How does the 12V charger work?

[Rei]

Anyone have any info on how the 12V charger works? The manual says it "intelligently" keeps the 12V battery topped up, but doesn't go into detail.

I'm just wondering how well it works with a dashcam in parking mode. Can I leave it on full power, recording video for hours while I'm parked away from home, and not come back to a dead 12V battery?

 

[decrep]

My manual infers that it only charges the 12v battery when in ready

 

[Rei]

Hmm, I'll have to re read it. That's a shame.

 

[MG Clive]

Some EVs do keep the 12volt battery trickle charged when the car is parked up and turned off, but I don't think MG cars have such a feature.

 

[Warden]

Anyone have any info on how the 12V charger works? The manual says it "intelligently" keeps the 12V battery topped up, but doesn't go into detail.

I'm just wondering how well it works with a dashcam in parking mode. Can I leave it on full power, recording video for hours while I'm parked away from home, and not come back to a dead 12V battery?

According to the manual I downloaded the S5 does monitor the 12vdc battery when powered off

 

[MG Clive]

According to the manual I downloaded the S5 does monitor the 12vdc battery when powered off

Very good, well done MG.

 

[Rei]

Thanks, that's what I thought. Need to try it out and see how it behaves. Taken at face value you could run a camera 24/7 because the traction battery will keep it going for a very long time.

 

[sammoj]

This sounds like how my Kona worked. They never got to the bottom of the 12v drain issues in Hyundai / Kia EVs so the later model could top up the 12v battery from the traction battery and did so about 3 times a day. Each time it did it a yellow light in the middle of the Hyundai logo lit up and the charging port went yellow if it was open and plugged in to show the high voltage electrics were active.

 

[Gary Bainbridge]

As I understand it the 12-volt battery is charged when driving and when charging. The car is supposed to monitor the 12-volt battery and when it drops to a certain voltage will turn the DC-DC converter back on to charge it from the main battery. Whether it really does this I cannot say as I doubt that so far it has ever been needed on my car. My old car (Mitsubishi Outlander) used to charge the 12-volt battery at 2pm every day for about 20 minutes.. That seemed to work well as I never had any 12-volt problems over eight years.