[agentSmith]

I guess we need to put it all into perspective. It appears that the low battery risk warning and actual instances of flat 12V battery are not closely related. Therefore, I think the log with issues related to the low battery risk warning should be specific to 2021 generation of CX-30 and, perhaps, a separate log is required for rapid battery discharge and flat battery events.

The 2019-2020 generation of Mazda MHEV platform had completely different problems with the 12V drain and these were eventually addressed by software updates. "LOW BATTERY RISK. START VEHICLE TO CHARGE 12V BATTERY" warning was a terrible attempt by Mazda to address battery power management issues in 2021 models through social engineering rather than a proper technical solution. Apparently, they had so many Mazda Roadside Assistance callouts related to flat 12V batteries on 2019-2020 models (costing them a lot of money) that they decided to scare owners into submission by generating this absolutely useless, misleading and false warning, which has no relation to the actual state of charge of the battery whatsoever. It is simply generated by Mazda when the vehicle network awake time reaches 30 cumulative minutes without the engine running. The irony is that being so concerned about the risk of low battery Mazda then proceeds with wasting precious 12V power on running full multifunctional display and sound warning for 30 seconds just to announce their concerns. It is blatantly obvious that using electrical power in the vehicle without engine running will eventually deplete 12V battery. Mazda simply could’ve put a sticker on the dash stating the obvious.

This 30-minute time limitation, arbitrarily selected by Mazda, is ridiculously short for the daily family car usage. I have owned the car since 23 July 2021 and, so far, only managed 3 days without being tormented by this idiotic warning. My daily car usage routine involves opening/closing the liftgate once and several opening/closing of doors without the engine running, which appears to be enough to trigger the alarm. I don’t think this routine is unreasonable for a family car usage, in particular, if you have kids and need to swap child seats between vehicles. I also take all possible precautions to reduce these warnings by keeping door interlock switch OFF, the keys in RFID blocking pouches away from the car, the car unlocked whenever possible to avoid unnecessary locking/unlocking, having “leaving home lights” disabled and I still can’t avoid triggering this warning daily. So far, I needed to clean the interior 5 times and each of these generated the warning as well. During first few weeks of ownership I did numerous tests and experiments and always had this warning triggered when the actual battery state of charge (SOC) was 95% or above and the state of health (SOH) 98% or above. Bizarrely, this warning is generated even when the car is connected to a trickle charger and the battery is indicating 100% state of charge and 100% state of health. Under certain circumstances I can trigger this warning by simply opening and closing previously unlocked doors 6 times. It is impossible to stop or disable this warning without starting the engine. I followed Mazda’s advice and ran the engine on idle for 7 minutes (added 2 min “just in case”). This resulted in my battery SOC being 1% lower after the engine run than it was when the warning was triggered. This is the ”masterpiece” of Mazda engineering for you.

There is no point of going to the dealer, at least in the UK, as they are hostages of the situation in the same way as the rest of us. Unfortunately, this warning can’t be disabled neither by users not by dealers until Mazda releases a software update. It is also impossible to disable the audio part of this warning or reduce duration of chimes from 30 seconds to something less annoying. I asked my dealer to put some pressure on Mazda to expedite the solution, but they understandably refused. I can’t blame them. Who dares to bite the hand that feeds you?
My ownership experience was totally ruined and I became sick and tired of daily ding-donging. Therefore, I launched an official complaint to Mazda UK about this terrible “improvement” of an otherwise excellent vehicle. In their response Mazda recognised that their solution for the problem was not ideal and said that they were considering increasing the timer from 30 minutes to something more realistic and more practical. However, it seems that they don’t see any urgency in doing so, as they have no date for the proposed software update release and even suggested next year as a remote possibility. It seems ridiculous that a simple task of increasing the timer parameter in the software (more than likely to be a simple variable) requires more than a year to implement. They either have incompetent software engineers or simply don’t care.

From my subsequent correspondence and phone conversations with Mazda UK I learnt that there were hardly any complaints about the low battery risk warnings and that, from their point of view, it is just a minor inconvenience for a few “miserable sods” like me who whinge about it. Apparently, the rest of the owners are “as happy as Larry” with this warning.

If we are serious about the low battery risk problems and want to force Mazda to do anything about it as soon as possible, then we need to start making official complaints to corporate regional offices rather than dealerships. As I mentioned before, dealers are reluctant to pass it to corporate, so direct approach is the only way to register the complaint for which Mazda then needs to respond and take action. I guess someone at Mazda reads occasionally comments on forums like this, but for them this is just a “bedtime reading”, as they have not obligations to consider or respond to our comments. For UK owners, if you want to make a complaint, just send it by email to mmukassistance@mazdaeur.com.

