Car Battery Lifetime

[Chris]

How long do lead/acid car batteries typically last nowadays and does it make any difference if you do low annual mileage but with lots of very short local trips, or high annual long-run motorway miles?

[terry.shitcrumbs]

Mine's on the way out at 8 years. The last 4 years have involved two daily journeys of about a mile each way, so no surprise. It barely gets to recove r the energy expended in starting. The occasional long trip has kept it ser viceable, until recently. This winter just gone by, I've had to take the ch arger to it when starter turnover became very sluggish.

Terry.

[News]

In message , Chris writes

Our last car, owned from new, finally died last year. Fairly low mileage, average 5k a year, one long journey a year, the rest local. Battery replaced once in 18 years, which I thought was quite good.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Chris writes

Piece of string question. The only truism I can offer is that the one fitted by the manufacturer will last much longer than any replacement you buy. Usually in excess of 5 years.

Replacements usually outlast the warranty. Just!

>

[Tim Watts]

Mine die at about 5 yearly intervals (2l diesel).

[Dave Plowman (News)]

IMHO, it more depends on if they are ever allowed to go flat.

The factory battery on my '97 BMW died after just over 3 years. The replacement Bosch - which looked identical in every way except for being badged Bosch rather than BMW - lasted 11 years. And that with a mixture of short trips and long ones - certainly not cosseted.

It could be the original was allowed to run flat when at the dealers - I bought the car at 2 years old.

[Broadback]

That brings another question, what about those fitted to VW cars with self start?

[NY]

The instruction manual for our Honda CR-V with auto-stop warns that the battery must be replaced with one that is designed for more frequent starts - I think it may list make/models or specifications that have been approved.

So there is the implication that auto-stop cars need a special battery.

[T i m]

And even when they don't, if it's just a (lower) capacity issue I've found they rarely cover it (that's fair enough I guess as they don't know how it's been used ... should that matter?).

Cheers, T i m

[Bob Eager]

That is certainly what it days in my S-Max manual.

[Huge]

Ditto in my stop/start Audi.

Although I always switch it off anyway.

[Roger Mills]

We've recently replace the battery on my wife's Puma - when it was approaching 16 years old. She only does 2 or 3k miles a year - mostly short journeys. The old one still worked but tended to go flat if the car was left standing for a couple of weeks.

I've still got the original battery on my 2007 Volvo 2.4 Diesel V70 - which will soon be 9 years old.

[Capitol]

I have had very bad experiences with Calcium batteries from 2 suppliers. Severe loss of capacity.

[Andrew Gabriel]

IME, the original battery in all the cars around the family does in excess of 10 years. Finding a replacement anywhere near as good when it finally needs replacing seems to be impossible.

[Cursitor Doom]

If that is the case there is no good reason for it. The required characteristics of a replacement battery are readily ascertainable from observation and measurement of an in-service unit - if not from published data. Most likely scenario is that car owners just buy cheapo replacements without concerning themselves about satisfying that particular vehicle's requirements. Do reputable battery manufacturers like Oldham and Exide still even exist given the punters' tendency to go for the cheap and nasty alternatives?

[Fredxxx]

My experience is that a name has very little association with quality. Most old "names" have been bought up in order to peddle nominal quality with lots of margin.

I thought Exide was still around.

[Bob Eager]

That might have improved the quality of Lucas.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I like Bosch silver. It certainly lasted far better than the original here

- and longer than any other I've ever had. So both cars now have them, but too soon to say about those.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Actually the exact opposite. The quality of the current Lucas branded distributors etc is appalling. But then they are cheap. The tendency is to think a new Lucas branded replacement for an original Lucas part is basically the same - or even improved. But one look inside shows it is cheap rubbish.

[Bob Eager]

My experience of Lucas was always very poor. We are talking 1960s and

1970s here.