[jd_tsi]

I noticed when connecting the OBD Eleven dongle, that the battery voltage was reading around 11.4v-11.7v when the ignition was active, but engine not running.
I checked the battery terminals with a multimeter, and got a reading of about 11.8v.
These numbers seem quite low, the car runs fine, and the start/stop system works but I wanted to see what others did to keep the battery in good condition.

The manual doesn't recommend charging the battery, and instead taking it to a dealer if battery problems arise from lack of use / intermittent driving.

In the month since we got our car, we have been doing mainly shorter journeys, and I have been letting the car handle the stop/start itself, and we'll have some periods of time where we won't be using the car for long runs.
Would people recommend, just taking the car for a longer motorway blast from time to time, or connecting to a charger now and then to keep things fully charged.

I have a CTEK MX5.0 smart charger that I could connect up to keep things topped up. Does anyone else do this, is there a reason that the manual would not recommend this?
In previous cars, I have connected the positive lead to the positive terminal and the negative to the car chassis to allow any voltage sensing devices to operate correctly - would this be the best solution on the Tarraco too?

The battery I have fitted seems to be a: 6R0 915 105 B - 69Ah - 680A EFB battery. There is a Black / Yellow indicator on top, which is showing black, which indicates that things are all good.

I don't see much in the way of 12v battery discussion, I guess as the car is pretty new to the market, so shouldn't be seeing problems yet.
Thank for any tips in advance,
JD

 

[Sparky13]

Very odd I would expect to see around 12.5 volts and 13.5 when charging with engine running

 

[jd_tsi]

The car would have been sat on the car forecourt for a while before we bought it, and my short journeys wouldn't have helped things much.
I wouldn't have thought anything of it, if it wasn't for the amber battery status that OBD Eleven gave, when running with the ignition active.
I'll see what OBD Eleven says when the engine is running. I had wanted to run an initial full backup, but it recommended having the engine running, or a battery charger connected.

Looking on various Tiguan forums, people seem to be using CTEK chargers successfully as long as it is connected to +ve terminal and the earth connection - to allow the car to monitor the incoming voltage,

=== Replacing Batteries ========
I found various videos about replacing the batteries - if anyone finds themselves needing to do so:

The batteries need to be recoded (Using OBD Eleven Pro or anything else that allows Long Coding) to enter the VW BEM Serial Number found on the OEM batteries, so the Battery Energy Management system knows the spec of the battery it is dealing with. Apparently, if you don't do this, then the battery doesn't get charged up as much or in the same way, and they can fail prematurely.