MarkinMD

This is from the Porsche battery warranty (courtesy of Suncoast Parts)...

• Drives of less than 5 minutes are not sufficient to charge the battery. Trips of 15 minutes or more are required for normal battery charging to occur.
• The customer should use the Porsche Battery Charge-O-Matic battery maintainer when the following conditions apply:

1. Vehicle is not driven for several days or longer
2. Vehicle is not driven more than 15 mi./24km per day
3. Vehicle is not driven more than 6000 mi. /9600km per rolling 12 months

A sulfated battery is not a defect in material and workmanship and thus not covered under warranty.

This is why I never leave the 911 (7 year old lead-acid battery) or Macan (1-year old AGM) parked for more than 10 days without connecting to a battery maintainer.

A few years ago, I was able to get BMW to replace a 47-month old battery under warranty, but only because I could prove I drove more than 8K miles per year and used CTEK a battery maintainer.

tk-porsche

Interesting. That seems like an absurdly excessive number of conditions and looks to me more like a way for Porsche to have an easy out in the event of a battery issue. Who even tracks their daily mileage on that kind of level, not to mention not everyone drives a vehicle on a daily basis?

Need4S

Not sure, because I put the car on a tender if I know it will be more than 2-3 weeks sitting. I'm told the car hibernates better if locked with the alarm on standby as the only real drain. Other systems don't sleep entirely if the car is left unlocked, because, I guess, there is some expectation that you'll want to immediately get in, start and drive off. It seems odd to lock the car inside a locked garage, though.

MM3.9GT3

Seven weeks in the garage with absolutely no issues. I did not lock the car.

ducktails

I had mine sitting for about 2 months as well, with no issue. Car was locked. There are other problems with letting cars sit for a long time. Depending on where you live, might want to check your engine bay to see if any little nibblers have set up a home there.

tk-porsche

Oh, yes If not garaged, I had issues in the past with ground squirrels doing all sorts of damage from building nests, to storing food, to chewing on wire insulation. Even after a few days some of those critters would already make their presence known. Best stuff I found to date is Rodent Defense. It has a peppermint odor, doesn't harm any engine components, and has worked well for over a year with no incidents.

Antigravity

Hey everyone, just wanted to mention a little tool that might help with scenarios like this we have called our Battery Tracker. It can be used to help give you info on your battery voltage and even notify you before it get's to the point of being dead. It just connects directly to your terminals and sends info to an app on your phone. Anytime you're within 30 ft of the vehicle you can see your current voltage and it will even send you notifications if it's getting low so you can avoid the whole dead battery scenario altogether. In addition, it stores that voltage data for 30 days so if the vehicle is sitting for a longer duration you can see exactly how fast it's losing charge over time. Feel free to check out the links below as we make them for lithium as well as lead/acid batteries and let us know if you have any questions at all.
Battery Tracker Lithium
Battery Tracker Lead/Acid

zolo47

18 Macan Turbo. Lighter sockets are dead with ignition off so apparently that is not an option. I have been told that there is a reason a maintainer can not be attached directly to the battery as damage could occur. Does anyone know for sure what my options are here?

OliverK68

Who said you can’t use a maintainer?

zolo47

Not that you can’t use a tender but that you can’t hook it up directly to the battery. Apparently there are some resistors or diodes or something that can be damaged by hooking directly to the battery in this particular vehicle and both cig outlets are dead with ignition off. I guess what I am asking is for the proper procedure to hook up a maintainer to a 2018 Macan Turbo??

OliverK68

What you are referring to is wrt emergency starting. There is a separate neg terminal the must be used when hooking up a booster pack or the battery from another vehicle. You can find details in your manual under “emergency starting.”

Battery tenders cannot provide the high currents required to start a vehicle.

Follow the instructions for the maintainer you purchase and you will be fine.

pop.tremuloides

Our Macan sat for 9 weeks and had ZERO issues on start up.

Just our opinion.

91c4cab

My 2016 S sat from February 5 to June 22. No tender. Started right up

VintageRacer477

I have had permanent hookups on my last 4 cars including a 991.1. Never a problem. Just removed hookup from E350 we're giving our daughter and will put it on the Macan.

Liste-Renn

I keep a 2018 Macan GTS and a 2011 997 GTS in storage- one in Portland OR and the other in SoCal.

Because of Covid-19, have not driven the Macan since February and the 997 since July 2019.

Both are on CTEK battery maintainers.

1. Purchased the 997 in 2016, drove it from Boston to Los Angeles after the sale (8000+ miles) and since then annually drive 2 long mountain/coastal road trips (1000+miles each) and at least a monthly canyon blast session over two or three days (about 200-300 miles).

The battery is the second one on the car- OEM died when it was stored a winter by PO with no tender. The replacement has performed flawlessly for the last 3 years/12K miles.

Since I have never let the 997 sit so long, I asked the storage staff tech to remove the tender and start it up to check battery status. He said they normally manually push/roll the long term storage cars a foot twice a month to prevent flat spotting the tires- and will now move them by starting the engine to check battery condition off the charger.

2. The Macan gets driven on at least three 1000-mile road trips a year, last one in Jan-Feb was 2000+ miles.
No commuting, no city driving, no short trips nor bumper-to-bumper traffic.

In September, it will be 3 years/17K miles since new with the OEM battery, no issues