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.

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 

In my experience, the OEM battery can last as long as 10 years.  It's the aftermarket ones that fail early.

But on my nearly new Renault Zoe (electric), they recommend changing the battery every 4 years, before it has a chance to fail.  I'm not sure that's progress.

Simon Barker said:

But on my nearly new Renault Zoe (electric), they recommend changing the battery every 4 years,

Different battery chemistry ... also different battery function.

I have generally had battery lives in excess of 5 years. My cars have usually been garaged but when we are away cold starts down to -20°C are to be expected.

All of my recent failures have been instant and complete. When the key is turned everything goes dark and the only solution is a replacement battery. The Swiss motoring association, TCS, carries a selection of replacement batteries in it’s patrol vehicles.

The problem appears to relate to the move towards ‘maintenance free’ batteries when the alloying element was changed from antimony to calcium. This reduced the water loss but meant the lead was more prone to cracking, causing a sudden increase  in the internal resistance of one of the cells. Often the available current was too low even to allow the vehicle to be bump/tow started as it couldn’t operate fuel pumps, ECUs etc. If you have the electric hand brake applied when the battery fails you are completely immobilized until you can find the handbook to tell you where the emergency release is.

I have generally had battery lives in excess of 5 years. My cars have usually been garaged but when we are away cold starts down to -20°C are to be expected.

All of my recent failures have been instant and complete. When the key is turned everything goes dark and the only solution is a replacement battery. The Swiss motoring association, TCS, carries a selection of replacement batteries in it’s patrol vehicles.

The problem appears to relate to the move towards ‘maintenance free’ batteries when the alloying element was changed from antimony to calcium. This reduced the water loss but meant the lead was more prone to cracking, causing a sudden increase  in the internal resistance of one of the cells. Often the available current was too low even to allow the vehicle to be bump/tow started as it couldn’t operate fuel pumps, ECUs etc. If you have the electric hand brake applied when the battery fails you are completely immobilized until you can find the handbook to tell you where the emergency release is.

So it is all about the software:

"The partnership will give VW immediate access to Rivian's software allowing the German car maker to use it in its cars."

German car maker VW to invest up to $5bn in Tesla rival Rivian (bbc.com)

Which may or may not help them depending how much architecture specific code there is and how aligned their architectures are.

Embedded isn't an IT solution, there is always a little specific code around in the name of performance and efficiency. Generally, abstraction layers are used to aid portability, but some functions will depend on the underlying hardware. The worst case is if they are using different network management concepts, OSEK vs AutoSAR or even based around different networking technologies.

Hello Roger:

You may have hit the reason why my experience with battery life is shorter than other members. The batteries we have in the US are all "maintenance free" versions (where one does not need to add distilled water). We haven't had the other type for maybe 40+ years.

Sudden Battery death is just that the power is not enough to start the car (just clicks) . I use a battery charger for a few hours to get it started, so I can get to the store and get a new one put in (after saving the codes first).

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay  

I have never seen a Rivian EV on our US local roads - maybe that is why they have never made a quarterly profit. 

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay

No, ours are all maintenance free as well. I've not topped up a battery in a very long time.