New cars are great...

watson387@sopuli.xyz to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 1818 points –
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Yeah but shouldn’t the power usage for the infotainment system be similar to a cell phone at this point with similar hardware where it really shouldn’t be possible to run a car battery dead during an update?

Ideally. Depends on the update time too. I know flashing ECU tunes requires a battery topper. I've also killed a car battery modding my infotainments firmware so it's totally possible. But most likely Subaru is doing it out of an abundance of caution... Don't want an angry customer coming saying the update killed their battery

My car pulls about 130W on the 12V line while in "stand-by". That would flatten a 12V, 40Ah battery in less than four hours, and that's only if it's in perfect health.