Fiat 500L battery issues

So I am at the Fiat dealer in Burlingame, CA trying to get the charging system diagnosed as the battery just died yesterday. Needed a jump and trickle charge last night to get it running.

I went online and I found there is a strange battery problem with these cars. I read when they are left UNLOCKED for a long period of time, the battery drains. Something in the 1 week range. Very odd but it was all over the 500 forum(s). I don't think that is the case with my car since it gets *some* driving most days but I do admit it can go a few days without a start but we ALWAYS lock it.

Anyway - hoping to find out what the deal is this morning.
:hmm:

should be

interesting to find out what the deal is on the L. I normally lock my Abarth, even in the garage.

Regards

So...

They tested battery, charging systems, etc and everything checks out OK. Not what I expected and honestly not what I wanted to hear since it wont be covered under warranty they wont just replace it because "I said to". I need to keep an eye on it I guess. I am heading to Monterey for the weekend to attend some car events, so I will be sure to bring jumper cables.

Did it again...

This time I took it to where I bought it at Capitol Fiat Dealer's service center (San Jose, CA). They quickly identified the battery as bad with a bad "cell" and it was promptly replaced.

NOTE - They also did the recall service on the bad airbag. So it turned out to be a good time to visit them

Something is the ECU or ECU's software/firmware remains on slowly using power from the battery.

Do other modern vehicles suffer from this same problem due to the number of ECUs and related on-board electronics?



Bernice

Rupunzell said:

Something is the ECU or ECU's software/firmware remains on slowly using power from the battery.

Do other modern vehicles suffer from this same problem due to the number of ECUs and related on-board electronics?



Bernice

Click to expand...

Good question. I know back in the day of early auto alarms, they could trickle kill a battery. 95/96 Jettas had this problem and the batteries would go dead after a few weeks of just sitting.

What I find strange was I had read that NOT leaving your auto alarm enabled on your 500L could cause a battery drain. I couldn't make sense of that though.

Modern cars have all kinds of little bits that are drawing some current nearly all the time.