Battery drain on my BMW 630d: Reasons why it happened & my learnings

This was not the first time I had left the car for more than 10 days without even starting and nothing like this has happened before.

BHPian Rachet recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hey BHPians,

It is indeed true that lesser the electronics inside the car, less would be the worry you would be having. Either they stop working or they might be the reason for something else to stop working.

My car happened to experience a battery drain a few days back. Learned 1 or 2 things out of it. Wanted to share the whole experience with you all. Felt like this is something everybody with a tech laden car should keep in mind. Made a video of the same as well.

Post getting back from my native, around 10 days back, I did not really start the car at all. And two days back I wanted to give the car a wash.

So I started the car and at that time it started with a jerk which was unusual, but it did start. So I thought it might just be me who was thinking too much. After washing the car and when I tried to start it, it just wont start. The instrument console showed a low battery.

There were a couple of doors open and sadly I was not even able to close the door. Problem with soft closing doors I guess, if opened , then it won't close when the battery has drained out.

Then I had to call the road side assistance to come and jump start the car. They took almost an hour to reach.

And they were not able to jump start my car using the car they came in.

They also tried with an external battery source but that too did not work:

So we had to use my friend's car and finally we were able to jump start the car:

After the jump start I then took the car for a spin for about 2 -3 hours. And now everyday I take it for a spin during the night and I have not seen any battery issues after that. It has been almost a week now after the incident.

I tried to think through what might possibly be the reason for this battery drain to happen. This was not the first time I had left the car for more than 10 days without even starting and nothing like this has happened before. I know that there is the BMW dashcam which continuously will draw power during the parking mode to record as I have enabled the parking mode recording. But the way the BMW dashcam works is, the device will be switched off after consuming a defined power in the parking mode to save enough battery to power up the car. This I am very well aware of and that is how it was functioning, hence I was not worried at all about the possibility of not being able to start the car.

Then it came to me. Even though I did not start the car, I had spent a good amount of time exploring stuff inside the car.

Every single thing that's inside this car needs power. There is nothing manual in here. So the battery discharge was continuous and I was not starting the engine for charging to happen. What I did not think of is that the dashcam has already stopped functioning after drawing enough power. So there will be only that much charge left in the battery which can power up the car. Instead I ended up draining what was left in it by using the car for exploring stuff inside without keeping the engine running.

So if you have a car that is loaded with tech , and if you are not using it for a while, also if you think you are spending a good amount of time inside the car, make sure you start the car and keep the engine running. It would be ideal if you take the car for a spin every now and then so that proper charge and discharge happens in the battery. It will help keep the battery healthy.

This is something we all will have to keep in mind because all cars nowadays come with lots of electronics. And these do consume lots of charge from the battery.

And when the battery runs out of charge, you have to call technicians to jump start the car. A visit by the technicians to do that will cost you around 1.5k . That's what they charge. Even though I had availed BMW's Elite pack + BMW secure insurance package which covers roadside assistance , the jump start is not covered.

So to prevent this, you can either use your car every day and take good care of the battery. Or if you cannot do that for some reason, you can even get a jump start kit for yourselves so that it comes handy when situations like this. Especially when you have a car which has lots of tech inside you know when a jump start kit will come handy.

I have learnt my lesson and will not make the same mistake again.

Hope this helps.

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