How to charge a dead vehicle battery

A battery at exactly 0% can be recovered with an external car-battery charger. Remove it from the vehicle first: an engine below 10% charge cannot start itself, and charging restores charge rather than item condition.

Recover a battery from 0%

1. Remove the installed battery. The vanilla battery part expects a tool with the screwdriver tag, such as a Screwdriver; vehicle access checks still apply.
2. Keep the battery and the Car Battery Charger in your inventory, then place the charger on your current ground square and connect the battery from its context menu.
3. Supply the square with electricity. Grid power works under its room rule; the charger can also draw from a powered Generator - Lectromax.
4. Turn the charger on, then remove the battery when it has enough charge.

Charging time

The external charger adds one sixth of full charge per in-game hour. A 0% battery therefore takes nominally about six in-game hours to reach 100%, or about 36 in-game minutes to reach the 10% engine-start threshold. Tick rounding can move the displayed moment slightly.

A running engine charges its installed battery by six percentage points per in-game hour. That cannot revive the same fully dead vehicle: below 10%, the engine takes the no-power failure path before it can begin charging.

Charge is not condition

The charge gauge and the battery’s item condition are separate. Both charger paths change stored charge; neither repairs damage. A full battery can still be in poor condition, and a healthy battery can still be empty.

Headlights and the radio drain the battery when left on with the engine off. Switch them off before leaving the vehicle.