beware the ides of March I mean stop-start
Discussion
So my two year old a110 was due for its service but weather meant it hadn't had some use for the longest time in my ownership. Maybe 4-5 weeks.
Last week, after this time sitting, I go to start the car and everything unlocks and lights up but pressing start doesn't start. Understanding it was a depleted battery, I put the trickle charger on and it could not have been that bad, because it showed the float light, not the power-charge light.
Next day, after 24 hours on the trickle charger, all is well, I use the car for hmm maybe a 20 minute trip, stopping it a few times, and so on. No issue.
5 days later, service day, today, I unlock and start the car as per normal. No hesitation.
Drive 1 minute down the road and stop start activates at the very first busy intersection and then the car goes dead as a doornail. I mean completely dead. Nothing works. Luckily the intersection is on a slope so I roll around the roundabout (** no hazards can be activated, which I think is unsafe ***).
Roll into a downhill parking spot at the side of the road and I'm screwed. I can't take my foot hard off the brake and of course cannot activate handbrake. the curb is non existent because of a driveway so will roll away if I get out.. Car will not restart of course or show any sign of a single electron. It is pouring down rain.
Call Renault roadside and they give me an hour window.
Call wife and she turns up with some rocks for the wheels so I can get out of the car - the door doesn't shut because of the window activation-on-close thing, and it is letting water in, so that's not cool either - luckily we have a spare 12v battery and jumper in the back of our other car.
Attach the battery and jumper and everything comes to life and car starts. Detach, no warning lights. Turn off stop/start. Cancel roadside assistance.
Drive it normally to the service place. At the service center, I re-activate stop/start and try to get it to engage to test if it restarts, but now it shows the icon it shows when it doesn't want to allow stop start?
I don't really understand this. The battery appeared fine to start the car normally with no volt fade or hesitation. ok if it is under-volt, then why did stop/start engage 5 minutes later with a cold engine, and a risky battery?
AND why did the entire car go dead and stay dead until I jumped it with a slightly higher voltage? Jumping it with the other battery I saw zero spark. This isn't what you expect when attaching an empty 10v battery with a 13v battery so I do not think a tired battery is the main explanation here. If the battery was weak I should still get an option for lights and hazards and handbrake and so on. I wish I had a multimeter to measure the volts in this dead state. I bet it was not too bad.
I normally use the car with the stop start button wedged down, so it never activates. Now I really hate this software with a passion. I think the whole system is buggy, the battery is not being correctly managed, charged or monitored, there is too much vampire drain, and it does not play well if you ever have a battery depletion event. Do not trust it!
And don't put any get out of jail items like jumper cables or lithium starters in the trunk. You can't open it.
Last week, after this time sitting, I go to start the car and everything unlocks and lights up but pressing start doesn't start. Understanding it was a depleted battery, I put the trickle charger on and it could not have been that bad, because it showed the float light, not the power-charge light.
Next day, after 24 hours on the trickle charger, all is well, I use the car for hmm maybe a 20 minute trip, stopping it a few times, and so on. No issue.
5 days later, service day, today, I unlock and start the car as per normal. No hesitation.
Drive 1 minute down the road and stop start activates at the very first busy intersection and then the car goes dead as a doornail. I mean completely dead. Nothing works. Luckily the intersection is on a slope so I roll around the roundabout (** no hazards can be activated, which I think is unsafe ***).
Roll into a downhill parking spot at the side of the road and I'm screwed. I can't take my foot hard off the brake and of course cannot activate handbrake. the curb is non existent because of a driveway so will roll away if I get out.. Car will not restart of course or show any sign of a single electron. It is pouring down rain.
Call Renault roadside and they give me an hour window.
Call wife and she turns up with some rocks for the wheels so I can get out of the car - the door doesn't shut because of the window activation-on-close thing, and it is letting water in, so that's not cool either - luckily we have a spare 12v battery and jumper in the back of our other car.
Attach the battery and jumper and everything comes to life and car starts. Detach, no warning lights. Turn off stop/start. Cancel roadside assistance.
Drive it normally to the service place. At the service center, I re-activate stop/start and try to get it to engage to test if it restarts, but now it shows the icon it shows when it doesn't want to allow stop start?
I don't really understand this. The battery appeared fine to start the car normally with no volt fade or hesitation. ok if it is under-volt, then why did stop/start engage 5 minutes later with a cold engine, and a risky battery?
AND why did the entire car go dead and stay dead until I jumped it with a slightly higher voltage? Jumping it with the other battery I saw zero spark. This isn't what you expect when attaching an empty 10v battery with a 13v battery so I do not think a tired battery is the main explanation here. If the battery was weak I should still get an option for lights and hazards and handbrake and so on. I wish I had a multimeter to measure the volts in this dead state. I bet it was not too bad.
I normally use the car with the stop start button wedged down, so it never activates. Now I really hate this software with a passion. I think the whole system is buggy, the battery is not being correctly managed, charged or monitored, there is too much vampire drain, and it does not play well if you ever have a battery depletion event. Do not trust it!
And don't put any get out of jail items like jumper cables or lithium starters in the trunk. You can't open it.
updating with service feedback.
They said the battery tests good and does not need replacing but "in a lower state of charge" and they "will force 14v into it overnight" in order to "bring it back". They had no comment/suggestion/explanation for the total blackout..
The car software obviously has no clue what it is doing, in and around stop/start, battery charging and whatever mode it can go into where it is totally dead.
They said the battery tests good and does not need replacing but "in a lower state of charge" and they "will force 14v into it overnight" in order to "bring it back". They had no comment/suggestion/explanation for the total blackout..
The car software obviously has no clue what it is doing, in and around stop/start, battery charging and whatever mode it can go into where it is totally dead.
I don't mind that stop/start sucks. And it does. So I usually disable it anyway.
But the car should not enable stop/start if it thinks the battery needs a charge, and it shouldn't go dead (or.. stay dead with no reboot), even if energizing the starter motor did cause a brownout.
If they had a flash to apply they would. I think. They're in the same Renault network as everyone else.
But the car should not enable stop/start if it thinks the battery needs a charge, and it shouldn't go dead (or.. stay dead with no reboot), even if energizing the starter motor did cause a brownout.
If they had a flash to apply they would. I think. They're in the same Renault network as everyone else.
Hi, I have had similar issues to you where sometimes the car doesnt start straight away and when I have stop start enabled, sometimes it reboots the whole car when it tries to enter that state. Having just had the battery tested, its on its last legs. I am replacing it soon and will see if it improves things
I had no idea how to "reboot" the car when it went dead. Tried several things such as long press on start etc.
Perhaps I should have removed the + terminal then re-attached it.
Got the car back today. The gen z service advisor was typically blasé. Blamed everything on the lowish state of the battery but then agreed that it would be wrong for the stop/start system to activate if the battery wasn't healthy.
and sort of dodged the question as to whether they did a search for TSBs that are optional, but possibly related. So I paid the $450 (256 UKP) oil and filter and cabin filter change invoice, and was on my way.
Perhaps I should have removed the + terminal then re-attached it.
Got the car back today. The gen z service advisor was typically blasé. Blamed everything on the lowish state of the battery but then agreed that it would be wrong for the stop/start system to activate if the battery wasn't healthy.
and sort of dodged the question as to whether they did a search for TSBs that are optional, but possibly related. So I paid the $450 (256 UKP) oil and filter and cabin filter change invoice, and was on my way.
I use my A110 in two "modes" — pottering around the local area, with the occasional roadtrip across Europe.
80% of the time, it has the "Auto stop/start unavailable" icon on the screen because the (higher capacity, Swedish-spec) battery doesn't have enough charge in it to support auto stop/start, presumably since pottering around the local area once a week isn't enough to keep it full. Then after a day on the motorway, the battery charges fully and it surprises me when stop/start activates for the first time in a year. (Despite all this, I've never had any trouble with regular starts or other typical low battery symptoms.)
So yes, it definitely should deactivate itself if the battery isn't fully up to it.
We've had the auto stop/start cause a car shutdown twice, once when the car was new and my wife was driving, and once when I was driving. An ignition reset (opening and closing the door) was enough to bring it alive again, thankfully. I do wonder if it's less a battery problem and more a poor software problem. When I was driving, auto stop/start triggered right as I was coming off the brake to get moving again, and I wonder if the car asking for power as the engine was in the process of shutting off caused it to fall over. I work in software programming, and it sounds like a classic race condition to me!
80% of the time, it has the "Auto stop/start unavailable" icon on the screen because the (higher capacity, Swedish-spec) battery doesn't have enough charge in it to support auto stop/start, presumably since pottering around the local area once a week isn't enough to keep it full. Then after a day on the motorway, the battery charges fully and it surprises me when stop/start activates for the first time in a year. (Despite all this, I've never had any trouble with regular starts or other typical low battery symptoms.)
So yes, it definitely should deactivate itself if the battery isn't fully up to it.
We've had the auto stop/start cause a car shutdown twice, once when the car was new and my wife was driving, and once when I was driving. An ignition reset (opening and closing the door) was enough to bring it alive again, thankfully. I do wonder if it's less a battery problem and more a poor software problem. When I was driving, auto stop/start triggered right as I was coming off the brake to get moving again, and I wonder if the car asking for power as the engine was in the process of shutting off caused it to fall over. I work in software programming, and it sounds like a classic race condition to me!
Yeah I suspect a software issue perhaps a couple of them.
The first one, if the battery V is low, not always detecting this, so enabling stop-start when it should be keeping the alternator clutch on and definitely not cutting the ignition.
and the second gremlin, a brown-out causing the entire car system to cut so nothing gets any battery voltage at all (so no dim lights, no window power, no nothing). I did open the drivers door and close it again, played with the remote etc. The moment the good battery was connected with jumper cables it all came good, just from the small voltage rise.
Which is not my experience with cars, normally a faded battery leaves one with whatever residual voltage is left, giving one dim interior lights, or anything else with a mechanical switch to +12v including the starter solenoid so you get that hopeless click sound.
Maybe anti-theft triggered and isolated the car?
the one time I ran my a110 battery down so Start did nothing, it still had residual power for radio, lights etc, and lock/unlock.
The first one, if the battery V is low, not always detecting this, so enabling stop-start when it should be keeping the alternator clutch on and definitely not cutting the ignition.
and the second gremlin, a brown-out causing the entire car system to cut so nothing gets any battery voltage at all (so no dim lights, no window power, no nothing). I did open the drivers door and close it again, played with the remote etc. The moment the good battery was connected with jumper cables it all came good, just from the small voltage rise.
Which is not my experience with cars, normally a faded battery leaves one with whatever residual voltage is left, giving one dim interior lights, or anything else with a mechanical switch to +12v including the starter solenoid so you get that hopeless click sound.
Maybe anti-theft triggered and isolated the car?
the one time I ran my a110 battery down so Start did nothing, it still had residual power for radio, lights etc, and lock/unlock.
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