[agentSmith]

See my comments here Battery Discharge Issue - Log of Member's events | Page 2 | Mazda CX‌-30 Forum (cx30talk.com)

 

[agentSmith]

Any model based on 2021 MHEV platform, i.e. Mazda 3 and CX-30 irrespective of engine specification.

 

[agentSmith]

Just wanted to add our voice to this issue. Picked up our new CX-30 on September 4th. Multiple times we are seeing the "Low Battery Risk" alarm. Finally called our dealer who said to just start and drive the vehicle. We are not buying this.. the car needs to sustain being parked and then mostly driven on 5-10 mile trips.. without any charging issues.

If you are seriously unhappy about this, please, make an official complaint to Mazda USA (I guess you are based in USA) as I described here Battery Discharge Issue - Log of Member's events | Page 2 | Mazda CX‌-30 Forum (cx30talk.com) #39. Dealers are not going to put any pressure on Mazda to provide a solution. However, each official complaint is registered and given a specific case number. Mazda USA will also have to provide statistics for this to Mazda Japan, if they operate in the same way as in the UK. They also are obliged to respond to each of these complaints unlike comments that we leave in different surveys. The more individual complaints regarding this software flaw are registered and the more pressure is put on Mazda by the owners the more it is likely that Mazda is going to address it through the software update and, hopefully, with extra urgency.

 

[agentSmith]

There is a YT video from a German dealer

explaining the warning and the reasoning behind it. More important the dealer is claiming at the end there will be an update from Mazda in Q1 2022, extending the timer from 30 to 90 min.

I hope this dealer knows more than Mazda UK does. I don't speak German but reading through the transcript it appears that Christian said "maybe Q1" rather than "in Q1". I got several replies to my official complaint about this warning to Mazda UK. The first one dated 03 September 2021 stated "We are working as swift as we can to have this software update released, our current timeframe indicates the update should be live early next year." However, this was than overruled by a Customer Relations Manager in her reply dated 22 September 2022 and replaced with "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."
Either way Mr. Kiyotaka Shobuda should be ashamed that it takes his software engineers over a year to change a simple timer parameter from 30 minutes to 90 minutes, in particular, when it was their own idiotic idea to make it 30 minutes to start with. Any kid given the original source code can do it in a couple of hours including debugging and testing. This makes you wonder if Mazda ever tests their software in daily usage. If they did, how could they fail to notice what we all experience as a result of this "innovation"?

 

[agentSmith]

"IF" rewriting the timer is so easy, can you just go ahead do it for everyone? Just make sure you consider how the change might impact the battery's SOH (state if health) and SOC (state of charge) for the start/stop system to function properly. Plus be sure that the system can maintain the battery at a sufficient state of charge to allow it to support the alternator at low engine speeds, and also not aggressively have to get recharged to the point that it risks shortening the battery's expected lifespan. Plus don't forget the battery's job of dampening system voltage spikes. That's another reason to closely regulate the state of charge/discharge that the battery is subjected to and to make sure that the battery lasts for its predicted lifespan. There of course is still way more to it than just being able to start the engine but surely anyone that can write code knows all about that too, right?

Unfortunately, low battery risk warning has nothing to do with the SOC or SOH of a 12V battery. On my car I can generate this warning, when the car is connected to CTEK MXS 10 charger being in Step 7 (Float) and Foxwell analyser indicating SOC 100% and SOH 100%, by simply opening/closing doors 6 times with 5 minutes interval. I can get the same warning even when the car is running from mains in MXS 10 "Supply" mode (13.6V/10A) with 12V battery disconnected. This warning is simply generated by a timer counting 30 minutes of accumulated onboard electronics awake time between 2 successive engine runs irrespective of SOC or SOH. Everything you said about the relation of SOC and SOH to the battery state and electric power demands is correct. I don't know about US, but in the UK CX-30 is a MHEV and, therefore, doesn't have an alternator as such, it has an ISG (integrated starter/generator) and a DC-DC converter instead. iStop system is purely run by the hybrid 24V battery rather than a 12V battery and, therefore, has no relation to the SOC or SOH of a 12V battery. The same applies to all other functions you mentioned as, when the engine is running, it is a 24V hybrid battery that does all the work including charging 12V battery through a DC-DC converter. I would have loved if Mazda did what you are referring to and had a true indication of 12V battery SOC and SOH rather than a meaningless low battery risk warning based on a primitive timer. I don't want to start an argument here but I can't see how a timer is related to SOC or SOH for this matter, in particular, when the timer generates a warning for a disconnected battery, as mentioned above.

