My girlfriend's 2020 2.0T FWD Tiguan occasionally gets a warning message that the 12V battery is low. The infotainment system apparently shuts down sometimes too. The battery was replaced less than a year ago and starts the car with no issue. Is the battery really low or is it likely there's some other electrical gremlins? Does the Tiguan have an auxiliary battery?
Anyone? It doesn't make sense to me to be getting a warning for low battery when it cranks and starts so quickly but then I'm not used to dealing with modern cars with lots of electronics.
I don't want her to have to throw money at something if it isn't the problem.
I'd try running a load test on the battery. I know on my wife's 2016 Pilot, a failing battery lit up a Christmas tree worth of lights on her dashboard. Voltage across the terminals was 12.5V, but when I hooked it up to a load tester it failed miserably.
Alternatively, how are the grounds (and the battery cables)?
Is she sitting in the vehicle with it in acc mode a lot?
I only had that message once on my Tiguan, happened after the driver's door was left open for 5-10 minutes while they were swapping wheels on my car at work.
In reply to dj06482 (Forum Supporter) :
Haven't had a look under the hood yet, will check it out and try a load test
In reply to 1kris06 :
Not sure, I'll ask.
The battery in our minivan seemed fine and would even start the car fine after disconnecting and reattaching the terminals but would soon leave my wife stranded. Eventually figured out it was the battery. Still not sure how or why but the point is that even if it starts the car, it could be bad.
Does it have 2 batteries? My moms Volvo has a big starting battery in the trunk and a small battery under the hood. I just replaced both of those a year or so ago. My brother took it to the local chain auto parts store, and they declared the battery good. He got it back to her house, shut it off, and it died completely. I never bothered to figure out which battery went bad, just replaced them both. The dash was showing a voltage issue, that was what prompted the trip to the trip to the auto parts store.
Is this one of those cars that need a battery replacement coded to the car? Something about how an uncoded battery will work for a while but not charge correctly... dunno, bleeding over some BMW lore here.
bludroptop said:Is this one of those cars that need a battery replacement coded to the car? Something about how an uncoded battery will work for a while but not charge correctly... dunno, bleeding over some BMW lore here.
It has the start stop function so I believe it does need coding. Last battery was installed by AAA so I would hope they would know how to code it. My girlfriend did get a start stop error message with it a couple of weeks ago, maybe that's related.
rustyvw - only one battery from what I've found
jfryjfry - noted, it should be under warranty still so that's probably a good place to start.
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