Starter Battery Drain; How to stop ECU's etc from consuming battery when door opens?

[Eric]

Why can’t BMW sell to the military? A quick google search didn’t bring up anything about this. Is it a principle or something going back to the war?

I have something in my mind that it was the way the factory workers were treated during the war production of vehicles. No doubt someone in the know will correct me please

 

[Jackattack13]

The S/W and electrics of the vehicle are clearly the Achilles heel of the vehicle. Why would they design a vehicle whose whole purpose is to get outdoors and far away from society, that dies after 2 or 3 days of camping in the bush? Poor engineering, poor design, thrown together by inexperienced engineers. I hope they can get their act together in future software releases.

 

[ADVAW8S]

The S/W and electrics of the vehicle are clearly the Achilles heel of the vehicle. Why would they design a vehicle whose whole purpose is to get outdoors and far away from society, that dies after 2 or 3 days of camping in the bush? Poor engineering, poor design, thrown together by inexperienced engineers. I hope they can get their act together in future software releases.

I disagree. The issue with infotainment system is not poor engineering but the long boot up time of systems and the rise of impatient drivers. Turn off your laptop, full power down. Now go into your car. Turn your car on. Now turn your laptop on and see how much faster for your car infotainment system versus your laptop. The difference is what people would be bitching and moaning about. To solve the average person complaining, all car manufactures have designed their systems to come awake as soon as you unlock the door. So as you are walking to the car and press the button, the system starts booting up. So by time you ass is in the seat, it is near the end of booting up. This is a drain on the battery system as it brings everything on line like HVAC, all your sensors even your seating position if it is coded to your key. When you get out, the car has no clue if you are done for night or grabbing something quick. So the car waits a good 10 mins before shutting the system down. During that time, it is keeping everything ready to roll if you were to open the door to drive. The way auto manufacturers have addressed the I'm done for the day or I am stopping quickly is double lock. The problem is most people are not aware or read the manual on locking doors. If you click the lock button on your key fob. It will lock the door and set the alarm. Now click it again, it tells the system you are done for the time being. This puts the car to sleep and reduces battery drain.

 

[landmannnn]

There's also a requirement in some countries that the reverse camera must be able to come on within a short number of seconds on engine starting.
So you can't wait for the ignition key before starting the various systems.

 

[HereinDaRockies]

I disagree. The issue with infotainment system is not poor engineering but the long boot up time of systems and the rise of impatient drivers. Turn off your laptop, full power down. Now go into your car. Turn your car on. Now turn your laptop on and see how much faster for your car infotainment system versus your laptop. The difference is what people would be bitching and moaning about. To solve the average person complaining, all car manufactures have designed their systems to come awake as soon as you unlock the door. So as you are walking to the car and press the button, the system starts booting up. So by time you ass is in the seat, it is near the end of booting up. This is a drain on the battery system as it brings everything on line like HVAC, all your sensors even your seating position if it is coded to your key. When you get out, the car has no clue if you are done for night or grabbing something quick. So the car waits a good 10 mins before shutting the system down. During that time, it is keeping everything ready to roll if you were to open the door to drive. The way auto manufacturers have addressed the I'm done for the day or I am stopping quickly is double lock. The problem is most people are not aware or read the manual on locking doors. If you click the lock button on your key fob. It will lock the door and set the alarm. Now click it again, it tells the system you are done for the time being. This puts the car to sleep and reduces battery drain.

Nah.. it’s poor engineering.

First of all, You cannot say the boot up performance in our grenadier is the ultimate in performance potential. They attempted to shorten the lead time to rear camera availability. Decided that they need to eagerly boot up the infotainment system. When doors are triggered.

Second of all, you can tell they did a hack job - When door opens/close triggers the infotainment, it also triggers the alert system - service reminder, fuel reminder, etc. There is literally no use case where opening my cargo door requires my car to alert me on upcoming oil change.

With more attention to detail, Ineos could have deferred the fuel. and service reminder to trigger when vehicle starts, not to trigger when door opens/shuts. They could have trivially buffered the fuel and service reminder events, and emit them upon vehicle startup. That would have been a much more elegant solution.

They very obviously took a shortcut. Sensible approaches were deferred to optimize for speed-to-market and reduced development cost.

Imagine you are camping and in the middle of the night you open the door to wee - guess what happens when you open the door? “BONG! Change your oil in 80 days!”

 

[landmannnn]

Nah.. it’s poor engineering.

First of all, You cannot say the boot up performance in our grenadier is the ultimate in performance potential. They attempted to shorten the lead time to rear camera availability. Decided that they need to eagerly boot up the infotainment system. When doors are triggered.

