My car is always on the CTEK 3300 when not in use. I believe the previous owner replaced the battery in 2012. I went out to clean my interior and the CTEK was reading green and fully charged. I had the door opened for maybe 5-10 minutes and took the car for a ride. I see a warning on the dash reading LOW BATTERY, PLEASE START CAR....not sure what the rest of the message was, something about if I wanted the nav to be working properly but wasn't sure what it said. Why would it show low battery when the CTEK had the battery fully charged 10 minutes before going down the block. Why would it say start car when the car was already running? I did have my battery and system checked by the dealer 2 months ago and everything checked out fine. What's up with that???

 

Do you have the CTEK installed with the alligator clips or with the eyelets?

This is the first time I've heard of electrical problems from someone who is using a CTEK.

 

[QUOTE=amcdonal86;917683]Do you have the CTEK installed with the alligator clips or with the eyelets?

This is the first time I've heard of electrical problems from someone who is using a CTEK.[/QUOTE


eyelets. I connect the CTEK whenever the car is parked. The car flips right over. No slow starts.

 

I'm going to make a guess here since I do not have a 2010XK at the moment. On my '12 XJL and '12 XF you have to be sure that you connect the charger OUTSIDE of that small device on the negative post of the battery. Preferably connect the neg charger lead to the car chassis away from the battery. If you put the charging leads on the + and - batt. posts the car's computer will not receive the information about the incoming charges and thinks that it may have low battery.

If that is NOT the issue than welcome to the club. On both of my cars, particularly on the XJL, a couple of door openings will produce that low battery warning. If I do not open the doors but, keep them locked, the battery is still good after 3 weeks of parking without a charger.

 

Nah, guys, it's simpler than that: the warning is misleading. It comes on any time the car has been in 'convenience' mode (i.e. all powered up & ready for liftoff) for more than some fixed period like 5 or 10 minutes. What it really should say is: "High battery drain - start engine to preserve battery life".

The car draws over 10A just sitting there doing nowt - leave it like that long enough, and you could end up with a low battery. So, if you are sitting in the car with the engine off, (say) listening to music while you wait for someone, the warning comes on to let you know that you're draining the battery. But it's indiscriminate - it comes on regardless of the actual battery charge level.

Took me a while to figure it out after I bought mine - I knew the battery was fully charged, so why "Low battery"?.

 

Niagra........Great observation!!! I think you are right on the money! My CTEK showed my battery was fully charged and while having the doors open for 10 or 15 minutes, the warning came on saying I had a low battery when I already knew I was using current without the car running. Of course if I continued for hours I might run the battery down. Leave it to the British. They are still in the Paleozoic period when it comes to technology. FYI......after this notice came on the dash that I had a low battery, I returned home and hooked up my CTEK and the battery went to the fully charged green mode after an hour. How low could the battery have been if it returned to a fully charged state after on one hour???? Thanks again for clearing that up Niagra. The poor guy who doesn't belong to this forum and sees the low battery warning is probably already on his way to the dealership!

 

And that would be me - I mean, what's a techie like me going to do as soon as he gets his new ride home? Sit in the driveway playing with the options for things like mirror dip, global window control, audio EQ, etc., etc., of course. So, after a 100+ mile drive, suddenly I have a low battery - WTF?!?!?!

Of course, I assumed the battery was duff, so next I called Jaguar, had to get Jaguar Assistance to come and test the battery before it could be looked at under warranty. Assistance man showed me the massive draw that the car makes when in 'convenience' mode, carried out some tests and said "Well, battery looks OK, but maybe needs a deep cycle". So off it goes to the nearest authorised shop for a 48-hour deep discharge & recharge.

Of course, the battery was fine, but I ended up being unable to enjoy my new toy for 3 days. And, of course, as soon as I got it home, I had to reset the seat memory, started messing with other settings - and there's that damn message again!! Then the penny dropped…

Another Suck-It-And-See Service: "Learning the hard way, so you don't have to".

 

I am quite sure that Jaguar service is quite aware of these electrical problems and really never "fully disclose" the resolve to most owners. It is easy for the dealership to simply sell the owner another battery.

Thanks to Ngarara for bringing this 10-15 minute "no start" issue to the forefront, and although some people get pissed when I mention CTEK, all of us that use them, know they are a great accessory to have especially if your a Jaguar owner. Some owners would simply rather suggest buying an AGM Battery for $165.00 or a GEL battery rather than spend a misely $52.00 for the CTEK 3300 and have it permanently.

