Parked at the office all day, how long should a battery really last in this setup?
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My situation is a little different from most posts I read here, so I hope someone can relate. I work in an office tower in DIFC, and my car sits in the underground parking for about ten or eleven hours every day, then I drive home in traffic that moves like a snail. My car is a Lexus ES, five years old, and the battery is still the original one, which my mechanic friend Sameer says is already a miracle. Last week I noticed the screen takes a second longer to wake up and the engine sounds a little lazy on the first start. Nothing scary, but I have seen enough movies to know where this story goes. I was reading about a Reliable Amaron Car Battery in DIFC and it got me thinking about something I never considered, which is whether parking underground in the shade is actually better for a battery than leaving it in the sun. My wife says it must be, because the heat is the big enemy. Sameer says it does not matter much if the drives are too short to recharge it properly. Who is right? Also, my daily drive is only about twenty minutes, so maybe that is my real problem. Is there a rule for how long you need to drive to fill the battery back up? And does using the seat heater, the music, and the phone charger all at once make a difference, or am I worrying about small things? I also wonder if a luxury car like mine needs a special kind of battery, because I heard some newer models have a system that turns the engine off at red lights and need a stronger type. Is that true, or is it only for very new cars? And if you change it, does the car forget its settings, like the seat memory and the clock? That would annoy me more than the price. If anyone here has a similar routine, parked long hours and short drives, please tell me how long your battery lasted and when you decided to replace it. I would like to plan ahead instead of being surprised on a Monday morning before an important meeting.