“Hi David! Car question for you. My battery died and needs to be replaced,” my friend texted me the other week about her 2019 Subaru Outback. AAA had apparently told her she needed to buy an AGM battery or she’d see premature failure, but there were no AGMs available nearby. “He… said that the [standard] battery would only last a year,” my friend texted me in reference to the AAA installation specialist. “He says bc of the auto start/stop feature it will drain too fast.” I advised her to not worry about it, and just have a standard battery installed. She followed my advice. A few days later I received this text: “Omg, my car is dead… again ????” This confused me.
Had I led my friend astray? Had her car’s start/stop starter motor unduly stressed her cheap new battery? I had her text me a photo of her old battery; it wasn’t anything special — just a regular ol’ battery manufactured by Johnson Controls like so many of the others. I googled Subaru Outback 3.6R start/stop, and found this thread — apparently her car doesn’t even have start/stop! So her basic battery should have lasted three to six years, no problem, even in the chilly Rockies.
“Sounds like you have a phantom drain of some sort,” I responded. Something was killing her battery overnight; I asked her if she’d left a dome light on or perhaps the headlights. She told me that, with 99% certainty, she had not. Hmm. Sounded to me like the vehicle needed to be taken into a shop; something was wrong with the electrical system. I did some Googling and found this thread on Reddit:
Included in that Reddit thread is a link to a settlement website titled “Subaru Battery Settlement,” which states on its front page:
A class action lawsuit was filed against Subaru of America, Inc. (“SOA”) and Subaru Corporation (“SBR”), collectively the “Defendants” or “Subaru.” The lawsuit alleges that the Settlement Class Vehicles suffer from a design defect in some vehicles that can cause battery drain; and that Defendants have violated certain consumer statutes and breached certain warranties. The lawsuit seeks certification of a nationwide class of present and former purchasers and lessees of Settlement Class Vehicles to pursue these claims.
Defendants deny the case claims. Defendants maintain that the Settlement Class Vehicles are not defective and that the Settlement Class Vehicles function(ed) in a proper manner, were properly designed, manufactured, distributed, marketed, advertised, warranted, and sold. Defendants claim that they did not violate any warranties, statutes, or laws. In the instances in which such repairs have been necessary, Defendants maintain that they have provided warranty coverage where appropriate.
I sent this to my friend. She replied: “If this is a known issue shouldn’t they do a recall or something?”
Fast forward just a couple of days, and — almost as if the company were dropping eaves on our conversation — received this notice in the mail from Subaru:
“Affected vehicles are equipped with a DCM and may experience a dead battery resulting from the DCM continually trying to access the cellular network due to deterioration of the internal memory,” Subaru writes in its notice titled “Warranty Extension for the Telematics Data Communications Module (DCM) for certain 2019 MYLegacy, Outbacks vehicles and 2019-2021 MY WRX/STI vehicles sold or leased in the United States.”
Subaru is warrantying all affected cars for a year from this notice, or for 8 years and 150,000 miles from the vehicle’s warranty start date. The company will either replace the faulty DCM if the owner has an active STARLINK subscription (STARLINK is a multimedia subscription that connects the car to the internet, allowing you to track the car, lock and unlock doors, make calls using the onbooard SOS button, and more), or they’ll bypass the DCM for those without an active STARLINK subscription. Subaru will also pay to charge/replace a battery drained as a result of the DCM failure.
Here’s the wild thing. The above notice isn’t the only DCM-related warranty-extension Subaru has sent out recently. In late February, Subaru sent out a similar letter for owners of 2016-2018 Legacies, Outbacks, Imprezas, Crosstreks, and Foresters, as well as 2017 to 2017 Subaru WRXs:
“In response to some customer concerns of a dead battery resulting from the DCM continually trying to access the 3G cellular network, which is no longer available, the extension will cover this concern should a customer encounter it during the warranty extension period,” Subaru writes about its eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty on the DCM. The notification will also give those outside of those constraints a single year from this notice to replace the DCM free of charge.
“Affected vehicles are equipped with a DCM and may experience a dead battery as a result of the DCM continually trying to access the retired 3G cellular network and have not received a previous DCM update,” the notice continues.