Not owning a CTEK smartcharger or an equivilent is like having toothpaste, but the person is fearful of spending $2.00 for a toothbrush.

It just makes no sense to me to have a $70,000 to $125,000 Jaguar and not spending $52.00 for the smartcharger.

 

Just as a slight counterpoint: even if the car is a daily driver or gets very regular runs, or if you use a conditioner like the CTEK, you will still get this dumb-*** warning if you leave the car sitting too long in 'convenience' mode. If it's happening soon after you get in, or you're getting the usual raft of weird electrical symptoms (well documented elsewhere on the forum), then you should get yourself a conditioner to make sure the battery is fully charged. If it still happens, that's when it's time to get the battery tested/replaced.

 

Cars have been built with 12 volt electrical systems for decades; however, the cars built today have several onboard computers and elaborate electrical systems to heat our seat, heat our steering wheel, operate our windows, doors, sound system, cooling systems, etc.. Some high end manufactures include a battery maintainer with the car, Jaguar should do the same. This is not a Jaguar only problem. All cars today require more electrical power because of the load being placed on them.

 

The 4.2 must not have a "low battery" warning--I've never seen it. And I don't have a battery maintainer.

 

DGL:

I totally agree with your post above. I have battery maintainers on 3 out of my 5 cars.

The CTEK 3300 is constantly plugged into the 2009 Jaguar and 2014 Porsche as these vehicles are loaded with electrical components you have discussed above. While 12v battery (electrical systems) have been around for so many years these newer modern technological advances require a vast amount of electrical power. This is one reason why we should have these maintainers.

 

Other than perhaps the electronically controlled CATS suspension, I cannot think of one electrical component that my friend's VW Jetta has that my XKR does not. Heated seats, navigation/entertainment, keyless ignition, security system, electronically controlled transmission. I'd like to think that a Jag or a Porsche has special electrical requirements but I'm just not seeing it. Can someone enlighten me?

 

I think it's simply that Jag has this 'convenience' mode that leaves much of the car powered up for 30 minutes - and even when you lock it, it takes up to 20 minutes (worst case) to shut everything down and reach minimum drain. I'm pretty sure it has more control modules than the Jetta, but a lot of them won't be active unless the car is running (auto lights, auto wipers, pedestrian impact system & so on), so that's not the difference.

 

I got a warning very similar to this, and it was for the battery in the key fob remote that needed to be replaced.

 

But the Jetta has auto lights and auto wipers, and US X150s aren't even fitted with the pedestrian system. So why would Jaguar engineer more control modules and this "convenience mode" into the car when they provide no tangible benefits??

 

That should give the message "SMART KEY BATTERY LOW" in the message centre between the dials. The "Low Battery - start car…" message appears on the touchscreen.

 

Because they're not as good at electrical design as VW? Because the Jag infotainment system is a lumbering dinosaur that takes too long to boot, so needs to be kept powered up if it's likely to be needed quickly? Because the Jetta is a later model with more recent electronics? Dunno.

Nothing we can do about it except complain, so probably not worth the effort.

 

Haha, I agree this is beating a dead horse!

 

I'll just throw this into the mix. FYI, I'm an automotive electronics consultant as well as a Jag owner (07 XKR). I've had at least one Jag I've investigated for electronic gremlins that was part of a pending litigation. My experiences on both my own Jag and the vehicle investigated (XJL), is I found low battery warnings quite common. They even occurred while we had 55A Midtronics programming power supply attached, which was holding the voltage rock steady at 13.6V (these are used by OEM auto technicians to maintain a constant, noise-free supply when reprogramming ECUs on the vehicle to avoid hiccups during the programming process). The diagnostic software was reporting adequate voltage during the scans via the battery voltage data in the scan tool, but the vehicle was still flashing low battery warnings on the IP. We did not dive into this further unfortunately, but I have my thoughts on the subject. As stated here, Jags have a LOT of electronics onboard, and even though they have large capacity batteries, many aren't driven that often, and the voltage will sag. Its my theory that the software/firmware may be prematurely triggering these warnings, but I have not as yet confirmed that. However, if voltage drops, and then you go to start the vehicle, it will sag further, and can sag to the point where it could damage some modules. Ferrari had an issue on some models with airbag ECUs getting fried when vehicles were started with partially discharged batteries (I know, I have one that experienced this). A good battery maintainer/charger is a great idea for these vehicles if you drive them occasionally. I personally use the Save-A-Battery from Granite Digital on several vehicles and find its a good product for this (http://www.saveabattery.com).