chassis

Yep, all good stuff. Is there a time duration when OTA map updates are ended? Like a warranty period? My 2017 with COMAND came with 3 years of free map upgrades at the dealer, and 5 years of mbrace.

With Mercedes me connect, are OTA map upgrades a fee-based subscription after a period of time?

superswiss

Yes, it's 3 years for free, so is Mercedes me connect as a whole. All services are free for 3 years, after that you need to pay for a subscription of which as far as I understand there are different levels of pricing and not sure what's included in which. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

SUV John

There is only one choice in the Apple app store for Mercedes me. There is a Mercedes me connect app available that mentions it's for 2019 and new vehicles so I think I'm limited to the current Mercedes me app for my 2016. It's okay- timing issues aside I can still use the features and there is no crazy price involved to say put a remote start in.

Emmablaker

Your battery isn't dead. I think that the problem is that it is not charging. You should try to recondition the battery. You can read about some methods on batterytools.net. I also had such a problem, after I got in the rain, and the water entered the engine zone and the battery started to work worse. I wanted to buy a new one, but the guys from the car repair shop said that I can try to recondition it, by cleaning it with a brush. I was shocked that it worked correctly and this error disappeared from the control panel of the car.

Roni07

No. Dealer says bad cells in it. Battery was replaced.

Roni07

I’m scared now to leave the GLE and GLC parked for more than 5 days. Don’t want income back to a dead vehicle at the airport or in my garage. At least with Tesla , you can leave to vehicle plugged in.
Speaking of sloppy “parts shipping”. Many have now assumed the “I don’t care attitude” and should all be fired. I ordered a brand new Tesla and went to pick up, the vehicle was damaged during transport. Bid dent on trunk door. Tesla says “common for third party transport companies”. May arrived damaged. how’s this acceptable for doing business ?? I told them “in that case you can keep it. I want a new vehicle and a new vin#.”” And I walked away. They are making a new one now. Unbelievable.

chassis

Sorry to hear about the damaged Tesla. You are having a bad run with cars, unfortunately. Hopefully things will improve. Have you ever owned a Honda or a Toyota? Usually it’s a drama-free experience.

Roni07

& my overall car experience has been very good. Never had an engine or a transmission die on me.
Cars I’ve owned
- Chrysler- terrible
- Ford - bad
- Toyota - excellent
- Honda - excellent
- Mercedes - good
- Tesla - TBD. The car was damaged during transport, so I can’t hold it against the Local Store. Once I take possession of the new one, I’ll come back and rate it.
- Tesla - test driving - the best driving experience, I’ve ever had.

SUV John

So going back to post #1, from June 2019 are you still having dead battery issues? Did it ever get fixed or has a cause been determined?

I'm curious because as I've been driving much less this last year, I have occasionally put my 2016 GLE350 on a Battery Tender to keep the original battery topped off. To date mine has had no issues so I would expect dealer troubleshooting would have identified a cause beyond at least one bad battery. Having had a career in aviation, I know cells of a battery can fail while outside factors can cause a battery to fail so it would be helpful to learn of the cause so others can be proactive if necessary.

Roni07

&& The cause is “Defective batteries form MB - bad batch”. MB dealer and shop found a bad cell in the battery that was causing the drain and the rest of the cells were supplying juice to only deplete themselves to oblivion. “”

20 glc 300

I’m not going to pay the dealership 700 to replace my battery, I found a AGM optima or diehard batteries suitable substitute.
Has anybody replace the battery with an optimal or diehard H6 or h7 ….And if so which one do you recommend?

chassis

Buy the battery from the dealer and replace it yourself. That's what I did.

Dealer battery price is competitive, maybe 10% higher than Advance Auto Parts, O'Reilly's, etc.

amusa

I always get the battery from the dealership. Take your old battery with you for the core.

20 glc 300

Advance Auto Parts, free install Optima H6…$355.29
done

amusa

Free install. I bet there be cursing up a storm if they replace both battery's in the W166. I would NEVER have them touch it. I'm sorry this is Advance I understand if it's a Honda or some sort but having a battery under the seat. I do it myself or take it somewhere that knows Mercedes.

20 glc 300

My GLC 300 main AGM battery is underneath the hood maybe you’re talking about the OG……GLE post and / or w166 ML and GLE
There is a voltage modulator…… Some people say this is the second battery… located underneath my passenger floorboard…but it’s still operational
They were very courteous and let me watch the whole process ….Advance auto parts

e9bm

2017 GLE400, DieHard, AGM Platinum, size H8, battery purchased at Advance Auto, 3 yr replacement, $225. Self install.
Battery is located under the front passenger seat, so a bit of a pain to install, but then I'm pushing 80.

amusa

The secondary battery on the W166 called the Aux battery can be in two different location behind the rear cargo plastic trim on the passenger side or under the rear seat on the driver side. The main battery for the W166 is under the front seat on the passenger side. Not sure on the right hand drive vehicles on how there configure.

