Went to Fort McHenry this weekend and half way through our visit I returned to the car to get some water. I decided to tilt the sunroof to let the car vent for a while. When I got out the car beeped at me several times so I figured that it must be the usual "roof open" warning. When we returned a couple hours later I noticed that the car was unlocked and then when I tried to start it I couldn't get a ready light. I tried several times with no luck and then noticed that the windows were very slow to roll down but everything else looked OK. Figured it was a low battery so started to search for someone with some jumper cables. Couldn't find anyone so I tried the start button one more time and luckily I got a ready light and we were good to go.

I'm assuming that somehow I left the car in accessory mode and drained the battery, or at least I hope that's what happened. With all the advantages of the smartkey this the one thing I don't like about it. You could never leave another car in accessory mode and take the key with you. Sure the car beeped and tried to warn me but given the roof was opened I ignored these warnings! Guess I'll have to be more careful in the future.

 

That sounds like the "you left the car on" warning beeps. I assume this happens if it is in accessory mode too. Was the red light illuminated on the power/start button when you came back to the car?

 

hmmm, don't remember if the red light was on. I thought that I got a orange and a green but don't remember a red! I'm just lucky nobody stole it!

 

Orange/Red are probably the same - maybe I am color blind!

 

Ha, I just posted about this 2 minutes ago in another thread.
I hate that there is no clear indicator of whether the car is on or off.
Drives me nuts...arggg...simple common sense design...come on!!

 

In order to lift sunroof you had to be in ACC2, in order to discharge battery the car could not be in ready to drive mode, otherwise the ICE would recharge battery, therefore nobody could drove off in your TCH without key and restarting the engine, the best anybody could do is to let it roll few feet down the hill. If you don't believe me test it yourself. As far as Smart key being less secure, yeah sure, like nobody ever left keys in the ignition before or didn't leave the parking lights on to discharge battery. Unless they make cars smarter than us to watch over themselves we will always find ways to do something wrong. I learned to pay attention to beeps and often ask passenger without FOB to double check if the doors are locked if I can't hear clearly one beep confirming the car is locked, lets say due to noise. I also found that leaving one of the FOB's in your jacket and then leaving the jacket in trunk gives you error beeps and it won't lock the car either, now try that with the regular key and then figure the way to get the key from inside of locked trunk. IMO the FOB is not less secure in any way than old fashioned key, just different and requires different habits to form. BTW I did something similar more than once and learned that way to pay attention to beeps more, I also don't trust anybody unfamiliar with the car to operate it in any way, missing ignition key is confusing first, but now I often want to drive normal car without turning on ignition, looking for button to press.

 

The same thing happened to me last month (confused a "car on" beep with sunroof warning beep), except that when I returned to my car 40 minutes later, the engine was running! I couldn't believe that the car stayed ON after me (AND the FOB) being gone for that long. What if I had left for a week? I really wish that the car would automatically turn itself off after a period of time if you leave the vehicle. Perhaps it was SUPPOSED to turn off but didn't... In that case, I may have to get it looked at.

 

I think this is the intended behavior (not shutting off when fob is removed). My suspicion is that the car won't shut off when the fob leaves the vehicle to prevent unintended shutoff of the car while driving and the fob battery is weak. It seems that this could have been addressed differently, but there are probably other reasons for it.

 

Wow. That really makes a lot of sense now that you mention the potential weak FOB battery issue. One would still need to be able to drive the car to a place where they could change the FOB battery. I just wish they could have made the assumption that if the car is running for over 30 min in park without a FOB signal, the issue is not a faulty FOB but rather a flaky owner (ie. me) and the car should be turned off.

I also agree with other posters about making the status of the car more visible. I consider myself a very technical person yet I still have difficulty telling whether the car is off or not on occasion. Once the car tells you your trip MPG after shutdown, the dashboard and gauges look the same to me as when the car is on.

 

Actually, you can remove the battery from the fob completely, and you can still start and drive the car. The battery is like a "booster" for sending the data on the key over longer distances (more than an inch or two) to the car. I haven't tried, but I recall reading that you can remove the battery from the fob, and hold the fob up against the Power button while you press the Power button. This allows the sensor to "read" the RFID chip in the fob and verify its code. The car will then run without the fob next to the button, but you will get continual warnings for "Key not detected".

This starting procedure is actually documented in the manual for starting the car when the fob battery is weak (obviously they don't suggest removing the battery in their procedure).