Quote:
Originally Posted by ZPrime
It's not a "lithium ion laptop battery thing," it's a pretty standard (for German cars) AGM battery. There's "a thing" attached to the top that is part of the SOC (state of charge) monitoring system, and somewhere in all the mess there will be a pyrotechnic charge that fires in the event of a severe accident (this is the battery disconnect system since it isn't up under the hood like in most cars).
They are still not cheap batteries, plus if you want to not prematurely kill the replacement battery, you need to have the dealer do the swap (or someone who has access to Rheingold so they can run the "new battery who dis" procedure on the car's software). This dance is required because the car "learns" the battery's characteristics over time and adjusts charge voltage based on temperature and other factors. If you just change out a dead battery for a new one, but don't "reset" this table of learned charging factors, you end up killing the new battery much more quickly since the car ends up overvolting it (new battery doesn't need as much voltage to charge as the old one did).
The CTek chargers are solid, as are the actual "Battery Tender" brand. Just hook your tender of choice up to the posts under the hood - do NOT try to attach directly to the battery, as this would bypass any protection in the car and is the opposite of what you want to do.
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Hmm. I have a bit of a dilemma. I live in a condo in downtown, and I don't have access to an electrical outlet. Considering the various battery sub-systems you've mentioned, I'm guessing I can't take the battery out and run the tender out of my condo unit (or anywhere else for that matter)?
For everyone else looking for the specific CTEK mentioned above, apparently it's been replaced by a successor, the CTEK 40-206 MXS 5.0-12 Volt Battery Charger. This is according to various reviews/answers on Amazon. I believe one of said reveiewers called CTEK to confirm, but you might want to do the same to be sure.