Subaru has an entire page on its website titled “3G Network Retirement” in which it states that customers had between mid-March of 2021 and February of 2022 to bring their old 3G STARLINK systems into a dealer to be replaced with a 4G system for free. From that website:
STARLINK® Safety & Security – 3G Network Retirement
STARLINK Safety and Security connected services rely on a wireless connection, and in some older model year Subaru vehicles, these services use a 3G network. In February 2022, the current wireless provider has elected to retire this 3G network, which will affect services such as Automatic Collision Notification, SOS Emergency Assistance, and remote vehicle features in those affected vehicles.
Subaru retailers are offering a complimentary update for affected vehicles that have an active STARLINK Safety and Security subscription. This update will allow continued access to these important STARLINK Safety and Security services. If an affected vehicle is not updated before the 3G network retirement date, the subscription will be canceled.
If you didn’t update your STARLINK, Subaru writes on that website, the results would be: “You will lose access to services such as Automatic Collision Notification, SOS Emergency Assistance, Stolen Vehicle Recovery and Remote Features such as locking and unlocking your Subaru vehicle.” It doesn’t seem like Subaru anticipated “your car will keep trying to connect, even while you’re sleeping, and your battery will drain.”
How exactly this happens, I’m unsure, but this post on Hacker News by someone with a username “siftrics” states:
STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers.
Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infinite loop of
1. Phone home, expending battery charge 2. Fail, because 3G doesn’t work anymore 3. Go back to step 1
This effectively remotely drains the battery of every Subaru Outback built between 2015 and 2020.
Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won’t be able to start it.
The internet is filled with Subaru-dead-battery posts, demonstrating how widespread this issue really is. Here are a couple of Reddit posts:
There are plenty more posts on Reddit:
And there are many on Subaru Forums:
And my coworker Jason even got this text message from a friend:
Yikes.
While I can’t know for sure that my friend’s battery drain problem is a result of the first DCM problem (I’m betting it is), there are clearly lots of folks dealing with both of these, and it’s good on Subaru for sending those noticse out and making them right. [Ed note: Maybe I’m onto something? – MH]
Wait, you’re writing an article to intentionally raise “Subaru bad” on an issue that they ultimately acknowledged, has a known fix, are covering under warranty, and isn’t parts constrained?
This all sounds significantly better than domestic-brands with outstanding recalls that have no fix (injector leak comes to mind) and/or can’t get parts to fix.
My wife had a brand new 2020 Outback. Went through at least 3 batteries in 2 years. Stranded twice. Radio and other things would stop working too. After each battery replacement, random electronics would act all flakey and require a return trip to the dealer. And one thing she always did is immediately turn off the stop/start feature, so it’s not like that battery was playing a role in any of this.
Same BS as everyone went through. Nothing wrong at our end! Finally, we threatened to go lemon law on them and to our surprise, Subaru offered a buy back. We actually made out on the deal money wise. Regardless, it wasn’t worth the anxiety and absolute PIA it constantly caused with being stranded and the non stop gremlins. Wife swears she’ll never buy another Subaru.
My 2018 CRV with less than 45k miles is on its third battery, despite being garage kept its entire life, and living in the mid Atlantic where winters generally don’t get too insanely cold.
How excited I was to see this article when my other car is a 2023 WRX.
Subaru is an absolute fucking disaster of a car company, and anyone that likes their shitty cars is a member of a cult.
/finis
Counterpoint: both Outbacks we’ve owned have been reliable and comfortable, doing everything asked of them without issue. I’m not a member of any cult.
Confirmation bias, my man
How does that not apply to both sides?
Unless you think he’s lying, those are objective facts, based solely on his lived experience. He makes no claim about the larger class of Subaru vehicles. You, on the other hand, offer nothing but opinion. One of the two posts above has two data points for evidence, the other has blather, as do the posts below. The relative credibility is super easy to judge. My man.
Utherjorge
It’s hard to actually understand why you typed so much that is backing an absurd and useless comment.
I might have meant something other than confirmation bias. I’m two tired right now to look it up…but his anecdotal evidence is useless and a waste of space, because it does nothing to counter the overwhelming ream of evidence that in fact Subarus are massive pieces of shit.
The data on Subaru problems is mind blowing. So, it’s super cool that the dude offers that his have been great. This thread alone overwhelmingly eliminates the usefulness of his points…and that’s before actual, you know, data.
