Hello Roger:

Having owned cars for about 70 years and replaced numerous 12 volt lead acid batteries I have the following comments:-

The life of a battery is usually about three years. The better quality batteries will actually go for four years. It also varies depending on where ones lives.

I have operated them at temperatures at minus 20-30 degrees F in Canada to close to +120 degrees F in the Arizona.

Both high and low extremes temperatures reduce battery life.

Some battery designs such as side terminals instead of top terminals seem to have reduced life. 

Infant battery deaths do occur on low quality batteries.

I always buy the best (high rated by Consumer magazine who test them) brand with the highest cold cranking rating that will fit inside the car. There has been reported cases where replacement batteries are too high and short out to the hood.

The place where one buys the replacement battery sometimes don't fully charge them and they advise one to trickle charge them when one gets home.

Rule 1- always have a home battery charger.

Rule 2- always use terminal chemical laced fiber rings to prevent corrosion build up.

Rule 3- Have a terminal bush to clean terminal contacts.

With modern cars the CPU codes have to be saved before removing the battery otherwise one may find that (for example) the door locks may not work.

Regarding the car itself many electrical short occur due to aging or incorrectly located parts such as micro-switches under the brake pedal.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

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Peter,

I've only changed one battery in the last 20 years.

Most of my vehicles has been low mileage (4000-6000 per year, you would probably consider that ultra low) and mostly doing short trips. So its not that the battery is being ideally conditioned.

You could say that we don't have the temperature extremes, but we have touched 100 F in recent memory and down below 30F in winter. Its the lows that take it out of the battery.

My current car is almost 8 years old and still on its original manufacturer fitted battery.

Peter,

I've only changed one battery in the last 20 years.

Most of my vehicles has been low mileage (4000-6000 per year, you would probably consider that ultra low) and mostly doing short trips. So its not that the battery is being ideally conditioned.

You could say that we don't have the temperature extremes, but we have touched 100 F in recent memory and down below 30F in winter. Its the lows that take it out of the battery.

My current car is almost 8 years old and still on its original manufacturer fitted battery.

Hello Mark:

The US is so big that one puts a lot of miles on a car even on short trips . Where I live it's about 200 miles to the Florida north border and close to 200 miles to Miami in the south. I have driven from the east coast to the West coast, a couple of times, which is a little over 3,000 mile doing over 500 miles a day. With the old high power iron engines they were only good for about 100,000 miles or two years for me.

The newer engines (Camry for example) one can get 300,000+ miles but the problem is the degraded electrical wiring.

P.S In the old days I used to take the battery out of the car each night when it was really cold.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay