DS7 Crossback e-tense 4x4 has thrown a fault this morning. Orange warning “Electric Traction System :repair the vehicle”. The car starts and drives normally, not in limp-mode, but won’t allow the selection of full electric drive, however it will provide electric propulsion in Hybrid and other modes.
Checking the voltage of the rear 12v battery, it’s 12.2v. Reading around that sounds like the low-end of good and may be the cause, and it should be at around 12.6v to be healthy and properly control the rear electric motor/AWD control electronics.
Would it be worth replacing this battery first? Is there a manual to replacement as it sounds like there are issues around order that it needs to be done in compared to a normal 12v battery in an ICE car.
It shows the order on how disconnect in the cars manual.
I believe its negative on the smaller battery first, then positive on the main one, then negative on the main one.
Connect the positive first when reconnecting.
The original is Fiamm EcoForce AGM 12V 12Ah 200A VR200 with Stellantis sticker.
Very close to original is VARTA SILVER DYNAMIC AUX AGM 513106020G412, 13AH/200A. The dimensions are the same, but the vent hole at the top is slightly offset. On the plus side, the price is much better.
After a longer drive that didn’t rely 100% on electric, and required some engine use, the warning went away. It stayed away too, for a few days while we were doing longer trips (2hr plus each way), however after a couple of days of doing EV only driving, it’s come back. That suggests as long as it’s getting a good charge, it’s fine.
Both the main 12v battery and the rear one are original, so 5-6 years old at least, so I’ll replace them both as routine maintenance anyway and see if that cures it
When I first got my Ds4 E-Tense, after a few weeks of it behaving fine I got “Elec Mode Unavailable” and a more serious sounding “Repair needed”. I booked into service centre for a check, but in meantime I tried various driving styles, journeys, the errors persisted for a few weeks but eventually went away entirely, so much that I cancelled the service centre visit since there was no longer a fault to diagnose. It has never come back. Very rarely I do get the “Elec Mode unavailable” (like once or twice), but it clears itself quickly (next journey), presumably after the cars systems have remedied any issue with battery charge, etc.
I put it down to the car being on a garage forecourt for a few months before I bought it, and very limited petrol engine usage.
I think both my batteries are original, so 4 years old. I check the voltage every month or two, just to see if I get any indication of them needing swapped before a bigger problem.
I connect mine to a battery tender occasionally, more often in the winter, to keep both 12 volt batteries topped up.
I think the engine will charge the underbonnet battery to about 90%, before it starts to charge the auxiliary battery. Whereas, the tender will take both to near 100% and hold them there.
Also, I think when you Plug-In, it charges the two batteries as well, but only if the traction battery is nearly empty.
The reason behind this is, I see the “Electric unavailable” more often when I was topping up after every short journey (10 miles ish) and not so often when the traction battery was near 0%.
Many on here may know that I’ve had lots of issues with both 12v batteries on my DS4 PHEV since buying new 2 years ago.
To date the car has had 5 main 12v batteries replaced under warranty and 1 smaller 12v battery.
At the moment everything is all good.
The car has been back and fore the dealership almost constantly trying to find a reason why the batteries were failing but they just cannot find a reason, so ultimately they put it down to a bad batch of 12v batteries that had circulated on some new UK sold DS4’s.
Some of the symptoms I was seeing were, proximity auto locks not always functioning, welcome lights not always functioning, message on the dash saying “electric mode currently not available”, radio/media system switching off after a few minutes when the car was not running with a message saying something like " power saving mode shutting down".
All of these issues are now ok with two good batteries.
Doing low mileage really does effect the 12v batteries on these cars so I now trickle charge the main battery once per month.
