From what I understand, the only impact camping mode has is to disable the interior lights being triggered when a door is opened. Rather it responds to the dedicated buttons on the lights only, in the camping area. All the cab lights are disabled.
I also believe there is a complex algorithm that slowly shuts down vehicle electrical systems once the doors are closed and the ignition off. Believe it or not, the van records explicit conditions in its memory that may cause a flat battery such as lights left on or hazards or infotainment system left on... I beleive this is to help with warranty claim determination.
There is also a low battery condition detected from the starter battery canbus module which then takes 'protective action' and alerts on the dash as low 12v and for the engine to be started.
The charge relay (couples leisure to starter battery) closes when EHU is connected and closes to charge the starter battery. I also beleive it closes with the ignition on (but not cranking) in 'certain' conditions. But i don't know what these 'conditions' or 'protective actions' are.
This is what i'm trying to find out.
I've had flat battery problems (long story), and VW refuse to tell me - they try to palm me off with some Ai puff stating 'it depends'!
I think it might be helpful to consider the base van and ignore the camping / California bit to start with.
I don’t know the exact workings of the Multivan, but I can outline what tends to happen.
The Battery Monitoring system will be reading the SOC of the battery and likely have multiple trigger points at various SOCs and they will progressively either switch off or reduce loads. Reduced timers, disabling infotainment without ign on etc, prompt warning messages and tell driver to start engine {this is normally well before they need to but the SOC is going the wrong way} (camping mode probably just mimics some of this) - this can reduce the load on the battery but you get to stage were stuff just can’t be switched off either because the car won’t function and/or doesn’t comply with regulations.
However a lot depends on what is causing the flat battery, all of above assumes the car is functioning correctly. A significant amount of effort goes into reducing the 12v consumption esp in the off state. However it only takes one rogue ECU or issue to keep the whole car awake and significantly impact the vehicle stand time.
I have seen simple software lockups, water ingress, aftermarket accessories (inc 3rd party trailer modules, trackers, LED bulbs), also external radio transmitters/masts, create drain issues by keeping the car awake.
Modern cars can take 5+ Amps if the Networks are held on. A lot of car companies will have the Hazard Light illumination as the last thing to go out when the vehicle moves from awake to sleep.
So I think it depends if you think your car is draining because of constant use and not enough protection or actually it is not going to sleep and the drain is excessive, if the hazard switch never goes out then I would suggest the car is awake.
The traditional way to determine the level of drain is to place a multimeter in circuit between the battery terminal and cable, most meters will have a 10A fuse in them, so this is just to test for drain with ign off. However if it is a software lockup, often disconnecting the battery resets the issue anyway. If you do see a high load 0.5A+ after 15 mins, then start pulling fuses to locate the issue.
