Maybe a stupid question but I didn't find anything on a search....

Why does an E's lights not turn off at some point after the car is shut down when the lights are in the 'On' position? This seems like pretty basic technology these days common on many other cars.

About a week ago, I had valet parked my car at a restaurant for dinne. Got back in the car with the guy who funds my company to take him back to his hotel. Sure I was a little distracted and I did not double check the lights. Apparently, the valet had clicked them out of 'Auto' to 'On'. I did not notice when I got home because my lights always stay on a few minutes. Of course,the next morning I have no juice. Call MB roadside and he immediately asks me if I valeted. He comments that he gets this all the time. Roadside guy comes out and says the same thing.

Anyway, just wondering why MB's lights don't turn off automatically and if other people have had the same problem with valets. My employees have had a field day making fun of the lack of technology in my E.

 

Never mind the valets. My wife and I are our own worst enemies when it comes to leaving the lights on and draining the battery overnight. I did it a year or so ago and my wife did it last week. In my wife's case, she switched the lights from "Auto" to "On" because it was raining but wasn't dark enough for the lights to go on automatically, and she then forgot that she had switched them to "On."

I have no idea why M-B sees fit to make the radio go off after 20-30 minutes of playing without the key, but lets the lights stay on without the key until the battery is stone cold dead. It's particularly stupid because, as you say, the lights stay on for a while in "auto" and it's easy to mistake the lights-on warning "beep" for the usual warning beep from opening the door while the key is still in the ignition. The topic has come up before and some fanciful theories have been advanced ("what if you went off some canyon road on a dark night and went into a ravine, wouldn't you want the lights to stay on even if the key fell out of the ignition?") but none that make sense to me.

 

And the one switch which needs to be back-lit, the light switch, isn't.

 

The idea behind that is that if the owner wanted the lights to automatically shut off then it would be set to the auto position. If the lights are switched on manually, possibly including the fog lamps the logic is that it was done for a reason... hence the control is still left up to the driver. You do get the chime and "switch off lights" message from the instrument cluster which is designed to remind the person exiting the car. Manual is the key word here.

 

I don't know if it has changed with the model years but my '06 chimes at me if I park the car and remove the key with the light switch on the 'on' position.

It doesn't happen with the light switch in 'auto' to that to me is a tell-tell sign tht the car needs attention before I walk away.

 

Sounds like some progress.