Low battery?

That one has 12v.
It will put the battery under load as it runs a test, but as mentioned no good for EFB or AGM batteries.
You need a stand alone battery tester for those batteries.

This my multimeter, it has 12v selection.
I’ve been seeing odd results when I was checking the EFB battery on my car with it.
After speaking to the tech guy at my dealership he said I needed a stand alone tester for EFB or AGM batteries.
A mulitmeter with 12v is ok for 12v standard lead acid batteries only.

Heres the tester I’ve just ordered.
But theres loads around, just make sure you can pre-select your battery type.

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/10108-cl-test-c12bt-batter/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI34Po7pSliwMVKJlQBh1l7iI3EAQYASABEgIkcPD_BwE&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI34Po7pSliwMVKJlQBh1l7iI3EAQYASABEgIkcPD_BwE&sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=716835&awc=3131_1738505289_fd79f36dd9fcf22f121332b57f12ef95

Many thanks, very useful informations

This one has very good reviews and videos on youtube.

I might cancel my order and go for this instead.

Just collected the car from the dealership, they’ve put 2 new 12v batteries in.
So hopefully this will solve the Welcome Light & Keyless entry issues I was seeing.

HOWEVER … before I dropped the car off to them a few days ago I did some extra mileage over the weekend, far more than I would normally do, which is usually around 45 mile per week, and then the car would sit on the drive for 3 days, so after putting some extra miles on the car all the functions that were previously very intermittent suddenly started working and stayed working ?
So theres a real possibility that there was nothing wrong with the 12v batteries and the car just need some uninterrupted driving, just as my son was telling ?
If thats the case I’ve had 2 brand new batteries, and a valet done for nothing :grin:

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Everytime one has any kind of battery problems, the first step should be charging it fully with a smart charger. When fully charged, a high current test will give more insight if the battery has any internal fault.
Letting the battery sit on anything below 70% is bad for it (sulfation sets in. Vibrations and extreme temperatures are worse, but they affect it in a different way), but if you don’t do highway at least 2 hours it’s difficult for the car to recover from a depleted battery. A damaged battery can be hard to diagnose since internal damage may cause intermitent faults.

Current cars rely heavily on batteries as consumption has skyrocketed, so having a proper tool available seems essential these days. My experience with a Konnwei KW520 has been very good. It will test, charge and repair a sulfated battery, which has proved amazingly effective for me.
Modern cars will have a Battery Management System that will handle EFB and AGM batteries without any problem. Both technologies are 100% compatible from the electric side when handled properly, but not so much from the environment side as heat will kill AGMs faster.

I came back to browse the forum after a long time. My dealer replaced two batteries for the problem. There is no problem with my vehicle anymore, there was a sulphate problem due to waiting, my vehicle has 5000 km now. As I mentioned, I bought the 2023 factory vehicle at the end of 2024 from the dealer, I had a problem as a result of sulphation in the batteries, it was a possible problem, but it was replaced under warranty. They stood behind my vehicle. After the warranty, you need to be careful about deep discharging the batteries or waiting for a long time, thank you DS

Jakactac’ın?
Does the problem persist after battery replacement?

Hi, yes its seems like the problems have come back .In fact when I went to collect the car on the day they said it fixed, I walked up to the car and nothing happened, no auto locks opening or welcome lights coming on, the service department reception was with me and said “that’s not a good start” !
I said I would try it over a week or two and let them know.

So currently heres what I’m seeing.

  1. The keyless entry & welcome lights only operate very intermittently, this was the reason for taking the car into the dealership initially.
  2. The car tends to kick in the petrol engine very quickly even if the hybrid battery is fully charged, I can pull off in electric but only up to about 10 miles per hour and the the petrol engine comes in and stays on, this issue started about 1 month ago, I did mention it to the service department when it went in for the 2 new batteries.
  3. The Auto dipped/main beam has now stopped working, this is a now development since having the batteries changed.

So the latest bit on info back from the dealership is this :
Apparently the DS Technical dept now think all these issues are a software problem and have passed this onto the DS IT dept to work on a software update, however, I’ve been told this could take many months to be released !!!

I’ve now contacted DS Customer Care to raise a case, their first question after listing to what has been going on for the last 5 months was “Do You Want To Reject The Car” ?
I think that is a bit extreme, however I’m certainly considering it, now that I purchased an Hybrid car that doesn’t like being an hybrid.

They are now speaking with the dealership and the tech people to see where we go from here.
I can live with waiting for a software update if it was just for the keyless entry & welcome lights, even the auto dipped/mean beam , but if the car is using petrol instead of hybrid all the time, well that a different matter altogether.
I really do think the service department have been trying different things as a trial & error exercise, they never really knew how to solve the issues, and now that they’ve failed they decided to say it must be a software issue.

UPDATE:
I’ve just had a call from DS customer care.
Apparently there are a number of dealerships across the UK reporting very similar issues to what I’ve been seeing for the last 5 months.
They asked that I be patient while more info is collected.
I think waiting 5 months for a fix is being very patient . :rofl:

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Apologies for jumping into the middle of this thread to ask a (probably stupid!) question but re the car kicking into using the petrol engine quickly while in hybrid mode, how exactly do you know when this is happening? Is it simply the change of blue and green colours in the drive train display as this never really seems consistent or, accordingly, informative to me?

In hybrid I seem to see the range of travel I can achieve from the electricity depreciate slowly (as, I guess, it’s not always using battery depending on how it’s being driven) while the range of the petrol gradually increases but once the battery is fully depleted the petrol range starts to fall off a cliff. It’s all very difficult to fathom how far I can travel with what I have in the tank and what I have in battery charge!

