This happens when the car has not been used/driven for 5 days or when your 12 volt battery is low. You can top up your 12v battery by either going for a sufficiently long drive or charging the car.

If you still get this message after charging or driving for at least 30 mins, it could be a sign your 12v battery is nearing end of life. The Corsa-e is notorious for failing in all sorts of exciting and interesting ways when the 12v goes bad!

 

Just an additional note: You are much more likely to see this message during winter if the 12v battery is very cold!

 

Ok that’s interesting as I basically use the car for short journeys 90% of the time (talking 5 minute ones to the gym etc.). But I’m doing a longer drive on Saturday so I’ll see what happens after that. I’ve booked it in with Vauxhall at the start of September anyway so they can take a look

 

Just a thought but with my endlessly short journeys being done in ECO mode rather than NORMAL cause the car to not be charging the battery as I drive properly at all? I would say 100% of the time I'm driving in Eco

 

Ah, yes lots of short 5min journeys won't give the 12v enough time to sufficiently charge and you likely aren't charging the HV battery frequently in that case, so the 12v will become depleted.

 

Driving in Eco mode has no affect on 12v charging. You need to do some longer driving or charge your HV battery more often to allow the 12v to charge!

 

If it's like other vehicles, simply sitting in it with it in Drive and ready to go is enough to charge the 12v. You don't have to actually be rolling anywhere. So if you can sit in it stationary for half an hour or so and listen to the radio or read the newspaper, while in Drive but with the handbrake on, that should have the same impact.

 

Can I ask what vauxhall said when you took it in? I'm having the same issue with my 3 month old Corsa-e. It's already been back once because the infotainment system crashed 🙄
I'm wondering if mine is because I only charge it once a week, only drive short journeys and precondition it 3 times a week when it's not on charge.

 

Preconditioning shouldn't deplete your 12v battery, when the preconditioning is engaged the traction battery is also engaged and raises the voltage on the 12v to about 13.5v, so if anything it is charging the 12v whilst it is preconditioning. As others have said it is infrequent short journeys that will deplete the 12v, no way around it unless you want to plug a battery maintainer in to your 12v whilst it is inactive but that is a bit of a faff. The Stellantis 12v battery management isn't as good as it could be. Chances are you'll need a replacement 12v battery at some point much sooner than would be the case with an ICE car, its a common issue across most EV's.

 

Hi there they basically said it was nothing to worry about when I took it in and the cars been fine so it’s not causing any issues when I did do a big cross country drive the message went away for a week or two but now I’m back to my short journeys every day it’s come back but I’m not worried I’ve found the entertainment screen thing crashes if you try and do things too quickly when you’ve push the start button. If you just give it a few seconds after you’ve pushed it and then put it in D or whatever it never seems to crash