When the dealer was showing me the features of the Navi system of my Fit the battery went dead. No problem, I thought. New car. Been sitting around. Got a jump and off I went.

Last night we're putting in our bikes after a ride, listening to the radio with the engine off. Maybe 10 minutes. Car battery went dead. Wazzup? Battery should have allowed me to listed to the radio for a few minutes, should'nt it?

Has anyone experienced this?

 

take it to the dealer. it's either bad or just low on fluids/charge.

 

it can be faulty alternator.

 

look at fuses. Check the alternator fuse.

 

Brand new fit under warranty? Have it checked out at the dealer. They should be able to do a load test on the battery and charging system. My guess is that they'll find a weak battery.

 

If you have a multimeter, check the charging rate. It should be 14.2-15v, no higher. You might need to also load test the battery. Aw hell, just take it in if it is under warranty.

I haven't looked at the cycle rate of the Fit battery, but it is a small battery. All batteries have a certain time frame that they can discharge. A 650amp 12v battery might be dramatically different than another 650amp 12v battery. A good example is a marine battery which needs to discharge at a slower rate.

So what I am getting at is your Fit battery might also have a very limited discharge rate, especially being so small. But, on the other hand, ten minutes seems way too short. If it was never fully charged initially that might have compounded things.

 

Took it to the dealer. 1hr 20 minutes later I find out it was a bad battery. Only 1,500 miles on the car! They did a system check to rule out any other problems. Worth going to the dealer to get a clean bill of health.
Thanks for the replies everyone.

 

.......

Premature battery failure does indeed happen. Most likely, it was a defect in construction, such as internal metal plates touching and causing an internal short circuit. Battery vigilance is important, since we have such an odd size battery, and replacements may be hard to find when in trouble in East Oshkosh.

 

...or the battery construction was fine, and crummy charge cycles are the culprit. The battery was run flat a few times, and most likely never got to a 100% state of charge. Don't 12v batteries like to be in a high state of charge? If a dealer demo ran the battery "dead" then it was most likely in a very low state (< 40%) for gawd knows how long...this has a big negative impact on battery life.

Moot point now that he has a new battery, but something to consider.