Being in Los Angeles lock down, my driving has been reduced dramatically. There had been no indications of battery issues at all. But then yesterday evening I was going to go out and pick up some Italian food. My first warning all was not right was when I had to use the trunk button to put my shoulder bag into the trunk. I closed the trunk but then the door lock wouldn't open by simple touch. I used the unlock button on the key and it let me in, but when I went to start the car, I got the message that the car didn't recognize the key. If it had said "battery low"...better yet, even warned me a few days before that the battery was not getting the charge that it needed...it would have made sense. But telling me it didn't recognize the key was bizarre. So I went upstairs and got my spare key but faired no better. And now I was locked out of the car. Now Alfa gives you a little tiny key hidden inside the bulbous key fob and I was able to use that to open the door, but I still could not open the trunk and the door locks were now acting up. I called my local Alfa dealer service department but they had changed their hours of operation on Saturday due to the virus. Normally they would be open, but now they were not. I called Alfa Customer Service but all I could reach was roadside assistance. That guy was very nice but outside of sending a truck to look at things, he couldn't help either.
I spend a half hour going through the owners manual looking for an explanation of "the car doesn't recognize the key." There is none. Anywhere in the book, there is no reference...except in the little section about what the different warning lights mean. But the only advice was to take the car to a dealer asap.
Now it is important to understand what happens when your battery dies on a Giulia...and I'm sure it is much the same on other modern cars...the Giulia has "electric brakes, and electric emergency brake, and electrically controlled transmission, electric door and trunk locks, you ignition switch is electric...everything is electric so when the battery goes dead, your car now becomes immobile. You can't push it or tow it because you can't release the emergency brake or get the car out of Park. To get it on a flat bed they would have to come with (in my condo garage's case) with a very low truck that would extend out some sort of cradle and pick up the entire car and try to get it out of the garage. This is your modern world and your modern car.
Imagine how easy it would have been to have a simple metal key, like with every other Alfa I've ever had. That one or two little keys never made an embarrassing lump in my pocket, they didn't cost between 5 and 8 hundred dollars to replace, they didn't need batteries, and they lasted decades. Yes decades. And the cost of replacement is still under ten dollars.
So how does this rant against the modern world end? I called the free 24 hr roadside service and said my battery was dead. I had no proof of this, but something was dead because now I didn't even get the original messages...the car was completely dark. The guy arrived and thank god Alfa had left one thing mechanical...the latch to get into the engine bay. So the guy hooks up his mega voltage jump starter (I know that car computers love this...like a southern death row inmate liked to be put in "old sparky,"), and the two guy yells for me to start the car. Well the dash lights up and the needles start dancing and warning lights start flashing and the car coughs twice and dies. We do it again...the dash is like a fourth of July fireworks display...another cough and it dies. Same for the third time. But at last the fourth time is a charm, the engine springs to life, along with some warning signs...there is no more collision avoidance, there is no more DNA, according to the lights there is no more power steering and something called ESC is illuminated. The road service guy tells me to drive it around for about 30 to 40 minutes...just what I want to do at 10 pm...with the uncertainty of what will happen.
But I do as he says. Came home parked the car and went to bed. This evening I went down to see what would happen. It started right up, the warning lights were all gone, no sign that anything had happened. My wife is parked behind me so I don't know if I got my DNA back, but I'll find that out in the morning.
All this because the great all holy warning lights don't tell you that your battery charge is low. More proof that high tech modernity is not all its cracked up to be.
If the car had not started this evening, I would have had the jump starter back tomorrow morning and gotten it to the dealer. Even if it did start but the warning lights were still on, it would be back to the dealer. And it still might be back to the dealer if the DNA isn't working. And, in fact, it will be back to the dealer for an evaluation of the battery. All this because in the digital world, more is less, where is the analog world less was more.
I had decided to stay with the Giulia through the end of the lease. This now urges me to move up the replacement date and more aggressively look at alternatives in the older car market. It seems that Snowflakes have more influence over modern car design than car enthusiasts.
I spend a half hour going through the owners manual looking for an explanation of "the car doesn't recognize the key." There is none. Anywhere in the book, there is no reference...except in the little section about what the different warning lights mean. But the only advice was to take the car to a dealer asap.
Now it is important to understand what happens when your battery dies on a Giulia...and I'm sure it is much the same on other modern cars...the Giulia has "electric brakes, and electric emergency brake, and electrically controlled transmission, electric door and trunk locks, you ignition switch is electric...everything is electric so when the battery goes dead, your car now becomes immobile. You can't push it or tow it because you can't release the emergency brake or get the car out of Park. To get it on a flat bed they would have to come with (in my condo garage's case) with a very low truck that would extend out some sort of cradle and pick up the entire car and try to get it out of the garage. This is your modern world and your modern car.
Imagine how easy it would have been to have a simple metal key, like with every other Alfa I've ever had. That one or two little keys never made an embarrassing lump in my pocket, they didn't cost between 5 and 8 hundred dollars to replace, they didn't need batteries, and they lasted decades. Yes decades. And the cost of replacement is still under ten dollars.
So how does this rant against the modern world end? I called the free 24 hr roadside service and said my battery was dead. I had no proof of this, but something was dead because now I didn't even get the original messages...the car was completely dark. The guy arrived and thank god Alfa had left one thing mechanical...the latch to get into the engine bay. So the guy hooks up his mega voltage jump starter (I know that car computers love this...like a southern death row inmate liked to be put in "old sparky,"), and the two guy yells for me to start the car. Well the dash lights up and the needles start dancing and warning lights start flashing and the car coughs twice and dies. We do it again...the dash is like a fourth of July fireworks display...another cough and it dies. Same for the third time. But at last the fourth time is a charm, the engine springs to life, along with some warning signs...there is no more collision avoidance, there is no more DNA, according to the lights there is no more power steering and something called ESC is illuminated. The road service guy tells me to drive it around for about 30 to 40 minutes...just what I want to do at 10 pm...with the uncertainty of what will happen.
But I do as he says. Came home parked the car and went to bed. This evening I went down to see what would happen. It started right up, the warning lights were all gone, no sign that anything had happened. My wife is parked behind me so I don't know if I got my DNA back, but I'll find that out in the morning.
All this because the great all holy warning lights don't tell you that your battery charge is low. More proof that high tech modernity is not all its cracked up to be.
If the car had not started this evening, I would have had the jump starter back tomorrow morning and gotten it to the dealer. Even if it did start but the warning lights were still on, it would be back to the dealer. And it still might be back to the dealer if the DNA isn't working. And, in fact, it will be back to the dealer for an evaluation of the battery. All this because in the digital world, more is less, where is the analog world less was more.
I had decided to stay with the Giulia through the end of the lease. This now urges me to move up the replacement date and more aggressively look at alternatives in the older car market. It seems that Snowflakes have more influence over modern car design than car enthusiasts.