Chip Mason

Is there any computer configuration or 'reset' needed when changing the battery in the W166? My other car requires the use of a computer program to tell the computer that a new battery has been installed. Over engineered car....

cparke

I'm not sure how he determined that. It's a sealed lead acid battery, you can't check specific gravity of the cells or the individual voltage of the 6 internal cells. Typically, yes, a shorted cell will drain out all the others, but that's also not the only thing that can cause this. If it's happened more than once for you, while yes it could be bad bad string of luck, more likely that isn't the real reason this is happening and that diagnosis comes with no real testing of the battery (ex: does battery lose significant voltage just sitting disconnected for a week?)

I had to deal with a similar issue on my BMW recently. For a long time, car would not start every few weeks and I manually recharged the battery to make this go away. Finally, I started getting this more frequently and I changed the battery. With the new battery installed, however, I starting having even more strange behavior! Car would suddenly not start and there was even a strange ignition error code in the vehicle. Furthermore, new battery was draining extremely fast, just like yours. Was this new battery actually a bad battery? Usually not.

The final outcome is it was the battery monitoring sensor (called IBS by BMW). Mercedes has a similar thing. It's part of the negative battery cable and contains a small microprocessor which measures and records the current flowing in and out of the battery. It's connected to the ECU by a data cable. Apparently when the electronics in this thing start to go bad (or the component has been damaged from too much battery disconnecting or the cable being over tightened, etc.), the battery monitor will not let the ECU go into deep sleep when the car is off, and this will drain the battery in just a few hours or a day or two, the same way as if the dome light was left on. That was my actual problem! Changed the negative battery cable and IBS, and the new battery now working perfectly, probably even the old battery was fine (it certainly tested fine).

gshockxcc

Hello all, I'm new to the forum, and a recent MB owner (my wife's car). I bought a 2018 GLE 350 CPO from a dealer here in Houston a couple of years ago. I have had no issues with the car since we have owned it. It's my wife's daily driver. This morning, she tried to start it and the dash was dead. She was able to unlock the car, but then when she tried to start it, everything went dead. No power at all. She couldn't even lock it. We have had some pretty high heat recently, and it wouldn't surprise me if the battery just failed. I'm sure it wasn't new when we bought the car. But, reading all of the other issues that everyone has had, I have lots of questions, because I have never owned an MB before. For better or worse, I've mostly done all of my own maintenance on Fords (F-150), Hondas (Civics and Accords), and Mazda B-2200 pickups.

I have seen references to a second battery, or a voltage modulator. I'm not sure how that works, but it sounds like it's just a capacitor. If that's the case, that's basically what a battery is, but using chemicals between the plates to create the voltage difference. So one battery must have a different current than the other, I would assume. One is for the auxiliary systems, and the other is for the high current cranking amps, perhaps?

I have no experience with the batteries under the seats or inside the passenger compartment. Any guidance on removing/replacing? Tips, tricks, suggestions, required tools? Any suggestions or advice (that hasn't already been mentioned) would be greatly appreciated.
My preference is to find the right battery from Autozone and install that, if I can. I'll go to the dealer if I have to, but it's not my first choice.
https://www.autozone.com/batteries-s...agm/319459_0_0

gshockxcc

I read through this thread several times and decided to do this myself. As Chasis indicated, it's not too hard. I took his advice and bought the dealer battery because it was the same prices as Autozone. It's been about two weeks, and the battery is dead already. That is, absolutely nothing on the display. My wife tried to have someone jump start it, and nothing. So something is definitely wrong. I can't imagine that there's a short somewhere without it affecting some other system. That is, if there was a short draining the battery, I would assume that something else would be malfunctioning. So far, there is no evidence of that.

I believe that Roni07 has had issues, and proposed that it's a known MB problem. I'm willing to go with that at this point, but it doesn't make me happy. Knowing that I can get the same AGM battery from AZ, and it will last longer than the MB battery makes me think that there's no reason not to go aftermarket on the MB unless it's under warranty.

Anyone still having issues with the AGM MB battery?

chassis

What mods are on your car? Replace the aux battery before suspecting the worst case.

gshockxcc

I don't have any mods on the car, that I know of. We bought it stock CPO from an MB dealer. Would the Aux battery failing cause the vehicle to not start? It seems strange that would be the case. I thought the Aux Battery controlled some aspect of the automatic shifting system.

chassis

Correct, the aux battery would likely not cause a no-start condition. The electrical system on MBs needs to be near-perfect to avoid odd behavior, so replacing both batteries around the 5 year mark is recommended.

It seems like your car has a current drain. An indy shop (cheaper) or dealer (expensive) can diagnose this for you.