 

[agentSmith]

I wonder if there are any legal types out there that would consider this as misrepresentation or misleading activity by Mazda with respect to SB-005/21 that requests dealers to take certain actions so that prospective purchasers will not see the alarm.

I know that if I had seen the alarm when I was reviewing the vehicle prior to purchase I would not have bought it and gone with another choice.

Cheers, .. Dino

Absolutely agree.

 

[agentSmith]

Must spoke with my dealer today about the lo voltage alarm....he conceded he gets lots of complaints about it from customers. He also said mazda already has a software fix for it in the cx5 and 9 but has not yet released a fix for the cx30 Grrr! He did say the alert timing will be extended to 60 minutes. Personally, i want it gone completely.

It seems that there are different figures being pushed around by dealers and regional Mazda offices regarding the extension period. Some dealers say 60 minutes and others say 90 minutes. Could it be that there will be different software updates rolled out to different regions at a different time? I can live with the visual warning despite it being very annoying, when your battery, in fact, is in top condition, but I definitely want these accompanying 30 seconds of audio chiming gone completely or reduced to a single ding-dong.

 

[agentSmith]

No matter its purpose it is a "nanny" alarm and damned annoying and mazda needs to get rid of it....in 99% of cases it serves no purpose other than to annoy the owner.

It reminds me the story of a shepherd boy who cried "Wolf", when there were no wolfs around. By the time the real wolf arrived everyone was so annoyed by false alarms that they didn't bother to react and the wolf had a banquet.😂

 

[agentSmith]

I was considering putting a switch in to kill that light if I want to leave the hatch open. But, all lights are LED and could be on fo many hours without a significant drain on battery. Now if you could figure out how the computer knows the hatch is open and bypass it, that would keep it from adding to the alert’s trigger minutes.

I noticed on my car that the light in the boot/trunk goes off automatically after a certain period of time, if you leave the liftgate opened. I didn't measure the exact duration, but roughly it seems to be something around 15 minutes. Originally, I thought that this happens only after the low battery risk warning was triggered, but then on a couple of occasions the light went off well before the warning chimes.

 

[agentSmith]

This brings up the question just how do the Mazda tecks deal with all the annoying warnings
while doing their job?

Mazda instructs them in SA-005/21 to remove and then re-install the fuse

Simples

 

[agentSmith]

Situation in US in this respect may be different but my EU car (2019 production) doesn't have the warning and has same EU approval number as a recent 100Y Anniversary Edition.

You are lucky. This warning was introduced only on the 2021 generation of Mazda 3 and CX-30

 

[agentSmith]

I don't see why it would be too hard for Mazda to turn off this feature because it was something they only added this year. Previous to this the cars didn't do it. Surely just reverse whatever they did?

I sent them a lengthy detailed complaint about 4 months ago asking either to increase the time before the warning alarm, or to reduce the duration of annoying 30 seconds bleating, or to make it user selectable feature, or simply to downgrade to pre-2021 software version until a more permanent solution is found. They blatantly refused to do anything about it. I spoke today to Mazda UK about this issue and the guy on the phone was extremely polite and trying to be helpful, but shockingly, he had no idea about this warning and problems owners have with it. It took me about 10 minutes to "educate" him. Eventually, I persuaded him to connect me to their technical department. They confirmed that there will be a software update at some point, but did not confirm what is said in the German YouTube video regarding the Q1 2022 release and said that they have no idea about the time scale at the moment and have not heard anything from Mazda Japan about it.

 

[agentSmith]

"not heard anything from Mazda Japan about it"

I dealt with Mazda Japan on another issue thought they would be the people to solve an issue
turns out not so much.

5 loaner cars and 6 months later.

I absolutely agree with you and the same applies to Mazda UK. It seems they are only good at selling tactics, but I feel that when it comes to technical issues Mazda becomes very protective and secretive. I suppose this applies to any corporation. Having said this, one person on this forum absolutely worships Mazda Japan thinking that it is "the next best thing after a sliced bread" and encourages contacting Mazda Japan for any issues that can't be resolved locally.

 

[agentSmith]

What would be a "smart charger" for our car battery? Had an issue today with a dead battery.

Do you mean like a Noco Boost Plus GB40? or a Hulkman Alpha85 Jump Starter?

I use CTEK MXS 10, but MXS 7.0 or 5.0 also should be fine as well as any of the CS models.

 

[agentSmith]

I'm in the USA. This has a EU plug.

The chargers I mentioned are similar to what you linked, but portable.

Yes, they are all pretty much the same. I was under the impression that you can buy CTEK in the US in North American specification. I believe I saw it on amazon.com some time ago.