[AussieJohn]

Hi All, Something interesting this morning; I went to start my T Cross R-Line and it wouldn't utter a peep. I had been away interstate for 5 days but couldn't imagine that a battery would be flat on an 8 month old vehicle. I remembered a post on the forum about holding the key fob close to where an ignition lock would be fitted, and lo and behold the car started instantly. As I live directly opposite my VW dealer I wandered over and spoke to a lady in the Service Department. She asked whether my wife and I stored our keys near each other, and that if you hang the keys side by side in the same place they will communicate with each other, and may compromise the starting ability of each key. She suggested a distance of 10 metres ( 33 feet) is appropriate. It sounds a plausible explanation, but nevertheless I took the car for a fast 10km trip on the motorway in case the battery was low. To be on the safe side the keys will now be divorced, and I am purchasing a maintenance battery charger as insurance. Cheers-John

 

[Digitalracer]

We bought a pair of Faraday pouches for about £8.

 

[AussieJohn]

Great idea-Thanks.

 

[Tricky2]

Somewhere way back on here I reported I found the keys on my 2020 model go to sleep after being left alone. I'd seen a report about this in other models so tried it out. Set them on a stool beside the car and tested car would lock unlock OK. After around 15 minutes, car would no longer unlock no matter how many times i tried, until i moved the keys, when the car would then unlock lock again.

 

[AussieJohn]

Interesting phenomena with these keys Tricky2-Cheers-John

 

[Tricky2]

It's all part of preventing cloning from outside your house. If the keys go to sleep when left unmoved and stop transmitting then thieves can't pick up any signal to clone.

 

[Halin9]

That sounds very innovative by VW...!

 

[GeoBog]

I don't know about the talking keys between them thing but the keys do talk to the car to keep in sync. What I found with VW and other car makes is that if you keep the key inside a Faraday pouch for a long time (more than a week), the keyless functionality is temporarily disabled, you need to unlock the car by pressing the button on the key, old school. Once car is unlocked, keyless function is re-enabled automatically including start engine. If you had to keep the key next to the steering column then that would usually be a low key battery albeit the T-Cross 12V battery is pretty [email protected], small Ah, I usually put my Ctek trickle charger on it from time to time if I don't move the car for more than a week as I notice on my battery monitoring app that the voltage seems to sit between 11.9 -12.2 which is very low for a car battery.