Second of all, you can tell they did a hack job - When door opens/close triggers the infotainment, it also triggers the alert system - service reminder, fuel reminder, etc. There is literally no use case where opening my cargo door requires my car to alert me on upcoming oil change.

With more attention to detail, Ineos could have deferred the fuel. and service reminder to trigger when vehicle starts, not to trigger when door opens/shuts. They could have trivially buffered the fuel and service reminder events, and emit them upon vehicle startup. That would have been a much more elegant solution.

They very obviously took a shortcut. Sensible approaches were avoided to optimize for speed-to-market and reduced development cost.

Imagine you are camping and in the middle of the night you open the door to wee - guess what ? “BONG! Change your oil in 80 days!”

You are not wrong.
However, from experience of spending huge sums of money on systems development, even the global leading companies are completely incapable of delivering a fully fit for purpose solution.
I suspect that IA made the school boy error of assuming that the developers knew how to give the required solution.

UK people will know the billions that Fujitsu have cost being unable to get a working system for the Post Office. Still not working 20 years later.

 

[Rok_Dr]

Why can’t BMW sell to the military? A quick google search didn’t bring up anything about this. Is it a principle or something going back to the war?

I have something in my mind that it was the way the factory workers were treated during the war production of vehicles. No doubt someone in the know will correct me please

From other posts on the forum and googling that's my understanding as well. Pre and during the second world war they were effectively an armaments company and extensively used slave labour. Something that they have acknowledged and taken responsibility for in the post war era. More can be read here https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/company/history/BMW-during-the-era-of-national-socialism.html.

As far as I can tell the closest BMW get to military vehicles these days is their Protection vehicle business which modifies existing models to varying levels of protection. For example the BMW our Australian Prime Minister drives around in . https://www.whichcar.com.au/features/inside-the-australian-prime-ministers-bulletproof-bmw-7-series.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Skydance]

I disagree. The issue with infotainment system is not poor engineering but the long boot up time of systems and the rise of impatient drivers. Turn off your laptop, full power down. Now go into your car. Turn your car on. Now turn your laptop on and see how much faster for your car infotainment system versus your laptop. The difference is what people would be bitching and moaning about. To solve the average person complaining, all car manufactures have designed their systems to come awake as soon as you unlock the door. So as you are walking to the car and press the button, the system starts booting up. So by time you ass is in the seat, it is near the end of booting up. This is a drain on the battery system as it brings everything on line like HVAC, all your sensors even your seating position if it is coded to your key. When you get out, the car has no clue if you are done for night or grabbing something quick. So the car waits a good 10 mins before shutting the system down. During that time, it is keeping everything ready to roll if you were to open the door to drive. The way auto manufacturers have addressed the I'm done for the day or I am stopping quickly is double lock. The problem is most people are not aware or read the manual on locking doors. If you click the lock button on your key fob. It will lock the door and set the alarm. Now click it again, it tells the system you are done for the time being. This puts the car to sleep and reduces battery drain.

I thought double lock disables the interiors sensors ie for dogs inside etc. But the Grenadier doesn’t have interior sensors.

I never knew that double lock would send everything to sleep. I must try this.

 

[Jiman01]

FWIW, the activation of infotainment and subsequent battery drain was a problem on the ND I traded in for the Grenadier as well.

IIRC, in the case of the ND, there was a work around to keep the system from booting up if the tailgate door opened. IMHO, that is a good work around since, for me at least, I’m in/out of the tailgate most of the time.

If that doesn’t work for the Grenadier, going with a RedArc 150 Li battery would solve the issue as well, if $1800usd is in your budget

 

[HereinDaRockies]

FWIW, the activation of infotainment and subsequent battery drain was a problem on the ND I traded in for the Grenadier as well.

IIRC, in the case of the ND, there was a work around to keep the system from booting up if the tailgate door opened. IMHO, that is a good work around since, for me at least, I’m in/out of the tailgate most of the time.

If that doesn’t work for the Grenadier, going with a RedArc 150 Li battery would solve the issue as well, if $1800usd is in your budget

Exactly the kind of strategic workarounds the Ineos people weren’t clever enough to implement! This purpose built vehicle has a ton of pedestrian design decisions that do not factor its primary purpose

 

[HereinDaRockies]

I thought double lock disables the interiors sensors ie for dogs inside etc. But the Grenadier doesn’t have interior sensors.

I never knew that double lock would send everything to sleep. I must try this.

Nah dude is wrong.. double click does nothing. My infotainment still boots up …. Clicked lock multiple times

Want to know how egregiously bad the logic is? Car has been sitting unlocked in my garage for over 12hrs. The I lock the door using my remote the info screen still boot up with the grenadier logo into the dash view. There is zero need to boot up the infotainment in that scenario. Zero ambiguity of driver intent - I just want to lock the car!

