Hi BHPians,
Sharing a bit of scary incident I suffered yesterday morning due to low battery in the car. My learning from this incident is that having portable jump starter kit is essential. Planning to purchase one. There are lots of options on Amazon. There is one from MGA (Maruthi Genuine Accessories) as well. Any recommendations are welcome. The desciption of the incident and my experinece with emergency RSA is given below.
My Car is 14 months old now. It is used mainly for highways and when full the family goes out. It is taken out once or twice in a week. I also have Toyota DVR installed in the car (which in internally wired, can wake up on impact of certian Gs and start recording. It is also supposed to turn off when battery voltage drops below 12v.
Yesterday morning around 8:15AM I got into the car and tried starting it (car was last used for a short city round about 4 days ago). It was not starting and parking brake light was blinking. The message "Parking brake unavailable" was flashing in center of MID. Using the EPB button to disengage parking brakes did no have any effect. I tried whole sequence of turning off, waiting for few mins and then trying to turn on for next 10-15mins.
I then called the Toyota RSA toll free number. It prompted 2 options: 1) self-service and 2) talking to a executive. I chose the later and was immediately connected to an executive and he confirmed my contact/vehicle details and then sent an SMS. I was supposed to open the link in the SMS and help them get my location. But SMS did not arrive. He asked me to manually specify nearest landmark in Google Map and punched that address for the incident. The executive got the description of the incident and promised that tehnical expert will call within few mins.
I was waiting for the call sitting inside car. After 10 minutes of wait, decided to get out of the car and lock it. Tried closing all windows, but the power window buttons did not work. Tried turning off ACC mode of car and turning it on again, no display was coming on MID, hence was not sure what was happening. Tried power window buttons again with single clicks, windows started rasing few cms for each click. After numerous clicks, managed to close both front windows. Clicking on start/stop button was not giving any indication if car was turned off. Got out and tried locking using the key. Nothing happened when I pressed lock button on the key. Doors were not locked also. Car was completely vulnerable. Since car was at home, I did not try removing the manual key from remote and trying to lock it (Not yet sure if this is possible, have read about manual unlock).
I got return call after 20 mins. This person again asked for the details, I explained what happened since morning and the latest status. He told me that a technical expert will come and investigate the car ASAP. I got another call in about 30 mins and was asked to share my location on whatsapp. This person came in next 30 minutes. Overall the duration was 60 mins from my call to RSA toll free number and the person standing in front of my car. This person was on a bike with some tools and battery on the pillion seat. He was from a company called Allianz. He measured the voltage of my car battery with multimeter. It was showing only 3V. He connected his battery using jumper cables and asked me to start the car. With jumper cable attached, all things inside car sprang to life and MID started working. I was able to start the car. He asked me to keep it running for an hour. Like we do in good old manual cars, I could not press the accelerator to make car idle since system did not allow me to do so (even in neutral mode). I just left it on in the parking area with key inside the car and engine running. Engine ran for few mins and went to EV mode. After few mins in EV mode, it went to running on engine. I kept the car like this for about 90 mins. I was able to start the car without any issues and use it later in the day.
During this whole ordeal no warnings related to low battery or anything else were shown in iConnect App.
This being a relatively new car and battery. Not sure why battery became low. I plan to visit service center and get things checked, especially get the DVR checked to ensure that it is not sucking all the power.
This post on the same topic published on the news page is also a good read -
https://www.team-bhp.com/news/batter...d-my-learnings
Given that these cars are totally useless without a battery. I will feel lot safer with a jumpstart kit. This thread seems to be the latest on jump starter kits -
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/techn...rter-cars.html (Maruti launches a compact jump starter for cars)