So I'm on a business trip in a hotel. I went to the market to buy food for dinner, and when I restarted my car the battery light stayed on. I drove back to the hotel down the street and shut the car off. Restarted the car and everything was normal. Restarted several times and light stayed off.
Im really far from home and a dead alternator would be disastrous.
However I'm thinking it might have been a glitch. If the alternator truly died would there have been a warning in the screen of any sort? What do you guys think?

 

harry, do you have a multimeter with you? If yes, put it across the battery and see if you are up at 12.6 VDC. If you are, then I would make the run home and if the light stays on for a long time, roll down the windows and try to leave everything off that is electrical if possible. You can pull over periodically (leaving the motor running for the moment) and put the multimeter across the battery. You will be good down to around 11.5 VDC. But, that should take you quite a while to reach that point if you are only running the engine.

The other option (and I know this is going to sound funny), but get one of those booster packs and keep it in the passenger seat of your car. Again, turn off everything electrical possible and when the light comes on, plug in the booster pack to the cigarette lighter. This will help keep the main battery up and that should be enough in conjunction with the normal battery to make it all the way home.

Running on just the battery and the motor only, you have about 4 hours worth of driving in the car with nothing else (assuming the battery is up at full charge, or 12.6 VDC). If it isn't, then you can charge the battery up overnight and then make a high speed run home that way.

If the light is off, put the multimeter across the battery. Is it up around 13.7 VDC? If yes, it may have been just a fluke and keep an eye on the light. But, as I mentioned above, as long as you are smart about what electricity is used during the drive, you can make it quite a long ways.

I say make a run for it. Worst case, call up the wife or a good friend and have them be by the phone just in case. But, you should have enough in the battery to make it home.

 

Ok, so I just tried to force the light back on. I started the car, put the headlights and foglights on and blasted the ac, and put on the interior lights as well as the radio.
The light did not go on. Oh, and the rear defrost as well.
No light. I just want to make it home tommorrow night.

 

There are no glitches with Jaguars, no freak occurances. Trust me, if it came on once it will come on again at some point, usually when you would least want it to.

I would do as Thermo says, maybe not now, get home first but definately get it looked at. In my experience these 'freak' occurances are always precursers to something with our cars.

 

A couple months ago I started my car and none of the gauges worked.
I didnt notice for a few miles down the road. I turned the car off and back on and they worked fine after that. To me that was a freak occurence, but your right about getting it looked at. I don't feel like it dying at the worse possible time.
Would the alternator going possibly throw up a code?