12V battery dead

[Richardo]

Our new Enyaq was delivered last week and we are already stuck in Italy with a dead 12V battery.

Question! Once the breakdown crew have attempted to charge the 12V battery, is there anything we need to do to wake up the car? Is there a reset or manual “on” function? There is no ignition key and the start button does nothing at present…

[Richardo]

For anyone else facing the same issue, the car woke up immediately the 12V charger was connected. Battery voltage still showing low after 30 minutes driving though…

[ChangoMutney]

I had a low 12v battery in France this year. Arrived at campsite and did loads of boot opening/closing activities plus lots of locking and unlocking. After a couple of days of doing this without driving, the car said that I could no longer access it via the app because it was protecting itself (from me). Anyway, I could still open the car and turn on the ignition, so that's what I did. It seemed to recharge the 12v battery just sitting there with nothing running other than the car being on.

[Cabanon]

It's plain bonkers why they are fitting these cars with SLA 12v batteries, it cant just be a cost saving exercise, can it !, there is no excuse for them not to fit a LiFep04 battery which would last probably a good 20 years, if Tesla can do it, they all can do it.

[MacDragon]

Also seems daft that the car doesn't automatically ensure it gets kept charged up even if don't drive apparently..

[Aragorn]

For anyone else facing the same issue, the car woke up immediately the 12V charger was connected. Battery voltage still showing low after 30 minutes driving though…

Take the soonest opportunity to properly charge the 12v with a standalone battery charger. 12v batteries charge very slowly and it can take 12+ hours to fully charge. Best bet is running the charger overnight. Just driving about isnt going to fully charge the battery.

[Coupevrs]

Reading all these stories about 12v battery issues sounds insane.

Is there anything I need to plan/do/avoid when I eventually get mine?

Is this an issue that cars can be sat for a while or only used on short journeys?

Can you change the battery for an alternative one to avoid this?

Do we know if Škoda are looking to provide an OTA update to get the car to charge the 12v from the main batteries?

Does it charge up the 12v when the car is plugged in?

[Aragorn]

The car charges the 12v whenever the HV is on. So driving, charging (AC or DC), preconditioning etc.

I dont know why these issues are popping up now, i've been on here for a while and its certainly not common, there just seems to be a bit of a flurry over the last few months. As i've said elsewhere, i've done nearly 50 thousand miles in my car over nearly 3 years and havent ever seen any sort of warning about battery voltage.

It may well be an issue caused by particular usage patterns. One thing to note is that 12v batteries charge very slowly. I've seen many people over the years, ICE included, jump start a car and "drive it round for a while to charge up the battery" Unfortunately what they dont realise is that doing that will never fully charge the battery (unless you plan to drive it for 12 hours streight or something), and if you leave a lead acid battery in a discharged state, it can permenantly damage it. You then end up with a battery that now only has a fraction of its original capacity, and thus even less scope for anything draining it down.

Thus my comment above, if you do ever suffer a flat battery for any reason, make sure you fully charge it using a proper battery charger, overnight.

Its also possible the battery was simply faulty when new, and has always been marginal. A long drive to italy should have made sure the battery was nice and full, so unless something has been left powered up and run the battery flat, i'd say its a little unusual.

[Valerio73]

enyaq 60 from february 2022. just after 6 months I have noticed the low 12 volts alarms. Dealer said no need to change. I have bought a 20 euros chargers and when the alarm appear (winter - never in summer) I leave the battery in charge for 1 night. After 70.000 km same battery and no problems. Greetings from Italy

[Steve666]

I purchased a CTECH MXS 5.0 Charger a while back for my Skoda Superb 2.0 TDI as I do low mileage, it is a very good charger especially for AGM batteries but it does normal lead acid as well.
I never needed to use it on my KIA E Niro 4+ as it had Auxiliary Battery saver + which toped up the lead acid battery from the main HV battery, for some reason Skoda have not given their EV's the same option, when the car is parked and locked.
So again, because I do low mileage I now use the CTECK charger for my Skoda Enqaq 85 Edition once a month, I fitted the CTECH Comfort Indicator to the 12 Volt Battery to give a permanent connection to the battery and allow easy connection to the charger, it works well and it gives a visual indication by LED traffic light indication , Red, Yellow, Green, of the battery level.