V60 T6 - 12V/starter battery discharged "out of nowhere"
Yesterday morning I unlocked my V60 T6 (2025-model) to be greeted by every single error message possible (more or less) on the dash. My 12V battery was dead/almost dead. Couldn't do anything with the car.
I called a tow car to come later during the day after work and he jump started the battery, and I could then get in the car and turn it on.
He said for the me drive around for about 45 min - 1 hour to fully charge the battery, which I did. Everything went fine during the drive, no more errors or anything.
Here's the kicker though and I would like to ask you guys for some information. He said to drive with the petrol engine running and not the electric engine. I didn't want to risk anything at the time so I put the battery use on "Hold" to make sure it didn't use the electric drive train.
Now my questions are:
Does the electric engine not charge the 12V/starter battery? Because 95% of my driving is purely electric. Or is it just less efficient at charging it? Or does that not matter at all?
Anything special I can do to avoid it running out of juice again?
The tow guy said the battery itself should be fine (but welcomed me to book a time with Volvo for them to have a look) and that the car most likely suffered from "city driving syndrome", aka driving short distances often, which puts strain on the battery. I get the reasoning behind it, but I drive the exact same distances now as I did on my older Audi A3 (2020-model), which had the same 12V battery since at least 2023 when I bought it. It never died on me, and I drove plenty of short distances in winter time when more strain is put on the 12V due to temperature (-18°C/-0.4°F) regularly where I live) and usage of things like seat warmers etc.
I guess I'm just looking for ways to minimize the risk of this happening again. I've driven ~1200 km/745 miles since I got it less than a month ago (~3 ½ weeks). In my mind that's quite a bit. Also, the evening before the battery died I had driven for 40 minutes (electric only) with only the fans at "Automatic 2" and Spotify running.