Home CAR & BIKES Random battery failure on my VW Taigun in just 2 years

Random battery failure on my VW Taigun in just 2 years

Random battery failure on my VW Taigun in just 2 years

Trying to imagine a similar situation but on a busier road, this would have been a nightmare.

BHPian omranga98 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

17,000 KM update!

So 811 days or 2 years, 2 months and 19 days or (if you fancy this) about 70 million seconds into owning the Taigun, the battery goes dead.

No warnings and no signs. One evening, the car started just fine, took it out of the garage, parked it outside while i locked the garage door, the car battery breathed its last.

Now i have an awkwardly parked Taigun which is barely leaving enough space on the street for other cars to passby and everytime i hit the start/stop button, the headlights are flashing like fancy cop cars abroad, the sound system is making weird noises and the virtual cockpit is going WILD by throwing all sorts of errors: The entire screen lit up with warnings and random messages. Here is a picture from that exact moment:

Random battery failure on my VW Taigun in just 2 years

Also notice how the virtual cockpit says SAFE on the top left side of the screen.

Anywho, a quick call to VWs RSA and they arranged a guy who came rather quickly with a jumper cable, a battery and a rapid urge to quickly start the car. Once the car started, he wanted me to drive the car for about 20 mins to check if the battery would sustain power.

Nice of him to chill at my garage while i took the car for a little spin because once i drove back to him and tried starting the car again, the car was back to being dead.

As the service center was already closed for the day, it made not sense to take the car and leave it for the night in their yard. So i decided to do this the following day.

Oh and apparently you cannot get the battery replaced from outside because that would void your warranty.

I called my SA early and got a confirmation that they had a battery in stock and would be a quick job once i get there. So I arranged a jumped start and drove to the service center which is about 20 kms from where i lived.

Once i get there, it was a good hour long wait, followed by 45 mins of more waiting and then the SA comes up to me and tells me how the battery that they had in stock was damaged and i would have to leave the car with them for about 4 days till they got their new stock of batteries.

The 4 days wait would turn into 25 days of car sitting at VW as i was going out of town the next day.

A little annoyed, i asked the manager to manage out a solution for the battery situation as leaving the car at their yard was out of question. So the manager managed to fish out a loaner battery for the moment while i travelled across the ocean.

30 mins later, they take the dead battery out which looked like this:

and then popped in a loaner battery which before popping in, looked like this:

Fast forward a couple of weeks, I get a call from the SA who now tells me that they have a battery in stock and after the call, sends a picture of a freshly cooked/baked battery as a proof this time.

Re-visit to the SC, the battery change took 3.5 hours! That is how slow things move at VW SC. The key fob battery was replaced too.

Total damage to the wallet: About 14k.

The VW app has information on the battery voltage but it never alerted of low battery or gave any alert. Trying to imagine a similar situation but on a busier road, this would have been a nightmare.

Here is a parting shot:

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