Mazda also conveniently hides their “innovation” from potential customers, as it is still not mentioned in their Owner’s Manual or any other documentation and dealers hide it in their showrooms by following SA-005/21 instructions from Mazda. I read a lot of professional and owner’s reviews of CX-30 online. They are all glorious and none mentions low battery risk warning. Mazda, as any other corporation, understands only one language and it is the language of money. They only will start seriously considering problems if they cause them loss of potential sales through bad reviews.

 

[agentSmith]

• At home, three occasions - within the first month of ownership
• Low battery warning message and audio alert
• 2021 CX30 SEL LUX Auto 186
• No recovery, placed on charge with CTEK 5 charger
• Passed issue to dealer to resolve
• Unknown update

The day after collection I had the warning, following washing the car, where I had the doors open for 15 mins. I was advised to drive the car, leave the engine running stationary for 30 mins and put on charge. Sadly none of these actions has worked. From speaking to Mazda and the retailer it seems very much that's is a proximity problem waking the media system (so you don't have to wait for it to boot when opening the car). In all fairness to my retailer, they're going to take the car back and conduct an investigation.

I was annoyed at Mazdas suggestion that I shouldn't be worried, as I had breakdown cover. That's not the solution, but better to acknowledge there is an issue and work on the remedy transparently. I'll post an update once the investigation has taken place and whether it's resolved.

According to Mazda UK Customer Relations Manager they actually have a solution, they just can't be bothered to implement it. Here is a quote from one of her replies to my official complaint:
"The factory however have taken customer feedback on-board that this warning is an annoyance rather than being a preventative measure and therefore have considered extending the 30 minute counter to the longest possible period. This is an enhancement and just extending the time that the warning will appear when the battery really needs input rather than the current 30 minute warning. At this moment in time we do not have a software release date. In our opinion the car is currently operating as designed thus there is no manufacturing defect."
The key word here is "an annoyance". This is how it is perceived by Mazda and, therefore, problem is that Mazda Japan doesn't see any urgency in the release of the software update and more than likely will fit it in their normal software update cycle (which is at its best is once a year) or even coincide it with the next generation of MHEV platform release for 2022-2023. According to what I was told they don't have a lot of official complaints to Mazda about this issue to generate an urgent response. Owners usually complain to dealers, but this is futile at least in the UK.
You are right, the proximity of the key fob is likely to generate this warning each time the car door is opened even when the car is unlocked. However, after the first warning (following cumulative 30 minutes of onboard electronics awake time) the car goes into a state of "deep sleep". This means that, if you keep a fob in RFID protected pouch of away from the car, opening doors will no longer generate subsequent warnings. There are certain actions that will still bring the car out of "deep sleep" and these are mainly related to the checks software needs to perform on the EPB, such as pressing the EPB button or brake pedal, pressing the clutch pedal (for manual transmission), locking/unlocking the car, etc. I have no idea, why Mazda is so obsessed with EPB checks, but here we go. Also opening/closing liftgate and opening/closing the bonnet does similar things, but, I guess, these are related to the alarm system rather than the EPB. Personally, I can wait a few seconds for the car to boot up before starting it and driving away. On my 3-year old Mazda 2 I simply disabled the Advanced keyless entry, but unfortunately this can't be done on CX-30. Funny enough, this pre-booting of CX-30 doesn't make any noticeable difference in comparison with non pre-booted Mazda 2, as far as getting going is concerned. Well, if you are a getaway driver for bank robbers, this pre-booting might be important, but not for a family SUV.

 

[agentSmith]

Thanks. I've put my second key in permanent sleep mode (4 presses, key light on, followed by another press and indicators flash). My retailer is looking at changing the advanced keyless setting, they want to fix it, so all credit to them. They're keeping the car for a few days to get to the bottom of it. If their solution works, I'll ask exactly what they did and post in this feed.

Great. Please let us know if your dealer finds the way to disable the advanced keyless entry and the effect it will have. I asked Mazda UK technical department to either disable the warning on my car, or disable advanced keyless entry, or at least disable the audio for this particular warning. They told me that nothing could be done, but I am not convinced they were 100% sincere. I felt that they simply were tagging Mazda's "party line". Apparently, there is a YT video where a German dealer indicates that potentially in Q1 2022 Mazda will release a software update increasing cumulative 30 minutes to 90 minutes. This 300% increase indicates that no proper evaluation was done by Mazda when the original 30 minutes were selected and we (2021 generation owners) were used as guinea pigs to test their solution. I guess Mazda are reluctant to admit their fault in fear of legal actions.

 

[agentSmith]

We have only had our 2021 CX30 GS AWD Soul Red for one week. I asked about the “Low Battery” alarm which I had heard about when we took delivery. Both the salesman and finance manager said the issue had been resolved and I would have no problems. There have been 4 instances already in this week while we were exploring the phone and music features in our condo parkade. We stopped exploring each time. The first time we drove the car for awhile as directed. Two other times we just stopped and locked the car until the next day. The car started fine and we never needed a boost. Interestingly, the fourth time I only ran the engine for a little over one minute instead of five since we were in the underground parkade. When I turned off the engine the alarm turned back on flashing and beeping like mad. I guess you really need to run the engine for more than five minutes. We have not been back to the dealer nor has the dealer called to follow up with us as an after sales courtesy. Somewhat disappointed but still loving our CX30. Seems like a “Low Battery“ alarm could be a good feature if battery was really low. Perhaps, Mazda has set software parameters too low and need to change alarm timeout for a longer duration? I emailed Mazda Canada about the alarm this evening to try to get their feedback. Hope this helps.

