Ford Focus 13 — interior lights not switching off once locked

DocQuincy

Inside our car on the interior roof there are two buttons to control the interior lights. One seems to enable/disable lights coming on/off automatically when you open a door. The other one switches the lights on and off. I am referring to two interior lights on the top, not the dashboard, etc.

If you switch the lights on once inside, when you exit the car and lock it, the lights stay on.

I did the school run today and was out about five minutes or so and they were still on. I'm just wondering if they can drain the battery and/or what the timeout is on them. You can unlock the car and switch them off no problem. It works like this every time as though by design rather than fault. I.e. not a faulty sensor.

1. If left on, how long before they switch off after locking, if at all?
2. Our battery is quite new (< 1 year old), do these lights use a lot or very little? Assuming working battery are we talking hours or days?
   

I checked the manual and it does not mention this. It only says when you open the door and the lights come on they will eventually switch off (gives no time frame) to save the battery. I'm wondering if this uses the same battery-saving feature.

I know I could test it myself but I didn't want to risk draining the battery, however unlikely.

Thanks.

Grey_Critic

If you switch them on manually as you have said you do then it overides the auto off. Try it.

user1977

And they're very low-powered LED lights, they'd take a very long time to drain the battery. I've accidentally left them on overnight (or longer) with no ill-effects.

Thrugelmir

DocQuincy said:

If you switch the lights on once inside, when you exit the car and lock it, the lights stay on.

Switch them off before leaving the car. Problem solved. 

If you were inside the car and locked the doors. You wouldn't want the interior lights to go would you? 

DocQuincy

Thanks for the replies. I know switching them on overrides the auto-off (at least initially) and that switching them off solves the problem. I was more wondering if the car would eventually switch the interior lights off to preserve the battery, as it does with the auto light on feature when you leave a door open.

When you leave the headlights on and open the door, an alarm sounds to remind you to switch them off. That there is no such alarm for the interior lights and, by design, you can leave them on, I would hope that either they really don't use much power as @user1977 says and/or they switch off automatically after a time. I just thought someone might be able to confirm this since it isn't mentioned in the manual. If the car can switch off interior ligts if you leave the door open the technology is clearly built into the car already.

If they really do use a small amount of power then I guess I can try it for an hour and see what happens.

Ditzy_Mitzy

DocQuincy said:

Thanks for the replies. I know switching them on overrides the auto-off (at least initially) and that switching them off solves the problem. I was more wondering if the car would eventually switch the interior lights off to preserve the battery, as it does with the auto light on feature when you leave a door open.

When you leave the headlights on and open the door, an alarm sounds to remind you to switch them off. That there is no such alarm for the interior lights and, by design, you can leave them on, I would hope that either they really don't use much power as @user1977 says and/or they switch off automatically after a time. I just thought someone might be able to confirm this since it isn't mentioned in the manual. If the car can switch off interior ligts if you leave the door open the technology is clearly built into the car already.

If they really do use a small amount of power then I guess I can try it for an hour and see what happens.

I don't know, is the short answer.  We have a Focus of the appropriate model in the family, however I'm not willing to try leaving the interior lights on for the sake of experiment.  Sorry.  Why, anyway?  

DocQuincy

Because if you know they go off automatically you don't need to worry about them being left on. I don't ever manually switch them on or off but other family members do. If they don't go off automatically it is conceivable, though maybe not that likely, they could be left on, not noticed and flatten the battery.

Ditzy_Mitzy

DocQuincy said:

Because if you know they go off automatically you don't need to worry about them being left on. I don't ever manually switch them on or off but other family members do. If they don't go off automatically it is conceivable, though maybe not that likely, they could be left on, not noticed and flatten the battery.

But surely that's a risk with any light connected to a battery.  You just need to take care to switch the lights off when leaving the car.

DocQuincy

But surely that's a risk with any light connected to a battery.

That's not true though, as I've said upthread.

Bigwheels1111

I had a Vectra, the lights would not go out for 20 mins when door closed.
Turned out it was the door lock.
Changed the lock and job done.
Don’t know if fords work the same.

tim9966

The timeout on them seems to be about 10 minutes anyway before they turn off if they are left on manually.