So today when I left the office I noticed that the drivers headlight was on, but the passenger headlight and both DRLs were off. Seemed a bit bizarre that one headlight would be on. My GLE was sitting for about 3ish hours. Has this happened to anyone or does anyone have any insight to the issue? I am worried that it will result in a dead battery one day. I attached pictures for reference.

The last picture was when I got home and I decided to have some fun and wash my GLE 😅



Drivers headlight is on.

Passenger headlight is off for reference.

 

Nope, not normal. Take it to the dealer.

 

I had that happen a couple times when I first got the car. It was in a few months ago and they did a software update and it hasn't happened since.

 

Had this happen in month 1 of ownership. Never happened again.

 

You were wondering if your battery was going to be dead. I assume then the engine was off and the head light was still on? Think the battery would be dead by morning. Wonder how one would be able to shut this headlight off and avoid a dead battery if this happened to anyone else? Don't even know where the battery is. It's the AGM battery I think. Maybe have to unhook it somehow? For me, I live approx 130 miles from the dealer.

Toban

 

Had same problem with my previous GLC and now with my current GLE.

YES it will drain battery.

To switch off headlamp just open driver's door.

Headlamp control unit/s would need replacement.

Rush to your dealer whilst warranty is not over.

 

Yup, happened 3 times already. The 2 times it happened was when I was adjusting my tire pressure, and 1 time it was parked at a weird angle on the curb (rear passenger side wheel up). Now that I thought of it, it was somehow triggered by the rear wheels (was deflating/inflating the rear wheel when the headlight turned on).

 

If you need to disconnect the battery, raise the driver's (left) seat all the way up and forward and remove the plastic cover in the floor. You can then access the negative terminal which takes a 10mm wrench. The first thing to try if you have a wig out of your electronics with multiple error messages is to disconnect and reconnect this cable.

 

If it is just one lamp, you may have parked the car with the turn signal on. In Europe, with crowded roads they sometimes use this feature to ensure the corners of the car are visible if you are parked on the side of a busy narrow street.

 

Is that a feature on a GLE built for the US market? You shut the car off with the turn signal on, and the head light on the side indicated stays lit?

 

The turn signal was not activated at that time. I am going to monitor it and play it by ear. If I notice it again I will bring it to a dealership to have them check it out but so far I have only noticed it once.

The only thing I would hate to happen is if they have to replace the headlight housing and they have to order the part, and then there's a part shortage and then I am stuck with some loaner for 3 months.

 

That's probably the best course of action. Somehow help them to duplicate the issue. Try to either describe the sequence leading up to it if you can't demonstrate.
It's frustrating for everybody to write, or see, a "Could not Duplicate."
Maybe ask the Service Manager to try, so he/she is more in the loop.

This is one of those things that you kind of hope shows up again!
Good job of troubleshooting and getting feedback from the Forum.
Good luck.

 

I hope it was more of a "one-time" thing like how I my old E300 the infotainment went black while I was driving and I had to pull over and restart the car/system for it to come back on.

I've been on the lookout and checking it at random times letting the car sit for various amounts of time and so far it hasn't happened. The only other thing that happened was it looked like the drivers (may have also been the passenger headlight too but I didn't see) headlight was trying to perform the "welcome" light show when I was at the gym but I clicked on the lock button and it stopped. That was about 1.5 weeks prior to this occurrence. I will keep an eye out and keep y'all updated if anything happens.

 

i had the same problem. Happen at least 5x in the past 9 months.
Error indicated on the dash screen: Intelligent Light System inoperative. Right dipped beam.
So far it Never drain out the battery. Sending the car for servicing soon and will report the problem.

 

I had something similar happen just now. I have the lighting package with the Multibeam LED. Car was in the garage since yesterday without a problem, just now went for a drive and got 2 errors: Check Low Left Beam, and Active Headlamps Inoperative. Both headlamps seemed on but the left side didn't do the "sweep" animation when I turned the car on, only the right side did. I finished my drive and parked the car, but after I turned it off the left side was still fully illuminated. Turning the car on and off a couple of times and fiddling with the lighting switches didn't do anything. I'm going to call the dealer in the morning to take it in, but I want to make sure the battery doesn't drain by morning. I suppose I can disconnect the battery behind the driver's seat, but it might be simpler to pull one of the fuses? According to https://mbworld.org/forums/gle-class...503-fuses.html it can be fuse 110 or 133 under the hood (not in the rear). Any advice from the experts on which approach is better/safer?

As a side note, it seems most of the module is illuminated, including the blue "strips" as well as the individual LEDs behind them, versus the other headlamp which only has the 2 rows of low beams while the car is running. Took some pictures of the faulty headlight and the one that's working (both while on and off) for comparison's sake. Another side note is I checked the Mercedes Me app and it helpfully noted the error coming from the car's sensors and that I should schedule an appointment asap, which was a nice touch.

