Car batteries are the strong, silent member of the automotive team. They do their job regardless of heat, cold weather and the drivers who demand so much of them. While a battery that allows a car to start at the first turn of the key is a joyful thing, it doesn’t last forever.
In fact, depending on where you live and how you drive, the condition of your charging system, and a number of other factors, a battery lasts about five years on average. And when it does give out, there’s generally no sign of trouble — your car just dies.
While the lead-acid car battery hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years, it’s still a difficult part of the car to check during routine maintenance. Simple battery testers can’t, at this time, muddle through the chemical complexity of what goes on in a battery. Instead, they provide a sort of snapshot of the battery at the time it’s being tested — without the context of the battery’s chemical composition before or after the test.
So, the rule of thumb is simple for battery replacement: You have approximately five years before the battery will theoretically begin its slide from chemical powerhouse to a chemical paperweight. At the five-year mark, we will start testing, and possibly detect a problem, before it’s too late.
But due to the nature of the chemical cocktail inside any battery, it may give out before the five-year mark, or maybe it will last for several more years. So, you have to ask yourself, “Do you feel lucky?”