And 2014.

 

Haven't seen any issues like that on mine yet. But to be fair, I do leave mine on the battery tender if I know I won't be driving it a lot, which is quite often lately.

 

I just want to add, since I have been monitoring voltage for a few weeks, that this car is never going to do a decent job of charging the battery with around town trips, even daily. The voltage is never high enough and certainly not for long enough to charge the battery properly. I have not taken any highway trips since I started monitoring, though.
The end result with my type of driving is that every day that battery is going to deplete a little more until, presto, low battery. This is a 16. Consequently, I now hook up the battery maintainer every night. Lead acid batteries last longer and have more capacity if maintained fully charged. This way, when I take a trip I know I can rely on the battery, especially since the car does not have built-in voltage or amperage monitoring. Small price to pay for the pleasure of driving it.
Larry

 

What sort of voltages are you seeing around town and how are you measuring it? You may have a weak alternator.

Ryan

 

I do not have a weak alternator; if I run the revs up I can see it output 13.5-14+ volts. Normal driving around town is about 12.5. I have a sensitive, two decimal place voltmeter that plugs in to the power port on the dash. I have used it on other cars and see higher voltages when the battery needs it. There are some other threads here on this issue and it seems that Jaguar has provided a strange charging algorithm for the regulator. Other people have observed the same performance. I cannot get Jaguar service at the dealer or in the UK to tell me what they were intending to do.
One of the other guys reported that after 20 minutes or so at highway speeds the voltage is as high as you would expect it to be, over 13.5, but I have not had a chance to confirm that for my car. You really need over 14 to fully charge an AGM and I only see that for brief spikes around town. It would be unrealistic to expect around town driving to fully charge the battery but I would expect enough output to put some charge in it. I doubt I am getting much charge, if any. I also doubt a dealer would find anything wrong since I have seen adequate voltage occasionally.
Larry

 

+1

About a year ago, I also monitored the voltage for several weeks on trips of various lengths and observed similar results. I think my commute is just long enough (60 miles RT) to keep mine from depleting enough to show the warning message. However, if I plug it into a maintainer immediately after that trip, it still takes overnight to show a full charge.

I have let mine sit (not plugged in) up to two weeks during the last two winters without ever seeing the warning, but anything longer than that, I plug it into the maintainer.

EDIT: One of the things I noticed on my voltage observations is that if you start out with a full charge (after topping off the battery on a charger/maintainer), the battery maintenance software seems to limit the voltage to 12.1-12.3 volts (sometimes high 11s) for an extended period, with only very occasional spikes over 13v. The further you drive, the more often it allows the alternator to boost the voltage to the mid 13s and low 14s.

Using the same voltmeter, checks of my other vehicles show nearly constant readings in the high 13s, and low 14s. I think the JLR software for the F-Type (battery maintenance system) needs some tweaking.

That supports your theory that repeated, short trips could eventually deplete the battery.

 

For me, it only happens after somebody taps into the OBDII port. I don't consider it an issue now that I know how to fix it.

 

And I did plug into the OBD port around the time this started happening, so maybe that is the reasoning for me... needless to say I'll happily take the new battery. I know my issue isn't related to lack of distance driven or anything of that nature, as I let it sit on a battery charger for a full day at work and still had the same problem.

 

Foosh,


Your observations are the same as mine, but I have no road trips planned so I won't be taking a 60 mile trip anytime soon. Since I now keep my battery topped up, all of my local trips will show the inhibited charging voltage and that is exactly what I am seeing as I drive around. Seems the same every time so I do not intend to watch this again until I take a road trip. It sure would be nice to be able to get a response to a technical question from Jaguar. I tried JCNA and they say all technical questions must be answered by the local dealer technician. Those techs have some training, but clearly they do not have the understanding that the design engineer has, the engineer who programmed the battery maintenance software/hardware. I already tried one dealer. Ha! When I take my car in for the 1 year service to a different dealer I will see if I can find anyone who cares or knows.
Larry

 

You'll never get in touch with a design engineer unless they reach out to you. There's just too many of them, who are too specialized to make that feasible. Not to mention many of them have knowledge of future products/designs they shouldn't share, so obviously Jaguar would want to hide them from you.

 

Have you tried the reset?

 

I did the reset before I connected the hardware for my battery maintainer, but I do not know whether that did anything because I was not yet monitoring voltage while driving. I honestly think I am seeing what Jaguar intended. I do not think this is uncommon; we had a similar issue with my wife's E350 MB. Dead battery. two long visits with the dealer and they found nothing wrong. I forced them to replace the battery once. I monitored voltage for a month of driving and reached the same conclusion. Without any sustained higher RPM driving there is not enough charging for the battery, especially with the drains of all of the new electronics. After a month or two of just daily short drives, the battery is too low. I started the practice of monthly overnight charges with her car. My Jag is driven less so I will keep it on the maintainer more. If I had a 60 mi commute, this would be unnecessary, I think. I keep a solar maintainer on my truck parked outside; I just do not drive enough good battery charging.
Larry

 

I think this would be normal for most modern cars. The tender is your best choice. I thought your low battery warning was occurring multiple times weekly.

 

Nope, I have never gotten the low battery warning but I have only had the car 2 months. My experience with newer cars made me look at the voltages(what is it with some luxury cars to not have an installed voltmeter?) and start the maintainer process. Seems that a battery maintainer is a part of car ownership these days.
Larry

 

Good info; thanks guys! :-)

Dave

 

+1. I've experienced the issue twice, and I now realize both followed use of the OBDII port. First occurrence was two days after getting my state inspection sticker (MA uses OBDII to check emission readiness) and the second was a day or so after I connected a Kiwi 3 OBDII interface.

 

Just to calibrate w/ the other observations here, nothing has ever been plugged into my OBDII port, since I took delivery, and I've never seen a low battery warning. In fact, my car has suffered no malfunctions of any kind in 2 years.

 

So has the case been cracked?
Following anything plugged into the OBD port will trigger something that will continually pull from the battery resulting in the battery warning and eventual dead battery if: you don't use a tender or reset the battery via 10+ second disconnect?

 

I don't think anyone can say, and we're all just trying to connect the dots.

 

Mine has had 3 MA inspections (which, as mentioned, includes plugging into the OBD) with no battery warnings. I have a 40 mile RT, and drive it most days in the summer. I did have one occasion of weird behavior, which could have been from low voltage, but the dealer found nothing, and it went away on its own.


Mine spends 4 months in winter storage, with a Battery Tender on it. (Came out a bit over a week ago, and we've had a lot of lousy weather since then. )