Being a vulnerable person for COVID infection, I took the lockdown order seriously, and therefore my beautiful 2008 3.0 S-type has also endured 4 weeks now of total lockdown. It suddenly dawned on me that the blinking red dash light had vanished Turns out the battery had totally run down, which I found odd because everything had been properly shut down. I jumped it and soon it was up and running, however, there was an annoying loud sustained alarm going off, and I had two error messages...1) LEFT TAIL LIGHT BURNED OUT, an 2) CRUISE CONTROL UNAVAILABLE. Took the cat for a 15 min sprint, and after 10 min the tail light error and alarm vanished. The cruise control error however remained and is persistent. Any ideas what's up with that? What killed the battery - everything was off?

Thanks for any and all advice/suggestions. Wishing everyone a healthy and happy - even if both you and your S-type might also be on lockdown.

 

Trickle charge the battery. You will probably see your cruise message go away as well.

 

Once a battery has drained completely dead in my jags the battery is/was never the same.

 

Charge it and see. Deeply discharged batteries are often permanently damaged. Hopefully it is not so bad.

What was on - the little red light. The alarm runs a few monitors which require electricity and the battery eventually empties. How quickly depends on the remaining capacity of the battery (lessening with age) and the actual level of charge when last used.

Intelligent battery chargers that know when to turn on and off to keep the battery topped up are good if you have a suitably placed power point available.