 

Update: A few minutes after sending my previous post, I checked the app again and it went from saying the Starter Battery was "charged" to "partially charged". Concerned that it would quickly get worse, an hour after that (2 hours from when the problem first started) I went back to the garage to disconnect the battery but magically the headlamp was already off. I performed a few on/off test cycles and all seemed to work correctly, including the startup "sweep" animation, so like the other posters on this thread it seems this issue was intermittent for me... I'll still call the dealer but might not be in a rush to get it looked at tomorrow.

I'm guessing that "some time" after you shut off the engine and lock the car, long after the lights are supposed to turn off, the car automatically shuts down some components more fully. When I was first trying to troubleshoot and turn the engine and lights on/off the first time, it was all within a few minutes of each other so didn't do anything to "reset" the headlamp module, but the "proper" shutdown of the car must have corrected it. Best case is this is a transient software issue and a software update (if available) will fix it. First time this happens in 18+ months of ownership so it's entirely possible it never happens again even without a software update, assuming the hardware itself is fine.

Edit: checked the app again and the Starter Battery went back to "charged". Also, in addition to the in-app notification I just noticed I got an automated email (that went into my junk folder) alerting me to the problem. I guess that part of the diagnostics system and alerting is working well, if only MB could provide OTA updates for all the various modules and MBUX.

 

Dealer looked at it and performed a software coding, hopefully issue is resolved for good!



I searched the fault code and found this which seems relevant: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2020/MC-10175236-9999.pdf

 

Thank you for your post. It helped me a lot. I have/had the same problem, but much worse. I was driving at night and all of the sudden I get a giant red battery error display and the MBUX is telling me to stop the car immediately and have it towed to the dealership.
Luckily I was close enough to home to just drive it home and park it. I had the exact same problems as you.
The dipped drivers side headlight.
Same light also did not turn off.
Light system error for MBUX.
When I was driving the car did not seem to downshift very well when stopping.

I did a quick search and found your post. I waited for the light to eventually turn off, which it did, and then I went to bed looking forward to a massive problem in the morning.
Today I checked the computer error messages with the FIXD device and it said no errors ?!?!?!?!?
I took the car for a quick drive and everything works perfectly.

I am glad it was just a computer problem, but what if I was in the middle of no where at midnight? Shut the car down, call a midnight tow that might take 3 hours and at what cost?

So what did I learn? Some "restarts" require that the car sit for a couple of hours and does a full shutdown. Insane... and how much did we pay for these cars?

 

Welcome to the forum Shannon!
This is only the second time I’ve seen this reported (including your post), so hopefully it was a hiccup and won’t happen again.
If it does, the dealer should be able to help by pulling the car computer’s logs.

Cheers,

 

This happened to me...I found I had manually turned on the headlights and did not turn them off. So when it happened a second time i knew what it was.

 

Thankfully I have not had this issue happen to me since the time I posted this thread last year.

 

Are we talking about the Euro parking lights, that are left OR right, with the switch all the way counterclockwise?
​​​​​​

 

Dude, thanks for this post. I had exactly the same issue and was planning to contact my dealership, but decided to google this error first. And this thread was one of the top results in google. I've read you post and tried to "shut down - wait for an hour - and start car again" and that error was gone and headlight was working fine. It seems it's some kind of software issue, I have not seen this error before.
By the way, my dealership updated car software like a month ago, so maybe this is one of the bugs of recent software.

 

Hello.

Ive same problem, but both headlamps are on.

It drains the battery and it will first trigger the alarm.

First thing I did was to buy a new battery to rule out low voltage or dips since I know the CANBUS can be sensetive, that did not helped.

I contacted my dealership who told that I need new soft. 180euro of soft update and things went bananas. The headlight went on many many times during a day. It did not matter if the car was locked or un locked, but directly I gave an input to the car, as open a door or unlocked the door, the lights went off and after a while when the car is off and no input is given to the car, then the head light start to iluminate. I also note that I lost the memory on rear windows automatic up function.
I can re-program the memory but after 1-2 days the memory is lost again. That means I can not open/close windows in the ME app.

I took contact with the dealer again and they told that I need 2 new control modules for the lamps, 1000 euro.

I changed the modules and still same issue with lights, and windows.

I was not happy at all, and again contacted the dealer who now escalated it to MB in Dusseldorf Germany, and answer was to give the modules new soft again. So I went again to the dealer and the gave new soft and problem still remain.

This issues have been for over 4 month and I am disapointed, such an expensive car, and this kind of problems and It feels like they just guessing.

I have also my own fault code reader since I looste the faith, but no fault code visable.

I have installed MB original dashcam and also a subwoofer, all by professional. As far as I know nothing of this is conected via the cars CANBUS, but I think the issues started around this time.

I have also told that to MB dealer about the installation and they also tell that this have no impact to the headlight problem.


Any help or suggestion is helping. There need to be something that trigger the light to go on.

 

I know you mentioned that the modifications are unlikely to cause the issues but try disconnecting both, the dashcam and the subwoofer to see if it helps. In engineering, the rule of thumb is to "roll back" first, even if the relation seems improbable. That's assuming the roll back is easy to perform.