Here's something that I noticed while we were camping this last week .... at night I would open the tailgate and load up the food bins and coolers to keep them away from critters. One evening, the tailgate was up for about half an hour, no interior lights on etc. When I tried to close it, it wouldnt budge and there was a warning message on the display saying 'Low Battery, please start engine'

It seems odd that the battery could loose power so quickly. When we were packing up camp, the same thing happened, the battery drained in about 30 mins and I had to run the engine while loading the car. Anyone else noticed this issue?

Cheers

 

While searching this forum I found your post, but no replies. My 2018 is doing the exact same thing and it’s frustrating. I even put a charger on it and after 2 days it’s doing it again.

Did you replace your battery, or find another solution?

 

I never got around to replacing the battery, and this years camping trips weren't plagued by the issues, although I am a lot more mindful of the issue. Given that the year shelf drops down so that you can enjoy picnics etc, I am surprised it's such a problem.

 

It’s good to know that you are still running the same battery and it seems to have resolved itself.

I just bought mine 3 weeks ago and drove it 1200 miles to get it home, so one would think that should have got it fully charged. It was a Certified Pre Owned and all that stuff should have been inspected prior to the purchasing.

 

Do you think it's ok to hook a charger up to the positive and negative extended jump start posts for charging?
The manual says to remove the battery for charging and that the job should be left to qualified personnel.

 

The battery is in a constant state of supplying power to a LOT of modules, while the car is not running. Best way to preserve the battery is to double lock it. You should hear a quick beep when you lock it - press the remote 2x.
In this state the only thing working is the alarm itself, and rarely the telematics ( you may get some OTA updates).
While locked regularly (1x) or not locked, all the modules are talking to one each other for long time. It drains a lot of battery.
I had this issues with the Velar, and with the Defender. It is not related to Disco only.
If you intend to leave the vehicle in a storage, unlocked, or in a garage parked for long time, connect a charger to it - or disconnect the battery. You could see that a lot of dealers (when they still had cars on the floor) had the charger connected to them 99% of the time.
Probably in my humble opinion, it can be improved by JLR, but .... you have to remember that a Disco 5 has about 85 modules, and they are "chatty" all the time, if not double locked.

 

Thanks for the double lock suggestion. I ran into this same issue while camping. I told my dealer and they tested the battery. They decided to replace it for me at no charge (it was a CPO car).

I can't say that the warning has gone away though. I'll try the double lock, but it sounds pretty inconvenient, since when I'm camping I'm often opening & closing the doors. That said, I've never been unable to start the car. The battery charge protection seems to be pretty aggressive. I do carry a jump back, just in case.

 

One other thing that comes to mind, is to use a solar paned ( one of those, foldable ) and set it on dashboard. It can keep the battery "happy".
I know, double lock is not convenient - but hey ! is a LR , what do you expect ?
Also, what I have done in the past: I got real good batteries ( VARTA in Europe ) and it pretty much made my troubles go away. Not cheap, but worth every penny. Not sure if you can get them here in US, but I am sure that there are many other brands better than the ones LR uses.

 

Double locking shouldn't make any difference to modules shutting down. Even if unlocked all the modules power down after about 15 mins. Look at the red warning triangle - that goes out when it powers down. So you don't have to lock at all if you don't want. And normal locking is fine

I've left mine for 2-3 weeks when away on holiday and always starts first time. If the modules aren't shutting down and you have parasitic drain, have the dealer check it out

Batteries do fade and fail. So start there

And for charging I see no reason to remove the battery to charge. Use a reputable trickle charger and top it up if needed. That sounds like over caution to stop someone connecting the car to a charger backwards...

But I've not had to charge mine in 3+ years.

 

I have repeatedly left my D5 unlocked for 3 or more weeks with no problem starting it. My factory battery is now almost 5 years old.
I have also left the tailgate open for hours while camping with no problem. The interior light shuts off after a while.
I have sometime hit the tailgate close button and had it not work but that has happened even when the tailgate wasn't open for a long time. Just a gremlin. Usually closing all doors and locking and unlocking fixes it up.
It is impossible to listen to the radio for long with the engine off. It shuts itself down after about 10 minutes. Then I can turn it back on for another 10 minutes without starting the engine, but I can only do this one time. Then I have to start the engine. My LR3 would let me listen to the radio without the engine running.