500L Dead Battery

[EricB]

Hello Everyone, you are not alone.
Brand new 500l bought march2014. Battery dead in april after car was left 1week without use. Battery dead again in may.
Yesterday, got the car towed again for dead battery.
Previous 500 did not have such issue.
Today they said i had a bad alternator and would change it but the dealer did confirm they need to regularly jump their yard's car because of high drain current.

I won't put in a larger battery, it won't fix the issue and the car is not even 6months. Too many dead batteries in the fiat blogs to be defective batteries... 1defective cell...blablabla.

Be aware, once you battery has been dead once... It will no longer perform as new. When batteries sulfate, vibration by normal drive shakes the sulfate at the bottom of the battery and capacity gets worse... So if dealer does not replace you battery, it will just get worse. Remember , their faulty design kills your battery slowly.

Can someone show me a link to fuse panel details ? I can certainly isolate which fuse circuit drains too much. Would also help if i knew what this car "designed standby current" was supposed to be. I can easily map current drawn for each circuit when <15 minutes after turning off and >20 minutes ( 15-16minutes to sleep) seems pretty standard accross many brands for current draw pattern change.

EricB

[EricB]

The problem exist as i have read it in many threads...
I am electrical engineerlooking for numbers to post here and give you guys the right ammunitions to get it fixed.

What is the car drain current when off ? What about > 20 minutes after turning it off ? ( door locked/unlocked) so 4 measur,ents are needed.
Once you have those numbers and share it here, calling customer support and sharing this is THE information they need to acknoledge the problem.
Most cars seems to run <20-40mA after 20minutes. Anything over this will reduce subtancially the amount of time it can stay in the parking lot without use.

Be carefull not to mix this issue with people driving many short distances. Battery does not have time to recharge between use. I have not been able to find a single car user manual requiring minimum drive distance for recharge OR maxmimum day car should be left unattended BUT this is clearly unaceptable.

I work for an automotive omponents supplier to the car industry and the only way to get things fixed is when a problem is well documented because many dealers mecanics ( along with the dealer's salesman) don't give a damn once the car it out the yard... Warranty will get fiat to pay for the replacement until warranty is over and YOU start paying.

Any current draw information you can get from your respective eperience ( or measure yourself) will help this group

Eric

[minibrings]

My car sat for a week while I was out of town. When I came back it was dead. The dealer tells me this is "Normal" There is so much parasitic draw in the L that if you
don't run it for a week it will go dead. I don't think that's acceptable, but I can't seem to get them to see it.

I called Fiat Customer Care. They said if car sits fir over 21 days disconnect battery.
My car sat a week and its dead.
Open a case with Fiat.. Guy was very helpful
I will take to studio tomorrow

[NGEN]

Had this happen when the L sat for two weeks. Studio said everything was fine. I tend to agree that there is a common draw somewhere that is draining the battery.

[SW Desert Dweller]

We were gone for 7 days and returned to a completely dead battery. This is the second time it has happened since I purchased the car in July. Love the Fiat 500L, but this is super-annoying and discouraging.

Dealer replaced the battery this time. I lost a day of my life waiting for the service department to make that decision...

[minibrings]

My studio wants me to leave car, even though i told them its happened before.
Its inconvenient fir me as a trip to the dealer involves over 100 miles round trip.
I was looking at a 500x, but not anymore. Never again will i buy a car where the closest studio is far away.

[Sipde]

From what I hear it looks like original equipment batteries coming from Hungary are not the greatest quality. Since mine has been replaced I haven't had any issues with the strange messages (excessive radiator coolant temp), and the radio stopped rebooting every time I start the car.

[Michael S Carbone]

hi We too had the battery issue. I had taken it to the dealership they could not find anything wrong. however there was an update to the software for the DC power control system. the next day car will not start dead battery. the outside temp was 9. When I came home from work that day the temp was 20. I got the car to start. So in reading the threads here someone had said try locking the car. so for fun I gave that a try. it was a night, and when I did this it like turning off a light switch. the cabin lights in the did not dim down just off. Hmmm. next morning it was -10. at 5am and to my surprise it startd right up. So the rest of the winter we have been doing that and we have not had any problems. who knew?

[500Lfyrman]

It' been 8 months and 12,000 miles of no problem ownership........ the battery finally died yesterday morning. Drove it to the delearship, battery replaced, updates completed, quick espresso, back on the road 1 hour.

[JustB]

Just had my battery die at noon on Saturday. No nearby studio has a service center open until Monday morning to check it out/fix under warranty.

[Fiat500USA]

Just had my battery die at noon on Saturday. No nearby studio has a service center open until Monday morning to check it out/fix under warranty.

Sorry to hear that. Maybe you can bring the battery to AutoZone/Advance/etc. and they can charge it up for you and test it. It may just be run down and need a charge or at least they can try to put a charge into it so you can start it. You can bring it to the dealer on Monday, and they can test it.

[JustB]

Thank you for the tip, but I really think the battery has just had it. This happened to me last February as well, though that was likely due to cold weather after I left it at an airport. This time it hesitated starting yesterday morning (took 3 tries before it would start, 45 degrees in the garage) then started fine the other 6 times I started it, even after very short trips. So it seems like it will hold a charge for a while, but once it sits for 12-14 hours, the charge is gone.

[Dcsdreams]

To all of those with a battery drain problem. Just took my 500L to service 2 days ago to repair an unrelated issue, and the service advisor said they would also perform a software update to fix the battery drain problem. All Fiat service departments should have this information. The rrt listed on my service invoice is 15-019. Hope this helps.

[jcsimon]

500L Dead Battery

We had a similar problem. Coming back from vacation after two weeks, car did not start. No electronics and key got stuck in ignition. Jumped it, but was dead again the next day. AAA said Alternator. Towed to Fiat (as Fiat service was going to take 3 hours, we utilized AAA who came in 10 minutes). Ended up needing a module update. Can you believe that? Has been running fine ever since. Ask the shop about updating the module.

[cmllr]

Had this happen as well, 19k miles - new battery and system flash and has been fine since. My studio said that the battery had a bad cell.