NHTSA complaint #11514745

Owner complaint summary

Starting December 2022, I've had a problem with my 2019 Subaru Outback - the battery goes dead when parked for as little as 24 hours. I have had the battery replaced twice - first by AAA in mid-December, 2022 and then by my local Subaru dealer in early February, 2023. Each time, the car seems fine for 4-6 weeks, then the problem starts again. Each time I take it to a Subaru dealer, they tell me they have found a different problem with the electrical system causing a "parasitic draw" on the battery while shut off. In February, Koeppel Subaru in Queens performed an ECM programming update at the same time they installed a new battery and told me that would fix the problem. But this past week, the problem resurfaced. I then visited Premier Subaru in Branford, CT who examined the car and they have told me I have a faulty DCM component, which will cost me over $900 to replace despite me having the Subaru Gold + Extended warranty. They keep telling they've found the cause of the problem (different each time) but it never seems to get fixed. Googling my car's problem, a lot of Subaru Outback owners are having dead battery problems and there seem to be a couple of class action lawsuits regarding getting Subaru to pay for replacement batteries. But those lawsuits seem to only address the symptom (dead battery) of a bigger problem - there is a design flaw in the Subaru Outback that is causing this "parasitic draw" on the battery when the car is not in use. It's a flaw that Subaru is not addressing by having a recall. It seems to me to be