“Plug in to maintain 12V battery” alert

[MONDO]

I plug in my ‘21 daily with charge limit set to 70% pretty much every day since I’ve owned this car. Received the 4.2.6 last Friday, and car ignored my charge settings and went to 100%. Yesterday I get an alert to “Plug in to maintain 12V battery” despite it being at 96% SOC. I don’t have a battery scanner so can’t confirm the 12v is low or not. I’ve had the car randomly tell me to service my 12V before when I turned on but that hasn’t shown up in a while.

Dealer says they checked battery at my 10K service appointment and it passed as normal. although I doubt they actually did. Anyone who has had these errors let me know how they handled with dealer?

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[DevSecOps]

I brought that up in the post about the last update to Fordpass. I think it's a bug in Fordpass. If your car is working correctly it'll top off the battery without plugging in above 12% SOC. Therefore, the message doesn't make much sense.

 

[Mach-Lee]

That is a worthless message that is triggered at the wrong time. Just ignore it. 12V automatically recharges itself unless HV battery is almost dead.

 

[GG70]

I received the same alert today, when my car was at 37% SOC. Certainly hoping this indeed is bogus, and if so, looking forward to this being fixed in a future update.

 

[Lenwon]

Been getting this randomly myself even though main car battery has plenty of charge and the vehicle is driven alot.

 

[hack-e]

I just started getting these messages since this past Saturday. My HVB is always 60% or higher but my LVB was found to be at 58% to 79% using CarScanner. I took a little drive each time to charge the LVB to 90+%. I'm not sure why this started happening as nothing electrical has changed on the car. I did just get the 5.1.1 update a few days ago. But hopefully that has nothing to do with it. I've got 29000 miles and the only other times I got this message was because there was a device plugged into the USB ports that was draining the LVB. So this time it's a mystery.

 

[Mari76]

Are you guys getting the 12V alert on the car screen too or just in the app? I get it in the app and it pops up on the small display screen when i turn the car on but it goes away after a few seconds.

I also took my car to dealership and they said the battery was fine and they don't know why it's happening.

 

[hack-e]

Yes also in the car.

 

[worachj]

I got my first message last night.

CarScanner App
I just started using CarScanner with a OBD2 adapter that will go to sleep after 30 minutes of no activity. I closed the CarScanner app on my android phone, but I just found out that the CarScanner app will keep pinging the adapter in the background. You need to make sure in the CarScanner app to disconect from the adapter.

 

[ShaggySS]

I got my first message last night.

CarScanner App
I just started using CarScanner with a OBD2 adapter that will go to sleep after 30 minutes of no activity. I closed the CarScanner app on my android phone, but I just found out that the CarScanner app will keep pinging the adapter in the background. You need to make sure in the CarScanner app to disconect from the adapter.

Only if you are within Bluetooth range of it. I discovered the same thing a while back. Like you said the easiest thing to do is just close it.

 

[RickMachE]

Or simply remove the dongle.

 

[Mach-Lee]

I got my first message last night.

CarScanner App
I just started using CarScanner with a OBD2 adapter that will go to sleep after 30 minutes of no activity. I closed the CarScanner app on my android phone, but I just found out that the CarScanner app will keep pinging the adapter in the background. You need to make sure in the CarScanner app to disconect from the adapter.

Correct, make sure you hit the disconnect button in car scanner and/or quit the app when you’re done so it doesn’t drain.

 

[HuntingPudel]

Or simply remove the dongle.

My OBD2 interface spends more time in its box than attached to my car. I really have only used it one time: To pull the codes my car was throwing when it gave me the SVS.

 

[hack-e]

After a few days have passed and I haven't seen anymore of these 12V battery drain messages, I think I understand what happened. The day the messages happened, I was working in my garage around the car and three things probably caused the excess drain during that work: 1) my phone was in my pocket with PaaK and 2) I know I bumped the car several times and 3) I did open the lift gate and use the back storage area as a work surface (nice feature!) while doing this work in the garage.

So I think all of this activity in and around the car caused more 12V drain than normal. I'll keep an eye on it. I am trying to keep the LVB ≥ 80% so I don't miss the BC 1.3 update.

 

[macgyver60]

Glad this was posted. My Mach E is 2.5 yrs old and I have never gotten that "Plug in to Maintain 12V Battery" warning until today. It happened at 79% SOC. I drive the car almost every day, usually about 20-30 miles a day, and plug in the car 3-4 times a week. Good to know others have been seeing the same thing and that its a recent issue. Maybe a software bug in a recent update?

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