But please, feel free to be as dumb as he is. I do enjoy that you can see how I do this all the time. Lies are no longer acceptable to be allowed to float around without being countered.
I definitely worship the flat-six. And I sacrificed many small inline fours and various 2-strokes on the mighty Subaru altar. I also occasionally see Matt H at our gatherings but he seems to be drifting apart.
The people I know that have them and can dedicate the time to them adore them. And since I know who they are and what they do, I can’t disagree. But consumer-grade Subarus are a travesty. If they hadn’t begun to market the hell out of them as “outdoorsy,” with the continued lack of hybrid options, we might have sene Subaru left the market by now, helped greatly by their awful reliability
The older I get, the more I think this applies to nearly all car companies. I am a Suzuki man, myself.
Ask me about the V6 in my wife’s Acadia before it ate itself. You may be onto something.
I’ve had few to no problems with Hondas and Toyotas, aside from the rust monster. Which is significant.
.0001% chance that wuss safety communication shit ever serves any damn good whatsoever for the owner, but apparently high probability that it kills the battery, batteries that aren’t cheap, that can leave you stranded somewhere very unsafe and certainly inconvenient, especially when they’re sold with CVTs and can’t be push-started like a manual. On 2/3 of my old Subarus—not the junk they make now—the batteries lasted 10 years.
Meanwhile, modern BMW’s need batteries every 2-3 years (especially here in Arizona) and nobody bats an eye at that, even though they also require programming and often require professional installation due to the battery being rather inaccessible.
Nonsense. The battery in my 2014 F30 gave up after about six years and it took me all of ten minutes to replace it and code the new one (needed to tell the ECM that it’s new, reset the charging values).
WTF are you on about?
Yes, but it sounds like you had the tools/capability to register the new battery. I’m aware that it’s not like real “programming,” but it’s often beyond the capabilities of most DIY’ers. And yes, the F30 battery is easy enough to swap out, but there are other chassis where it’s significantly more work to replace the battery, like on the hard-top convertibles (E93, F33) or in some of the newer 7-series where it’s much more hidden away.
I say this as somebody that worked on BMW’s full-time at an independent shop for most of 5 years, and currently I work at a BMW dealership.
Weird to call them out based on your personal experience with one (1) car that may or may not be within the time period or model being discussed, while also proving half of their point (I’ve never needed to “code” a new battery)
Count me in the camp of confused how people think Subarus are reliable. If I’m going to have an unreliable high maintenace car it’s going to be fun and likely German.
..or even more fun and italian 🙂
it’s a ‘fun-to-reliable’ sliding scale
We have a ’22 Forester Wilderness that regularly lugs when starting after it’s been sitting for ~2 days, and after sitting for three weeks in our garage (to be fair, in the Maine winter) was so dead that even the AAA guy couldn’t get it started with his portable jump box. We love the car otherwise, but given that this is supposed to be our reliable winter car, it’s worrisome for sure.
My 07 Subaru drains it’s yr old battery every few weeks. I chalk it up to old old electrics causing a parasitic drain somewhere. The solution would be for me to spend a couple of weeks circuit chasing the problem. I’m going to go watch a movie instead and let the trickle charger deal with it.
In my wife’s 06 outback (Legacy), there was a connector under the driver’s seat that wasn’t used, but because it was buried in the carpet that would occasionally get wet and salty from snow tracked in on boots etc, it corroded and caused a parasitic drain. Cutting the power and ground wires from the connector and independently insulating them seemed to fix the problem.
We have a ’17 Outback 3.6R (non-stop/start) and it’s on its 5th battery in 7 years (< 45k miles). The first 2 replacements Subaru mostly covered but the last two, they did nothing for us. I finally bought an Optima last summer and we were able to make it through the winter for the first time in years without having to use a jump pack. I’ve been told that for fuel savings, the alternator does not charge enough during everyday driving. So, unless you are driving far enough on each trip, the battery is constantly using more power on start-up than it is recharging by the end of that trip. One trick we found was to drive around with the parking lights on, which will force the alternator to charge the battery at a higher level and help top the battery back up. For comparison my 2012 WRX is still on its second battery.
this is because subarus are massive pieces of shit
Sounds like the car needs to be taken out back
Reminds me of a family friend of my parents who had a pair of Dodge Colts (His and Hers) that had similar battery issues.
