NHTSA complaint #11419719

Owner complaint summary

The battery in our brand new 2019 SUBARU OUTBACK kept on being drained after moderate usage. Twice it was from leaving the hatch up for a couple of hours, once we were driving out in the country and parked to look at the scenery briefly and the battery died leaving us stuck out in the middle of nowhere. It didn't feel safe to be out there as night was approaching and we were waiting for a tow truck. All in all had to call SUBARU Roadside Assistance and have the battery jumped on three or four separate occasions. Because of this we bought a portable battery charger to keep in the car at all times because we were afraid of getting stuck with a dead battery. We ended up needing to use that battery charger on about 3 different occasions. Eventually the electrical system started acting very erratic with spontaneous alarms, loud chirping sounds and door locks so we took it in to Southern Oregon SUBARU who replaced the battery for us. Changing the battery seemed to fix all of the problems. That was in February 2021. The battery had a 30 month warranty. This week on June 1, 2021 we came back from vacation where we had left the SUBARU safely parked in our driveway. It would not start when we returned. We only have 1 vehicle so this was very inconvenient for us. The battery was dead. We tried to charge it with our battery charger but the battery was just too dead to take a charge. So, we had one night without a vehicle. We called SUBARU roadside assistance and they sent out a tow truck driver who could not get the battery jumped because it was so dead it just would not start. That was our second night without a vehicle. The next afternoon SUBARU roadside service sent out another towbtruck driver who had a more powerful battery charger and he was able to get the battery to start. We drove the SUBARU OUTBACK to Southern Oregon SUBARU and they are working on it now.