I have a 3-year old Levorg with no troubles before, but it has been about a week since we last drove it. And today it won't start as the battery is flat - down to 8.5 volts. I've seen some stuff on the Internet about earlier Suburu models having an excessive battery drain when the car is unused and suspect this might be the cause. I guess I need a new battery, but previous cars (many of them Subarus) haven't needed a new battery quite that soon. Anyone else had a similar problem?
Battery flat
- Thread starter clive_p
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robo498
Active Member
Nope, mine sat at falls Creek for 7 days in the snow and started first time.
Arkatee
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I don't think you'll get more than 3 years out of a battery, mine lasted 2 years an was replaced under warranty. There's a lot of battery drain on these. I use a trickle charger if I'm not using the car.
nicodache
Active Member
I drained my battery twice by mistake (left the rear cabin light on overnight), but I'm still on my original battery, 6 years and 134kkm later...
I had the car checked by our local Subaru dealer who said that a map-reading light over the rear seats had been left on, which explained why the battery had gone flat in a few days.
For obvious reasons, we haven't had anyone in the back seats for the last two years and have not intentionally used these lights, so I had no idea that they were there or that they didn't turn off automatically when you lock the car. I wonder if they are under the control of some computer which had switched them on? They are so small and inconspicuous that I we might not have noticed one being on - this seems a bit bad design. Those over the front seats are much brighter and more conspicuous.
The battery is working but said to be in a poor state, so I'm getting another one. In previous Subarus we have not had to replace a battery so quickly. I'm still suspicious that there is a fault somewhere.
For obvious reasons, we haven't had anyone in the back seats for the last two years and have not intentionally used these lights, so I had no idea that they were there or that they didn't turn off automatically when you lock the car. I wonder if they are under the control of some computer which had switched them on? They are so small and inconspicuous that I we might not have noticed one being on - this seems a bit bad design. Those over the front seats are much brighter and more conspicuous.
The battery is working but said to be in a poor state, so I'm getting another one. In previous Subarus we have not had to replace a battery so quickly. I'm still suspicious that there is a fault somewhere.
Arkatee
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I drained my battery the same way, I had accidentally hit the switch whist loading stuff in the back and didn't notice it. The behaviour of the interior lights can be changed on the top screen on the dash, it's in the handbook. If you use the stop start, it canes the battery, I never use it myself.
The time-out of the interior lights can indeed by altered using the view/edit functions in the centre of the dash, but as far as I can tell, that does not apply to the "map reading" lights above the front seats or above the front seat-backs supposed to be for back-seat map readers. These are push-on push-off, and they never go off when you lock the car. They take incandescent bulbs of 8W, so at 12V take about 0.66 amps. If you leave the car for a week (168 hours) this will take 112 amp-hours from the battery, about twice what even a brand-new battery can supply. Why Subaru didn't use LEDs for these, or provide an auto-shut off function, I have no idea. It seems a serious design flaw.
I hope I won't be caught out by this again, but it's already forced me to pay for a new battery.
robo498
Active Member
I changed all mine to LED as well.
Changing to LEDs sounds like a good idea.
But the problem prompted me to buy a clip-on ammeter and I'm surprised by the static current drain of the car. It seems to be about 0.15 Amps, even after waiting 10 minutes with nothing in use and all doors closed. If that lasted a week that would use 25 Amp-hours from the battery, i.e. nearly half its capacity. So anyone parking at an airport and going off for two weeks holiday might get a nasty surprise when they got back. Has anyone else measured the static (or parasitic) battery drain on their Levorg?
I see that owners of some earlier Subaru models have encountered similar or worse static drain and some have been taking legal action against Subaru:
www.motorbiscuit.com
But the problem prompted me to buy a clip-on ammeter and I'm surprised by the static current drain of the car. It seems to be about 0.15 Amps, even after waiting 10 minutes with nothing in use and all doors closed. If that lasted a week that would use 25 Amp-hours from the battery, i.e. nearly half its capacity. So anyone parking at an airport and going off for two weeks holiday might get a nasty surprise when they got back. Has anyone else measured the static (or parasitic) battery drain on their Levorg?
I see that owners of some earlier Subaru models have encountered similar or worse static drain and some have been taking legal action against Subaru:
Subaru Owners Are Suing Over Frustrating Battery Drain Issues
There are few problems more frustrating than cranking your car, only to discover the battery is dead. It seems to happen at the worst possible moment,
www.motorbiscuit.com
Arkatee
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There is an auto shut off function. Mine come on, with the front ones, when I approach or open the car, and dim to off along with the front ones when I close it. Are you saying your rear interior lights are on all the time? Yes, they're push-on push-off, but note that if they are manually switched on by pressing the lens, they will remain on regardless of whether the car is occupied or locked until you press it to off. There's also a master slider switch on the front edge of the lamp housing that will disable them from turning on when you open a door.
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Virgonaut
Member
Hello,
I've faced battery drain issue 2 days ago. Battery was quite old so replaced to new, but next day it was also flat...