Seems the LED Clocks were draining the batteries.
LOL, how much could an LED clock possibly be drawing?! I remember when my ’89 Maxima’s battery was so drained that I didn’t even get a “click” when turning the ignition — but the LED clock was still running.
Late 1970’s/early 80’s Mitsubishis had issues.
for real-a cheapo casio digital watch will run for years off a tiny 1.5 V battery
Our 2019 Outback has this problem. Haven’t got the letter yet, but right now we have it setup using a something to reroute the power to the starlink module so it’s only on when the cars on. That solution has worked well
There seems to be some confusion in the comments. To clarify: Subaru was not using 3G connectivity after the 2018 model year. The document shown in the article indicates that the 3G issue is for certain 2016-2018 vehicles only. Subarus built from the 2019 model year onward use the 4G data connection from new. The issue with battery drain on 2019 Legacy/Outback and 2019-21 WRX-STi is a DIFFERENT problem: a possible DCM memory failure which can cause battery drain.
Both are DCM-related, but yes, two separate issues facing different vehicles, but causing the same symptoms.
It’s what makes a subaru…
I love you
My 2014 Hyundai Elantra GT, despite having GPS in the nav unit, can no longer can keep the correct time since the 3G shutoff. If network time is left on it is just completely wrong, and if I turn network time off it just keeps time very poorly and loses minutes per week. This is particularly annoying since I’ve worked on systems with GPS signals, and since GPS time is super accurate(because that’s how the whole thing works) there is no reason to get time from 3G using NTP except pure engineering foolishness.
Are we talking satellite connection (Starlink) or cellular connection (3G)? These seemed to be incorrectly lumped together unless I’m missing something.
It seems odd that a vehicle branded “Outback” would expect a reliable cellular connection. Not all mall parking lots have coverage.
Regardless of name, the Subaru system does NOT use a satellite data connection. The Subaru Starlink originally used 3G cell technology and now uses 4G cell technology through a well-known cellular provider.
Thanks for clarifying. Still a mystery how it would be expected to find connection in the outback.
I have a ’16 outback that has had a ton of battery and electrical issues. We wound up just buying one of those battery charger packs and keep it in the car because we’re going to need it at some point.
And for reference my other car is a 2015 BMW i3, I’ve spent so much more money and time keeping up with the outback that it has totally turned me off from subarus. I have spent waaay more time in the dank dark Subaru dealership waiting room with the flickering lights and terrible coffee than I have in the swanky nice BMW dealership. It is like night and day. I know that comparing an electric car to an ICE car is not a fair comparison when it comes to reliability but I don’t think I’ll buy another Subaru anytime soon.
If anyone wants to see a mechanic going through the diagnostic process for this, here’s the wonderful Mr. O. of South Main Auto…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFBpTwGk67c
Well damn I just posted the same thing a few minutes ago. Guess I should have read the comments before I posted.
Gee, my alternator works just fine without any programming whatosover.
Too cute by half?
Yeah, and they still get shit mileage. Battery in my 1990 Legacy lasted 10 years and the alternator a quarter million miles. But I’m sure that .05 mpg they save is worth the battery replacements and much better for the environment.
I doubt it even is that much.
Only surprise in this article is seeing DT on the byline instead of Hardigree. The months/years of gaslighting by the OEM is classic (and unfortunately not limited to Subaru). Put a battery tender on my new car that I drive every day? GTFOH
One of the typical things you see this with is oil consumption. Manufacturers will put absolutely absurd claims about “normal” oil consumption in the manual and then say you should put in a quart every 1,000 miles. Ridiculous.
Unfortunately this stuff seems to stem from OEMs trying to squeeze every last MPG out of the car to meet regulations. It’s reasonable to ask if we’re serving the environment by pitting reliability against fuel economy. Not that anyone needs another reason to question the incentives created by CAFE.
For real, I think longevity via durability and repairability are seriously underrated in the quest to make cars more green and sustainable.