You are correct that you need to idle the engine for at least 5 minutes to re-set the the timer. Of course, it is not enough to charge the depleted battery, it is simply a nominal number arbitrarily selected by Mazda for a timer re-set. The timer simply counts 30 cumulative minutes of the car electronics being in the awake state between successive engine runs. When this time is reached the "Low battery risk" warning is generated irrespective of the 12V battery's actual state of charge or state of health, as you found on your new car. It is a pity that Mazda pushed out such poor and not well considered software, but there are indications that an update is on the way for Q1 of 2022. Still great that you contacted Mazda Canada. The more owners push them the more likely we are to get this update earlier.

 

[agentSmith]

I am still having the annoying alarm, even after the latest software update.

Loaded some items into the boot/trunk and this activity bought it on.

Ran the car for about 7 minutes (drove down the road and back) and no more alarm.

This running of the engine for >5 minutes seems to me to negate any fuel savings generated by the stop/start function and wonder if this impacts upon the fuel economy figures or, if it is even taken into account. It may be a case of mis-representative advertising similar to that of the Volkswagen fiasco.
Because the dealers have been advised to disable certain functions when displaying vehicles to prospective customers certainly looks like it to me.

Dino

I agree and had the same suspicions. I reported it to the UK Consumer Association and it was passed to their researches specialising in vehicles. Not heard anything back and, somehow, I don't think I will. However, I guess any decent eco lawyer would jump at the opportunity to hit Mazda and other manufacturers (Toyota, for example) for instructing owners to senselessly run their engines and pollute the environment just to deal with car makers faulty software. During the lockdown Toyota were instructing the owners of their hybrid cars to run them periodically in READY mode for at least 60 minutes meaning that the car was stationary and starting and stopping the engine just to charge the hybrid battery. The owner also was expected to sit in the car for the whole 60 minutes, as Toyota was advising against leaving the vehicle unattended during this process. Funny enough, a lot of owners reported that they were putting the car into READY mode with the battery indicating 7/8 of charge level and finishing with it indicating 2/8 level. Obviously, they were very concerned that this process instead of maintaining the battery's state of charge was reducing it. These examples question the whole concept of self-charging hybrids and MHEVs. It becomes clear that manufacturers can't manage properly power drains in these vehicles without running their engines and really should provide a plug and a charger to deal with situations when the owner, for whatever reasons, can't run the car daily for hours or only runs it on short journeys. However, these will make those vehicles plug-in hybrids (PHEV), which already exist and have their own problems (inefficiency). Anyone knows a good lawyer?

 

[agentSmith]

Got no idea how to add to that table, but mine’s gone back to the dealership again today for this.
Drove it forward a few feet to give it a good clean inside & out, probably an hour start to finish. It started fine when I moved it back again but this morning it was just ‘clicking & clunking’ when my wife tried to start it. Called out Mazda Assist who confirmed the dead battery & recharged it. He told me it was software, needed an update - again. (12,000 miles service was done only last week). Then he told me the start button had failed, so it had to go back to the dealership.
24th Apr 2021. Surrey UK. 2019 GT Sport Tech. All updates supposedly done.

Terrible. So sorry to hear it. I wonder when is Mazda actually going to understand and acknowledge that they have serious problems with 12V battery power management on MHEV vehicles?

 

[agentSmith]

I took my daughters new 2021 CX-30 back to the dealer about 2 weeks after purchasing it for this issue and was basically blown off. It's coming off warranty in August and I plan on following your advice Susan (going back to the dealer and then contacting Mazda NA to start a file. It's ridiculous that I can't vacuum her car for a few minutes without this 'low battery warning' coming on. Mazda should recall affected vehicles and FIX this PROBLEM.

There was a software update for this issue. Basically, control software of the BCM has been modified to change the condition for the power saving mode to be activated and deactivated.

- Activation of the power saving mode
The accumulated time 30 minutes has been extended to 90 minutes.

- Deactivation of the power saving mode
Driving or engine running for 5 minutes has been shortened to 3 seconds.

It is all described in SA-002-22, which I have attached. If you want it to be done you need to contact your dealer and ask them for this software update. This is not a recall and is only applied to customers, who want to have it. The reason being that it only increases the timer and the danger of running battery flat still exists. I had this update installed on my car and since then never had any annoying battery warnings. However, I regularly test my battery and top it up with intelligent charger, when required.