I did research over the internet and found out interesting information. There is lawsuit in USA against subaru because of the parasitic battery drain. As what I found temporary solution is to lock car using remote-key three times, which will order to disable some systems, checking some car status stuff. Not sure if this works, but may help you. I'll test this over night.
Reference:
www.impreza5.com
I've faced battery drain issue 2 days ago. Battery was quite old so replaced to new, but next day it was also flat...
I did research over the internet and found out interesting information. There is lawsuit in USA against subaru because of the parasitic battery drain. As what I found temporary solution is to lock car using remote-key three times, which will order to disable some systems, checking some car status stuff. Not sure if this works, but may help you. I'll test this over night.
Reference:
Home | In re Subaru Battery Drain Products Liability Litigation
If you bought or leased certain Subaru Vehicles, you may benefit from a class action settlement
www.subarubatterysettlement.com
Update to Impreza parasitic battery drain issue
www.impreza5.com
Last edited:
I also saw stuff on the web about the legal action over excessive parasitic drain on some Subaru models, but as far as I could work out these did not include any Levorg models - but I might have missed something.
I've since bought a clamp-on ammeter (Kaiweets HT206D) to try to work out what the battery drain is under various circumstances. Immediately after turning the ignition off there's a drain of up to 1.5 Amps, but this slowly decreases over the next few minutes. The local Subaru dealer suggested waiting for at least 10 minutes for things do die down - what on earth is drawing so much current for the 10 mins after you stop driving and lock the car I can't imagine, but there it is. The clamp-on ammeter is not very sensitive to small DC currents as it has to measure their magnetic effect and there can be other fields about that make this difficult, but my meter can just about measure down to 10 mA. My observation is that after a few minutes the drain does indeed reduce to something like 50 or 60 mA. That is what the garage also measured and thought was reasonable.
To me that's still rather worrying. Suppose you leave your car in an airport car park for two weeks, 60 mA x 14 days x 24 hours makes 20 AH - so a 60 AH battery would be one third drained by then. If it wasn't fully charged to start with, or had lost a bit of capacity over the years, then you might well have a problem restarting the car. That seems a very poor design.
The other bit of really bad design, which I think may have caused my battery to get flat in a few days, is that the "dome" light which one uses a night to see things on the rear seats or their footwell can be switched on in two ways: the slider switch turns them on when a door is open but they go dim then off when the last door is closed; but if you press the lamp housing it turns it on in exactly the same way but then it says on indefinitely as there is no auto-off in this case. Since these are filament lamps (which is stupid when LEDs are so much better for the purpose) of about 8 Watts they use about 667 mA, so just leaving one of these lamps on for a couple of days will easily flatten a battery. I think one of us probably needed a light in the back just before leaving the car, but with smoked glass windows (another design nasty) you can't see that they don't go off after the door is closed, and this may be what caused our battery problem. By the time I found out the battery was down to 8 volts and probably damaged. We live and learn. I've removed these filament lamps from the housing so this will not happen again.
I've since bought a clamp-on ammeter (Kaiweets HT206D) to try to work out what the battery drain is under various circumstances. Immediately after turning the ignition off there's a drain of up to 1.5 Amps, but this slowly decreases over the next few minutes. The local Subaru dealer suggested waiting for at least 10 minutes for things do die down - what on earth is drawing so much current for the 10 mins after you stop driving and lock the car I can't imagine, but there it is. The clamp-on ammeter is not very sensitive to small DC currents as it has to measure their magnetic effect and there can be other fields about that make this difficult, but my meter can just about measure down to 10 mA. My observation is that after a few minutes the drain does indeed reduce to something like 50 or 60 mA. That is what the garage also measured and thought was reasonable.
To me that's still rather worrying. Suppose you leave your car in an airport car park for two weeks, 60 mA x 14 days x 24 hours makes 20 AH - so a 60 AH battery would be one third drained by then. If it wasn't fully charged to start with, or had lost a bit of capacity over the years, then you might well have a problem restarting the car. That seems a very poor design.
The other bit of really bad design, which I think may have caused my battery to get flat in a few days, is that the "dome" light which one uses a night to see things on the rear seats or their footwell can be switched on in two ways: the slider switch turns them on when a door is open but they go dim then off when the last door is closed; but if you press the lamp housing it turns it on in exactly the same way but then it says on indefinitely as there is no auto-off in this case. Since these are filament lamps (which is stupid when LEDs are so much better for the purpose) of about 8 Watts they use about 667 mA, so just leaving one of these lamps on for a couple of days will easily flatten a battery. I think one of us probably needed a light in the back just before leaving the car, but with smoked glass windows (another design nasty) you can't see that they don't go off after the door is closed, and this may be what caused our battery problem. By the time I found out the battery was down to 8 volts and probably damaged. We live and learn. I've removed these filament lamps from the housing so this will not happen again.
nicodache
Active Member
Been there, done that. twice
Virgonaut
Member
Settlement Class Vehicles include model year 2015-2020 Outback, 2015-2020 Forester, 2015-2020 Legacy, 2015-2020 WRX, and 2019-2020 Ascent.
WRX 2015+ is on the list. I assume Levorg is too niche to be considered...
nicodache
Active Member
2015 > 2022 levorg not sold in USA, too...