# Increased Battery Discharge



## TheDrivingG (Dec 30, 2009)

Diesel Power said:


> the culprit of my problem turned out to be the FZD module (Function Center, Roof), specifically the Interior Motion Sensor (Alarm). After replacing the motion sensor the amperage draw went away.





Penguin said:


> All this fancy electronics is a step backwards in my opinion. I mean seriously, why should it take 16-70 minutes for a vehicle to shut everything down? Why not just shut everything down in a minute, unless someone purposely does something like switch on "accessory" mode, as in older vehicles?


This is why I don't like having too many electronic systems in our car, something is bound to fail. Even if you have 99.999% system reliability, with so many components, you are bound to hit that 0.001% chance. Unfortunately all car manufactures are going in that direction.

I'd rather have an obsolete car that is less likely to have problems than one with "fancy" gadgets (coming from a guy who designs electronic chips :eeps. I don't even like the power seats and moonroof; I rarely change the setting and it's one more thing that can break down. I'm not so lazy that I can't manually change a seat position and if it breaks down, it just going to be a $$$ bill . In fact, I don't have any options added except the sports package. I do care about the electronic stability control, but that is because it is a safety feature (yes, you can argue about safety features failing but I know it's a nice safety net to have). The engine on this thing will last forever but I'm not so sure about the rest of the car. As for the argument about perpetually leasing so that you don't have to worry about it after 3 years, the cars will just keep on getting more and more complicated systems.

Mild rant over.....


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## Snipe656 (Oct 22, 2009)

Funnyn you mentioned power seats and roof, both are things I too would rather not have and more because of fear for one day when they might break. One of my old Porsches had sunroof issues that I spent thousands of dollars trying to get fixed. It never could get 100% fixed and what annoyed me was I never even used the sunroof so it was an option I was spending a lot of money to fix that I'd preferred never been on the car. I actually at one time considered getting the thing welded up. That experience years later caused me to special order an Audi S4 without a sunroof.


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## anE934fun (May 10, 2008)

Snipe656 said:


> I guess the days of just putting a volt meter on a battery and pulling fuses to systems to see which system has the drain, are no longer with us with how complex cars have gotten.


These days, you are not buying a 'car'. You are buying a bunch of computers with wheels, brakes, suspension and engine to provide electricity for the computers. What is a car? :angel:


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## Snipe656 (Oct 22, 2009)

I have a friend who insists that the next time he needs to buy a truck that he is going to buy some old 70ish year model truck and redo most everything on it so he has a "new" vehicle that is not over complicated with worthless(to him) crap. I guess there is something to be said for his thought process.


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## Penguin (Aug 31, 2003)

anE934fun said:


> These days, you are not buying a 'car'. You are buying a bunch of computers with wheels, brakes, suspension and engine to provide electricity for the computers. What is a car? :angel:


Emissions, safety, and fuel economy were the drivers to bring the first computers into the automobile. And once they got started, it seems the product planners couldn't stop!

But I recall MB a few years ago, sometime between 2000-2005 when their reliability was really lousy, made a deliberate move to take-away some limited utility "features" that were overly-complicating the vehicle and hurting reliability scores. I can't seem to find a reference, but recalled reading a news article to that effect.


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## Snipe656 (Oct 22, 2009)

I was watching some old episodes of I think Top Gear on the BBC over the weekend and they mentioned that about Mercedes around that time period began to take away some of the complexity. They said the stated reason was the one you gave but seemed more was for cost savings. It went on to talk about how they have changed things in recent years to get back reliability since guess they did not gain a whole lot of it from the de-complicating process.


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