I had an ’00 BMW 323i that required overhauling the entire cooling system every 100K (or less) due to a notoriously frail cooling system components. BMW wanted to massively increase (or maybe german govt mandated) the amount of recyclable plastics used in manufacturing, which is laudable. But this lead to these cars having various coolant system failures sometimes in as little as 80K miles. I hate to think how many of these were taken off the road on otherwise solid cars due to overheating leading to toasted motors by inattentive drivers.
I am so pleased that none of the vehicles I rely on were built before 1978.
Yeah, nothing before 1978 has any problems at all… as long as you don’t get in a wreck, like good fuel economy, and don’t mind spewing emissions.
Look, I’ve got a ’65 that I love. But this idea that older is better is just silly.
Nic actually said they’re glad they do not rely on an older vehicle. I’m not sure why that’s relevant, however.
Never get downwind of an unhinged rant.
I’m actually looking at a 1980 Dodge Aspen because, well, for one thing I think it’d be funny as a daily driver. Even funnier once I get rid of all the vacuum lines and replace them with proper electric motors. And two, if something does go wrong I can fix it by kicking it and then doing a Fonzi impression.
Some people just value different things. I value the mechanical simplicity over the passive safety because active safety does more heavy lifting.
Can I recommend a1930’s Bentley? Given that my backup car is , as of today, an 1913 Amilcar, I will stick with my idiocy, Two spanners, a screwdriver and a hammer and some stuff in ones head, I am good to go.
No problem with that here!
If I had the garage space to store a drophead I’d go for it. Sadly where I live it rains a lot, and that vintage ostrich leather and wool interior wouldn’t last long under a car port.
It is not a drophead. The Amilcar is not either, it has no head to drop!
I was going to say that this makes me love my bottom trim base model 2005 Impreza 5spd even more. Such a great vintage for a non-luxury car in terms of feeling like analog machines and not being loaded down with so much technology, while the technology it did contain actually contributed to making them incredibly reliable and well-running. I think we are just going to get recall after recall with increasing frequency ad infinitum as cars increasingly turn into battery-operated mobile computers. Maybe they’ll sort it out eventually and this will be a sort of medium term thing, but i doubt it. They’ll have to move to the same sort of software (and hardware) update model that computer and cell phone manufacturers operate on. The problem is that a car should last a lot longer than your phone and be more reliable than it without the need for constant software updates. And it’s bad enough when apple or google or whoever says your phone is no longer being updated or supported, but that’s plainly not acceptable for a car. I just don’t see how OEMs are going to do it.
Did you mean after?
No, my daily car was built in 1934.
Right, and you said
> none of the vehicles I rely on were built before 1978.
I meant after, you are correct, and a pedant after mine own heart.
We got the letter as well regarding our 2017 Outback 3.6R. However, we haven’t seen any battery drain even after several weeks of non-operation.
Dunno…we’ll take it in first chance we get. UF the closest Subaru dealer is an hour and a half away…
Side note – the alternator on this thing seems to be cooking the battery. Shortly after I purchased the car in 2019 I noticed a lot of corrosion on the positive terminal and corrosion of the metal hold down bracket. I replaced the battery, sanded and primed/painted the affected hardware, and reinstalled the battery. Two months later the same thing happened to the new battery. .
Still not dying though…
We’ve got the same thing on ours. But our battery dies…
Check out your ground off the battery. The cable and the connections on both ends. The battery hold-down bracket might be carrying load, though that would mean something strange with there being a short to the bracket.
You can also try using some dielectric grease on the cleaned terminals.
Also, silly as this may sound, CRC terminal spray (the red stuff) is fantastic. Definitely use it on a new battery, or after cleanup if you get the chance – it inhibits some of that issue.
This is good stuff that I’ll not only share with my customers, but also the other Batteries Plus stores in my franchise group. I think I’ve dealt with some of these cars myself.
I think the alternator doesn’t charge the battery all the way because the weight of that extra electricity causes worse gas mileage. It’s science or something.
Also the magnetic field from the alternator throws off the GPS.
Also, the extra magnetic field increases the pull of gravity on the car.
I didn’t think of that. Good call out.
So it helps it stay grounded to the ground?
Obviously.
We replaced the battery on our 2019 Crosstrek after three dead batteries with an Optima Yellowtop and, while we did go on vacation once and that thing still died as well, it is more resistant to deep-discharge and we’ve not had any problems since. Still better than the OEM batteries we went through.