But I still maintain the switch-off after X minutes is superior. Voltage collapse happens very quickly - waiting until that point to do something just seems crazy.
I think the idea is to have low(ish) voltage protection on lights etc. only low enough that you still have enough power to start the engine. If the battery is still OK, it’s not hard to pick a voltage cut off that will still be sufficient to start the engine.
My car fridge has a selectable low voltage cut off. I can set it so that if I leave the fridge running in the car it’ll shut off the fridge before the battery gets low enough to not start the car. Installing this simple tech to the body control module would be quite easy technically and prevent someone leaving the ignition on(key in, engine off) with wipers, heater or lights running and draining the battery low enough to need a jump start.
Why Dont Cars Have Bat Low V Protection? drivers turn off their car lights before leaving them?
Because high-current DC relays are not cheap. Batteries are, by comparison
Headlights already have a relay. It would be easy enough to turn them off when battery is low. Of course the standard auto-off after delay from engine off works in 99% of cases.
You likely wouldn’t need any additional equipment. The ECU already senses voltage. The body control unit controls lights etc. just use software update to disable anything that isn’t required to start the motor if the voltage drops below a predetermined point and the motor isn’t running.
OP is married to their Car and it has the seven-year itch.
Because when the DC low voltage shut off does its job or fails and the car cant be started or used, it's "Why do cars have these stupid voltage cut off relays in them?"
This is where I was at with my answer, everytime you add a part you need to consider the fact that it may fail.
Decent brands do, wife had a 2012 Camry where she left lights and they were turned off, left boot open and it turned light off, left door open and it turned internal light off - and car started the next day still!
Why doesn't she close the doors?
Got distracted with multiple trips inside unloading car ;)
Stitch up designed by Big Battery to screw forgetful people
It's a conspiracy (I'm serious), but it's something you can solve, aftermarket.
It's something you can solve simply by not leaving the lights on.
it's not really about that though. I had a 2000 AU Fairmont that used to turn everything off, no matter what you may or may not have left turned on. Since car manufacturers don't seem to want to make something like this a standard feature (even though other things are pretty much standard), you have to go about solving it with aftermarket electrical add-ons. The cost of new vehicles even after factoring for inflation have actually become cheaper over time, so the overall cost increase excuse for economy of scale doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Most modern cars will not let you leave things on that would drain the battery. The car shuts down and 'goes to sleep' after 15 mins of inactivity. Only if you do aftermarket mods e.g. dashcam you run the risk of draining it.
Not really, depending on manufacturers, some 20+ year old cars have that features whilst other made within the last few years still don't have, Toyota and Honda are notorious for this.
mine cut off when key is removed, handy and simple to implement feature that should be wider spread amongst other manufacturers.
I just killed the battery in a 2015 Jimny by leaving the lights on.
LOL.. you screwed up and you're trying to blame the functions (or lack of) on your car!
Kind of like rear-ending someone and then asking why they didn't include bigger and more powerful brakes? 🤣
After lockdown I used a battery topper/maintainer on my Ford Territory, and it blew the screen, which prevents use of reversing camera, and the controls for ventilation, heating, aircon, bluetooth, etc.
Later found out that on a Territory you shouldn't connect jumper or battery topper negative leads directly to the battery, but instead to some place on the chassis.
A 50 cent fuse could have prevented the $1,500 repair, or even a 5 cent warning sticker on the terminal leads…
It probably says in the owners manual where to connect jumper leads etc. but that doesn’t help if you don’t have the owners manual.
As far as I know most modern vehicles aren’t meant to be jumped direct to negative and some aren’t meant to be jumped/charged with the battery in vehicle.
That… doesn't make sense. You're advised not to connect direct to the battery but the chassis so the spark doesn't happen near the battery and ignite the hydrogen gas.
It doesn't magically stop voltage spikes or whatever killed your screen. I doubt the fuse would have either - it's there to protect the wire against drawing too much current.
If your charger had anything to do with it, it maybe sent a transient high voltage spike into the vehicle's 12 system, again nothing a fuse would do anything about and if that is what caused the HU to fail, you're lucky it didn't blow the ECU… or maybe you just connected it backwards and shunted 12V into your ground line.. who knows :D
Later found out that on a Territory you shouldn't connect jumper or battery topper negative leads directly to the battery, but instead to some place on the chassis.
That's for all cars.
But not the chassis because that's probably painted. You want clean metal.
Check what type of charger you have. If its a 3 stage charger I would not have expected there to be an issue as the charger 'shouldn't' put out anything different to the alternator
However if its a "5 stage" or similar charger, this is the type that has a "recovery" or "desulfation" stage. When they perform the recovery step it sends voltage spikes into the battery to knock off any crystals that have formed on the plates. These voltage spikes would be bad and need the battery to be disconnected.
I leave the lights on 24x7 in my 04 Liberty. The car is smart enough to turn them off when the engine is stopped.
Not sure if youve got a new battery already, but if not you can probably trick the charger into working.
If the CTEK model has the 'supply' function let that run for an hour and try the normal charge function again. If not you can jump the battery and that should be enough for the charger to get going.
An old school battery charger should be able to charge it to a higher voltage level so the intelligent charger can start charging after it detects the voltage it wants.
But if it is the original battery, it should be changed anyway.
It is expensive to implement such a protection circuit, as cars draw 500 - 1000 amps of current when they start the engine. A relay that can handle that current will be expensive, and it will also consume power when turned on. A solid state relay will consume much less power, but it is even more expensive. Implementing such a circuit would also add another point of failure to the car. A battery is also relatively cheap to replace. So that's probably a few resons why car manufacturers don't put such a protection circuit on the battery.
You wouldn't need this on the starter motor or ignition circuits though. Just the accessory stuff like lights etc.
Some cars already have this feature, where they will turn off the lights, radio etc. after a while. It is a better solution which is cheaper and doesn't affect the reliability of critical parts of the car.
I think the point of the thread is that not enough cars have the auto off feature.
Yeah it's ridiculous. I had a warning for the lights on my Kia Pregio. After I sold it I bought a Kia Sorento. It doesn't have a warning sound if you leave the lights on. I ran my battery down a few times and it died after 18 months. Got it replaced under a 30 month warranty at Super Cheap Auto. It would have been a lot better for myself and Super Cheap Auto if the Kia Sorento had a warning when the lights are left on.
My cheaper Kia Cerato turns off the lights automatically sometime after you leave the car. Is this an older (than 2015) model?
2004 model. The Pregio van was 2002.
Majority of cars today have auto headlights, so not much of a issue now. All the European cars I've owned(VW, Audi, Volvo) have had a low voltage warning and shut the accessories off if sitting in the car for awhile with the engine off. While the Japanese cars I've owned(Toyota, Mazda, Honda) just discharge till the battery dies.
If it was the original 7 year old battery it was probably on the way out anyway.
Does the Jimmy not have a lights on warning buzzer when you exit the vehicle?