Low Battery Please Start Engine
 

Getting low battery message on display intermittently when pushing START button. Don't know the age of batteries and am thinking of just replacing them as a preventative measure. Searched forum for cost estimate and whether I need dealer to do it or a local independent shop. Have heard one report of $2000 which seems exorbitant even if batteries are hard to access. Anyone have any experience with this? Also, anyone with local San Francisco Silicon Valley Bentley shop --- I live in Menlo Park and 3 Bentley dealers are all about an hour away. Thanks, Bill

Check the SEARCH function as I recall it should be under $1k for both installed. They are standard batteries so not specialty items only for the Bentley. In fact try your local VW dealer if you have a pre-2010 (perhaps 2008 and before) as the Bentley is really just a VW Phaeton.

Batteries from VW, CDN$

Main battery: 000 915 105 CE $220
Starter battery: 000 915 105 DE $139

Update on 'Low Battery Please Start Engine" warning message. This continued for a month each time I started the car. When I was not going to drive the car for a few weeks I connected my CTEK battery maintainer and it apparently achieved a full charge and warning messages stopped. My (totally uninformed) theory is that when battery initially fell below some threshold it triggered the low battery indication that stayed in memory and the alternator never brings it up to 100% because there is so much draw while running. Anyway, glad I did not invest in new batteries that I did not need.
By the way, I did find out that I could get both batteries installed for about $450 at an indy shop specializing in Rolls and Bentleys. This is for correct size Interstate batteries. A forum member recommends Oddysey batteries which are highly rated and have superior specs. I wanted to install those but was advised that hold downs need to be modified to fit the Bentley. Car currently has batteries branded Varta which may be OEM batteries made in Europe but owned by Johnson Controls who also makes Interstate. I am posting this for anyone else getting low battery warning which also triggers other fault codes so they can fully charge before buying new batteries. Worked for me, may work for others.

If the batteries are reaching +4 yrs in age, they may have become sulfated. The batteries can still take a charge to full, but will not be able to store the same amount of energy and the voltage will quickly drop below 12.2v.

That'd be me and thanks for the info as I did have to mod hold-downs for the Ferrari when we did the changeover. HUGE thanks for the added info on the stock batteries, MUCH appreciated!

Varta are indeed a very well know make in Europe.

I'm wondering if I might have original batteries in my 10 year old 2006 CGT since they are Varta's made in Europe. I've had the car for a year and a half and it had only 7900 miles on it when I bought it. I can't see any mfg date on the batteries. It starts without effort in a second or two and the only indications were low battery alerts which went away after hooking it up to my CTEK charger for a few days.

For your info'. I've just had a look at the replacement main battery that the main dealer fitted in mine a couple of years ago. It has VW/AUDI logo's on it.

Les.

Gotta do this soon. No problem starting but I do have the low battery indicator message. My indy tech quoted me around $800.00

I'm in California and both batteries were replaced with Interstates by indy who specializes in ferraris, lambos, porsches, RR, Bentley, etc for just under $500. OEM batteries (VARTA) seem to be from Europe and hard to find. About one to one and one half hours labor including about a half hour on resetting low battery code in display. They had the factory Bentley diagnostic tool but still had trouble with the reset. Low battery will start throwing all kinds of false codes like ABS.

WOW thats a steal. Im paying $427 for just both batteries still less than the dealer so im not too upset.

Think my batteries were around $350. Big one more than smaller one. Both kind of hard to get to and big one very heavy and hard to pull out. Don't think I was charged for code reset because they had trouble doing it and I watched the whole process. You'll have a lot of peace of mind with new batteries and not wondering if it's going to start when you see the dreaded LOW BATTERY alert

I have Bosch batteries in mine. They were replaced in 2017 (as dated on the batteries) just before I bought the car. There is a Bosch S6 (AGM) on the left side and an S5 on the right side. Both have been doing the trick since I've owned the car and mine does sit for days at a time w/o running. In fact, just lately I started running a Ctek maintainer on the leftside battery just in case.

I think the Bosch batteries are available here in the U.S.

Costco has the best prices on the Interstate H3 & H5 batteries that our cars use. Changing them looks like a PITA though so I may just pay my indie to do it. I just started getting that same message when starting and the batteries are at least 5 years old now. The care still starts instantly though and lives in an air conditioned garage.