Really scary warning light

Our 04 has just over 100k miles. The wife says yesterday the red exclamation mark came on the dash and the screen has a little red car icon with an exclamation point.

The manual says this means "take vehicle to dealer immediately". Is there any way I can find out what is wrong without going to the dealer? Any idea what is wrong?

No other warning lights or strange behavior has been reported by her, but I haven't test driven the car myself.

Thanks

 

She said the light came on yesterday and when she started the car today it came on immediately. So the car is just sitting at home right now.

I don't have a scanguage tool...is this something the local parts store can scan for free?

I know the battery is getting weak. It died on my wife a few weeks ago after having the headlights on for only 20-30 minutes. Pretty sure it's original. I guess I will replace the battery first and see what happens.

 

eh, it needs to be replaced anyway. When I'm there I'lll ask them if they can scan the car for free (yeah, right)

 

Thanks for the link. I'll do that first thing when I get home.

The only alternative I could find is the Optima yellow top, which seems to cost more than getting an OEM battery from the dealer.

 

Yeah so the battery level does seem low (around 11.7-11.8 after pressing the start button twice). New battery tomorrow!

 

Oh, sorry for not updating. Yeah, the new battery fixed it. Didn't even get a warning of any kind after starting it up with the new battery.

Note: once you remove the battery you can't open the trunk. I found that out the hard way. I ended up jumpering the new bettery from under the hood to open the trunk.

My hunch, the car detected the low voltage on the battery and put up the warning so I would get it replaced.