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Old 09-14-2017, 02:08 PM
oldskewel oldskewel is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Loperamide View Post
If i left my USB phone charger plugged into 1 of the sockets would it drain the battery?
I don't know much about these sorts of details, but ...

Just a USB charger would not likely be able to drain the world's largest car battery just by itself in a matter of days. BUT, in my early days of owning this car, happened one time, so not a very solid data point, but ...

I accidentally left the GPS (a real handheld one, not the 20th-century equivalent built in to the dash) powered on and plugged into the 12V port in the upper passenger footwell. Next day the battery was deader than dead. So low that my "smart" charger I had with me that will automatically decide if you're charging a 6V vs. a 12V battery, decided I had a 6V battery, which made charging a little difficult. BTW, it really is a nice charger except when it's not quite as smart as it thinks it is.

My guess is that having the GPS plugged in somehow convinced the intelligent agents living inside the BMW's brain that the car should not go into sleep mode, so the car's GPS, CD changer, and all kinds of other crap stayed on all night ... and that's what drained the battery. So it was not that the GPS took all the power, but it kept the car awake and that took all the power.

I never followed up with any experiments to verify this theory. I just am careful to never leave anything plugged in.

If the USB charger is in the socket, but not actually plugged into anything (like a phone or GPS), that may or may not eliminate this type of problem.
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2001 X5 3.0i, 203k miles, AT, owned since 2014
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