 

[Ovrland Bill]

Nah dude is wrong.. double click does nothing. My infotainment still boots up …. Clicked lock multiple times

Want to know how egregiously bad the logic is? Car has been sitting unlocked in my garage for over 12hrs. The I lock the door using my remote the info screen still boot up with the grenadier logo into the dash view

I can say that the ‘second click’ (after locking) serves to shut off the headlights without waiting for their ‘time out’…

 

[HereinDaRockies]

I can say that the ‘second click’ (after locking) serves to shut off the headlights without waiting for their ‘time out’…

Oh ok.. I already set my headlights to have zero duration on after shutoff.

 

[HereinDaRockies]

I disagree. The issue with infotainment system is not poor engineering but the long boot up time of systems and the rise of impatient drivers. Turn off your laptop, full power down. Now go into your car. Turn your car on. Now turn your laptop on and see how much faster for your car infotainment system versus your laptop. The difference is what people would be bitching and moaning about. To solve the average person complaining, all car manufactures have designed their systems to come awake as soon as you unlock the door. So as you are walking to the car and press the button, the system starts booting up. So by time you ass is in the seat, it is near the end of booting up. This is a drain on the battery system as it brings everything on line like HVAC, all your sensors even your seating position if it is coded to your key. When you get out, the car has no clue if you are done for night or grabbing something quick. So the car waits a good 10 mins before shutting the system down. During that time, it is keeping everything ready to roll if you were to open the door to drive. The way auto manufacturers have addressed the I'm done for the day or I am stopping quickly is double lock. The problem is most people are not aware or read the manual on locking doors. If you click the lock button on your key fob. It will lock the door and set the alarm. Now click it again, it tells the system you are done for the time being. This puts the car to sleep and reduces battery drain.

FYI there is no such feature.. double press of lock does nothing, nor is such feature documented.

 

[HereinDaRockies]

For long term storage ~2 week. From batter drain perspective, Is it better to lock the vehicle or leave it unlocked?

 

[Rok_Dr]

For long term storage ~2 week. From batter drain perspective, Is it better to lock the vehicle or leave it unlocked

I've had no problems parking up for almost 2 weeks and leaving it locked.


The Ineos body builders guide also gives some good tips for long term storage. https://ineosautomotive.stylelabs.cloud/api/public/content/Body_Builders_Guide

Cheers
Steve

 

[Cheshire cat]

I leave mine for a month at a time. So far, no issues although going forward I will leave it on a battery tender. I think that would be better for the battery in the longer term.

 

[blighty001]

I noticed the same problem camping. Dual battery system drained to 25% in 2 days parked with much open and closing of doors and some small camp lighting used.

My solution is a small 120W solar blanket with mppt controller connected directly to starter battery. Kept it topped up nicely for a week on recent trip north, even without full sun every day.

 

[das mo]

Another camper here.

I was actually stuck in summer 2023 in the woods with empty battery.
Aside the bootup thing there is a relay burning voltge in my car as soon as I switch on the aux power.
It usually is on as I am powering my fridge from the boot 12V socket, but even with no consumer attached, it drains battery…
Some others also reported that it helped them switched lights from auto or always on to off when parked.

My dealer said the last software update fixed some issues with ECUs firing up all the time.
Just got the upgrade, so cannot tell yet.

Greetings!

 

[Andrew Kilby]

I disagree. The issue with infotainment system is not poor engineering but the long boot up time of systems and the rise of impatient drivers. Turn off your laptop, full power down. Now go into your car. Turn your car on. Now turn your laptop on and see how much faster for your car infotainment system versus your laptop. The difference is what people would be bitching and moaning about. To solve the average person complaining, all car manufactures have designed their systems to come awake as soon as you unlock the door. So as you are walking to the car and press the button, the system starts booting up. So by time you ass is in the seat, it is near the end of booting up. This is a drain on the battery system as it brings everything on line like HVAC, all your sensors even your seating position if it is coded to your key. When you get out, the car has no clue if you are done for night or grabbing something quick. So the car waits a good 10 mins before shutting the system down. During that time, it is keeping everything ready to roll if you were to open the door to drive. The way auto manufacturers have addressed the I'm done for the day or I am stopping quickly is double lock. The problem is most people are not aware or read the manual on locking doors. If you click the lock button on your key fob. It will lock the door and set the alarm. Now click it again, it tells the system you are done for the time being. This puts the car to sleep and reduces battery drain.

I see your point, but is it more reasonable to compare to a mobile phone?