Couple of things to look for.

  1. your current speed will change from blue to white
  2. you’ll see a gear number appear next to what ever mode you are in when the petrol engine is driving the car, this disappears when the electric motor is driving the car.
  3. if you go through your display options you can have a rev counter showing which only comes live when using petrol, or a display showing the car and the petrol engine along side the electric drive, it will change as you drive along from one or the other or both.

Sometimes though you may see the revs ticking over at 800rpm or 1400rpm depending on engine temp, even when the car is driving in electric mode, this is to either put some charge into the 12v batteries or to warm the engine if it hasn’t been run for a while.

The car senses if the petrol engine hasnt been run for a while so sometimes you may notice the petrol engine kicking in more than usual, this is a normal thing DS tell me.
In my case though I cant get above 10 mph without the petrol engine kicking in, every journey , every day.

I also find that the petrol gauge is a bit hit & miss, it can seen to hold in place for a a few days but then suddenly drop.
I read somewhere that the tank must have at least 10 ltrs in there register, not sure if this is true though ?

In petrol only I personally think the mpg in poor.
I also find that when the petrol engine is running the gear changes between 1,2,3 is held fairly long petrol and it’s very "revvy " before it changes those gears.

My neighbour has an PHEV Hyundai, it is unbelievably quiet in petrol mode, you cant hear or feel any rev changes when changing the lower gears, in fact it’s very difficult to notice when the car switches back and fore between petrol and electric, particularly in regards to the gear box in petrol mode.

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Just wanted to say that the DS7 is exactly like that Hyundai.
I can’t tell (or feel) when my car changes between electric and petrol. I need to look at the speedo color to know which mode it’s running in.
So this is probably just a case of how well soundproofed the car is.

Thanks for such a detailed reply Jactac, it’s much appreciated and it certainly gives me things to keep an eye on to ascertain whether I’m running with electric or petrol when in hybrid mode as I can’t really say that I’ve noticed petrol ‘running’ being any noisier (or certainly not much noisier) than ‘electric’ running.

I do agree re the petrol mpg - it seems poor but, as I’d mentioned, I really haven’t got to grips with how many miles I’m achieving with petrol as the range estimate displayed under the petrol tank gauge is just all over the place and I can’t get a reasonable handle on anything! I’m not at all convinced I’m getting the ~42mpg the trip computer suggests I’m getting though!!

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I’ve just had a bit of a shock from the dealership.

Since all the issues started 5 months ago I’ve toyed with the idea of getting rid of the car, but each time it went in to the service dept I was hoping it would be a final fix, so I’ve just let the 5 months pass by, but today I decided to ask the sales dept what the car is now worth if I did decide to sell it.

I paid almost £41000, it’s now worth between £20000 - £21000 depending on what I decided to swap it with !
First of all, I couldn’t believe their cheek by suggesting I would swap it with another DS, that would never happen…
But more shocking is how much it has depreciated in just 5 months.
Almost 50% .
I dont think I’ve know a car to drop so much in value in such a short time ?

Sounds like it should be more of a case of a “buyback” for full price, since you have gotten a faulty car that they have had more than enough time to fix but failed.

The price off the sales guy was just me enquiring what the car was worth after 5 months, it wasn’t an offer to buy it back.

I was just shocked to learn how much it has depreciated.
I’m still waiting for an update from DS customer care on what the next steps might be.

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Interesting that your Auto dip headlamp function isn’t working now! Quick update on my DS 4 petrol problems. Back to the Warranty dealer this week to have the new battery fitted, an update to the software for the speed sign recognition as well as ‘hardware’ replacement as suggested by DS tech. Result: No change to anything! Total waste of time. Also have intermittent problem with ‘Welcome’ door opening etc as you do. At a loss as what to do next

I was informed last week by the service manager that apparently other dealerships here in the UK are now reporting owners having the same issues as me with keyless entry & welcome lights.
He said DS Technical now think this could be down to a software update and it has been passed onto DS IT to look into a software update to fix the issues, however this may take “many months” to identify the issue and develop a software fix.

When I put this to DS Customer Care, to confirm if this might be a bigger issue than just my car, I was told “We cannot comment on other vehicles due to data protection”, I have that reply in an email !
I believe this is probably bigger than DS want to admit.

This is why I’m now in talks to either fully reject the car under the sales of goods act, or they can compensate me now for 5 months of hassle, frustration and total incompetence, plus the fact that I still have to wait for a fix.
Customer care did say they would be looking at a “goodwill gesture” but only AFTER the car is repaired.
So they want me to wait indefinitely for a fix before paying out a “goodwill gesture”.
My other option is to reject the car for a full refund , which if they try pushing me into a corner thinking i’ll not go that far, they are very much mistaken.

The sales people at my dealership are trying to convince DS to “look after me now”, if I agree to hold onto the car the fix.
Ultimately this will all depend on what they offer as a “goodwill gesture”.
If it’s a joking offer they’ll be seeing me handing the car back and paying out a full refund.

I truly believe there are better quality cars out there in the same price range, so a rejection and refund is looking more likely, unless their “goodwill gesture” is brought forward, and is good enough to convince me to wait for a software fix .

I think you’re right, I tried to talk to the dealer who sold the car Thursday, seems the guy I was dealing with has left, no-one else could help until Tuesday!
As indicated previously, unfortunately I purchased the car from a dealer 4 hours away so it’s not easy to communicate but I think I’m going down the same road.