New 2024 CX5 not starting - lemon car?

[dbasuli@gma]

Hi everyone,
I bought a new 2024 Mazda CX5 Carbon Edition last year from Mazfa Dealer, and it currently has around 6,000 miles. A few months ago, the car suddenly wouldn’t start. I took it to a Mazda dealership, and they replaced the battery. It started working again after that.

However, the issue happened again recently. This time, I brought it to a different Mazda dealership. Initially, they said the battery and alternator were both fine and couldn’t identify the problem. The car stayed at the dealership from May 1 to May 14 (14 calendar days). Today, they called me and said they replaced the battery again—and now it’s working.

I’m worried this issue might happen again. I know the Lemon Law in some states applies if a vehicle is in the shop for 20 or more business days, but I'm not sure what my options are at this point. Can I still clain it as a lemon car? This is a brand-new car, and I didn’t expect these kinds of problems.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Is this potentially a Lemon case? Any suggestions or advice would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ruthrj]

I did the lemon law process in Florida over a decade ago and it sucked. You'll have to look up the laws for your state to see what you have to do. Generally, the manufacturer is allowed 3 fix attempts for a recurring issue during the first 2 years of ownership. Like you said, there is also a clock for how many days the car is in the shop. In Florida, 15+ days is sufficient to notify the manufacturer how long it's been in the shop to put them on notice. You're at 2 fixes and about 15 days if I read your post right.

Have your documentation in line. Check your state's laws. If you're at 15+ days in the shop, you may be at your first required action to notify the manufacturer how long you've been out of a car. You're definitely at 2 fixes. If it happens a third time within 2 years, they'll have a third fix available to them. If the third fix fails, you notify the manufacturer they have one final fix allowed before you pursue arbitration. If it goes over 30 days, you can pursue a lemon law claim for days in the shop.

Arbitration has two levels. The first is a bogus BBB arbitration paid for by the manufacturer. The mediator talks with you and a manufacturer's legal representative. Very rarely do cases get resolved with a buyback or new vehicle at this step. If this mediation isn't settled to your satisfaction here, you then have to arbitrate with your State's lemon law board doing it all over again but in a more arguably neutral zone.

Hopefully it was just a couple of crap batteries and you don't have to worry about it again. I had a Corolla that had an OEM battery crap out twice within 2 years of ownership. Wasn't a fault with the car, IMO they were cruddy batteries.

 

[dbasuli@gma]

I did the lemon law process in Florida over a decade ago and it sucked. You'll have to look up the laws for your state to see what you have to do. Generally, the manufacturer is allowed 3 fix attempts for a recurring issue during the first 2 years of ownership. Like you said, there is also a clock for how many days the car is in the shop. In Florida, 15+ days is sufficient to notify the manufacturer how long it's been in the shop to put them on notice. You're at 2 fixes and about 15 days if I read your post right.

Have your documentation in line. Check your state's laws. If you're at 15+ days in the shop, you may be at your first required action to notify the manufacturer how long you've been out of a car. You're definitely at 2 fixes. If it happens a third time within 2 years, they'll have a third fix available to them. If the third fix fails, you notify the manufacturer they have one final fix allowed before you pursue arbitration. If it goes over 30 days, you can pursue a lemon law claim for days in the shop.

Arbitration has two levels. The first is a bogus BBB arbitration paid for by the manufacturer. The mediator talks with you and a manufacturer's legal representative. Very rarely do cases get resolved with a buyback or new vehicle at this step. If this mediation isn't settled to your satisfaction here, you then have to arbitrate with your State's lemon law board doing it all over again but in a more arguably neutral zone.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I am from the state of North Carolina, and I will check what the laws are here.

 

[HyFlyer]

Nobody likes having problems with a brand new car for sure and 14 days seems like a long time to diagnose a bad battery. However, my question would be ... Do you like the car? My thoughts would be be see what happens with this new battery and ask if there could be some parasitic draw problem killing the battery?

Another question ... Do you have any dealer installed accessories or aftermarket accessories that are wired in like a remote start, alarm, tracking device (some are left installed by the dealer by mistake), insurance "snapshot" type device plugged into OBDii port, dashcam, etc

 

[dbasuli@gma]

Nobody likes having problems with a brand new car for sure and 14 days seems like a long time to diagnose a bad battery. However, my question would be ... Do you like the car? My thoughts would be be see what happens with this new battery and ask if there could be some parasitic draw problem killing the battery?

Another question ... Do you have any dealer installed accessories or aftermarket accessories that are wired in like a remote start, alarm, tracking device (some are left installed by the dealer by mistake), insurance "snapshot" type device plugged into OBDii port, dashcam, etc

Thanks for your response. Honestly, I don’t like the car at this point—mainly because I’ve lost trust in its reliability, especially with so few miles on it.


There are no dealer-installed or aftermarket accessories on the car—no remote start, alarm, dashcam, or anything like that. I even asked the dealership to check if anything might’ve been accidentally left installed, and they said no.


About the “parasitic draw”—thanks for mentioning that. I looked it up and it sounds like something that could definitely explain the issue. What’s confusing is that when I brought the car in the second time, they initially said the battery and alternator were both fine. But then after keeping it for two weeks, they changed the battery again and said it’s now working.


That makes me wonder—if the battery was fine at first, and now it works with a new one, could something be draining the battery and slowly killing it? I’m going to ask them directly if they’ve checked for a parasitic draw.


Appreciate the input!

 

[paris1]

See post #1 in this thread:

Thread 'Brand New CX-5, Dead Battery!'

Aug 6, 2023

We just purchased a 2023 Mazda CX-5. With 50 miles on the odometer, we went to a friend’s birthday party. Upon arrival, my wife turned the car off. It was a warm day, so I suggested rolling the windows down an inch to let out some of the heat. I had already opened my door, so she pressed the start button twice (ON), to provide power to the windows. I do not know if she turned the car off or left it on. We left the car and headed in.

About an hour later my wife brought a friend out for a tour of her new car. After the tour, she closed the doors. Her friend said she heard some beeping. My...

• mazda-mania
• Replies: 23
• Forum: CX-5 General

He explained it much better than I could, but the exact same thing happened to my wife's'23 when she first got it. You have to be very careful to turn everything off when you park one of these things or you'll come back to a flat battery in very little time.

 

[Ranman57]

Do you do a lot of short hops without longer drives between them? Doing that will run down the battery since it's drawing more power from the battery to start the car than gets put back in from a short drive. Couple that with the car's always on electronics like the connection to the app and it's pretty easy to drain a battery.

My neighbor had a Nissan Murano that never had a battery problem until they gave the car to their son. He mostly does short hops and it sits unused quite a bit too. They had problems with it dying until the son made it a point to give it decent drive once in a while to bring the battery back to a full charge.

 

[N7turbo]

Another question ... Do you have any dealer installed accessories or aftermarket accessories that are wired in like a remote start, alarm, tracking device (some are left installed by the dealer by mistake), insurance "snapshot" type device plugged into OBDii port, dashcam, etc

Was going to mention this. It's either a parasitic draw or faulty battery. Not the first time we've seen either one here.